Through the Google Glass: mx.google error messages and finding the right lawyer

This post is not about the law, per se.  It is more about adventures in the operation of a law business, and intended primarily to offer to whomever is looking the solution to an email problem that has bedeviled us for months.
 
We are a small business, with some degree of technological autonomy- our domain is hosted by a large web-hosting service, but our emails are routed through our own Microsoft Exchange server on site.  A few months ago, we began getting bounce back messages when sending emails to people with gmail addresses.  This was actually a fairly enormous problem, as many of our clients and prospective clients use gmail accounts (compounded by the fact that we frequently remind people not to communicate with us via their employer's email accounts, due to issues surrounding privacy and attorney client privilege that could be the subject of an entirely separate post).  The error message went like this:

"mx.google.com gave this error:

[####:#a##:####:#:#a#:a###:#aa#:a###] Our system has detected that this message does not meet IPv6 sending guidelines regarding PTR records and authentication. Please review https://support.google.com/mail/?p=ipv6_authentication_error for more information. w8si14224913qag.54 - gsmtp

 

Your message wasn't delivered due to a permission or security issue. It may have been rejected by a moderator, the address may only accept e-mail from certain senders, or another restriction may be preventing delivery."

 

Wait, what?  If practically nothing about that message looks like a language you speak, then you can appreciate our dilemma.  I will spare you the step by step description of our flailing about trying to find an answer, but say simply that between our web-hosting service, our ISP, our local IT consultant, and a variety of techy friends and acquaintances, nobody seemed to have the obvious answer to the question.  Here is the answer, because if you hit upon this post you are probably looking for it.

• The basic problem is that Google now requires validation that the domain that is sending an email is real- this has always been the case, but they now require validation both of your regular old IP address, which looks like this: ###.###.###.#, and your IPv6 address, which follows a different protocol (the series of numbers and letters in the brackets that comes in the bounce-back message is in fact the IPv6 address of your mail server--I made ours anonymous above, because nobody reading this really needs to know the IPv6 address of my mail server).  The main thing you need to know is: (i) someone needs to configure your domain to include a DNS record for your IPv6 address; and (ii) your IPv6 address is the gibberish that mx.google just sent back to you. Armed with that basic information, somebody ought to be able to help you.

• If you happen to use a service like Go Daddy and want to fix this yourself, you can log in to your account, navigate your way to the DNS manager, then select your domain and click "edit zone."  In the Go Daddy system, you will see a button that says "add record-"  On the drop-down menu "select record" you will see an option "AAAA(IPv6 Host)."  Select that, then add the numbers and digits from the bounce-back message, and follow the prompts to save. 

So why am I posting this on a law blog?  First, I never was able to find a clear answer to this online, so consider this paying it forward. 

 

Second, I suspect that my relationship with technology is not unlike the relationship of many non-lawyers with the law.  I am not a complete idiot, am as able as anyone to browse the web for information, and generally able to analyze a problem and identify solutions.  But when the problem involves something I know too little about to even know what questions to ask, or who to direct those questions to, and the internet offers information that ranges from too-technical-to-be-useful-to-me to downright incorrect, I am stuck.  And it stinks to be stuck on something so stupid.

 

What broke the dam for me was encountering someone whose professional expertise allowed him to explain to me, in structural terms, what was happening and where and how the problem needed to be solved.  In many ways, that is what we do as lawyers.  Our clients are intelligent people who solve complex problems every day in their own fields, but often do not have the information to even know which legal box or field of expertise a problem belongs in.  The internet is there, but in many areas of law has the same defects as a resource that it did for me- ranging from too-technical-to-be-helpful to downright incorrect, with the right answer out there somewhere but no meaningful guide to finding it.

 

So, if you are reading this and think you have a legal problem but do not know where to start (and did not actually stop reading after the fix to the gmail problem), here is my advice:

• Start your inquiries with a lawyer or law firm that has multiple practice areas.  In every profession, specialists tend to recommend solutions that are within their specialty.  It's just a comfort zone thing, but not always the right answer for you.  If it is not obvious to you what your issue is, it is better to have someone with a broad base help you issue-spot than to go to someone who wants to put your issue into the box that s/he understands best.  

• Always ask why.  Always.  You may not be trained in the law but you are probably a smart and logical person- if someone gives you an explanation of what you can and cannot do, you have a right to understand how they came to that conclusion, whether you end up working with that lawyer or somebody else.  And knowing why will help you make good decisions.

• Don't sweat the small stuff.  If an extra half hour of giving your lawyer facts that will help him or her correctly diagnose the situation costs you an additional hundred dollars or so, imagine the cost of paying that lawyer to follow the wrong path for months.

• And finally: the person who pointed me in the direction of the right answer to my gmail problem did not ask for or require my business as a quid pro quo for that information, though he is certainly high on my list if I ever need any of the services he provides.  The lawyer you want will be similarly willing to do a little triage for you without an immediate commitment.

 Good luck to problem solvers everywhere, and thanks to our clients for their patience while we figured how to keep communicating with them....