The problem is that there is no standard for record keeping and for storing these messages automatically.

That's because what the industry considers "best practices" is not to store them at all. In fact, "best practices" suggests that unless you're a government entity with some kind of archiving requirements, emails shouldn't even be backed up! Put policies in place encouraging/demanding that users delete old emails, and configure your backups to ignore email folders.

Why? It's a lesson Microsoft learned during its antitrust trial. If it exists, it can be subpoenaed and introduced as evidence; potentially damaging evidence used against your own organization in legal matters years later and not even foreseen at the time the mail was written. The solution is that emails need to be rendered as transitory as telephone conversations in order to make them as transitory as telephone conversations -- and that means making sure that no copy exists to subpoena, whether it be in a folder on somebody's secretary's computer, or sitting in an old rotation backup tape in a Pierce Leahy or Iron Mountain offsite-storage facility.

Spud Zeppelin * spud@spudzeppelin.com