One of the most striking features in corporate scandals in recent years is the role of email. When Morgan Stanley was ordered earlier this year to pay $1.45 billion to billionaire financier Ronald Perelman, largely because the firm failed to produce emails requested by the court, Bill Lyons, the boss of records retention software provider AXS-One described the case as a "harbinger". "I think general counsels around the world are going to look at this as a legal Chernobyl," Lyons said. But despite the heat coming from regulators and courts, a survey shows almost half the organisations out there don't have email retention policies. The Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Journal has an excellent piece on the Top 5 Strategic Email Compliance Mistakes: don't make a compliance a business goal; don't destroy all emails after the retention period ends; don't reject compliance in the mistaken belief that it's expensive; don't assume that emails are not company records; don't categorize.