This note is confidential; don't read it

A growing number of e-mail messages look more like top-secret dossiers.

Check the bottom of messages and you'll see that many are labeled "confidential."

Instructions, often written in legalese, say that if you receive a message in error, you should delete it and alert the sender.

They give the impression of authority, suggesting that you will be punished if you fail to comply with the disclaimer.

Are they enforceable? In most cases, they're completely meaningless, said Sam Byassee, a lawyer who recently retired from the firm Maupin Taylor in Research Triangle Park and specializes in Internet law. They have minimal, if any, legal standing.

Why is that? A number of reasons. For one, they appear at the bottom of e-mail instead of at the beginning. That means a recipient doesn't have a chance to weigh the consequences of reading.

When a disclaimer reads "confidential," you're not supposed to go any further.

In the case of e-mail, however, "after you read through the entire e-mail, you see, 'Oh, don't read this,' " Byassee said.

What's more, the confidentiality notice is usually stamped on every e-mail message -- from those organizing lunch to those swapping financial information.

The disclaimer loses meaning.

"It's like calling everybody the most beautiful person in the world," Byassee said. "After a while, nobody is going to believe you."

Why are the disclaimers showing up so much? In a word: Lawyers. They're belt-and-suspenders types and like to take every precaution. It might not help much to have the disclaimer at the end, but it doesn't hurt either.

And it could be that the disclaimer is intended as much for the sender as the receiver. E-mail is playing a more significant role in courts.

"Maybe it kind of lets users know that e-mail is important," said Randy Whitmeyer, a lawyer with Hutchison Law Group in Raleigh. "People still don't put the same kind of thought they would in a letter." But more and more often "you see cases where the key documents, the smoking guns, if you will, are e-mails," he said.