As the law calls upon enterprises to excavate their digital landfill, many are looking to enterprise content management strategies to offset e-mageddon. Enterprises are at last waking up and with a start - to the implications of the regulatory cascade started by Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), widely regarded as an over hasty response to accounting mega- scandals such as Enron. Yet, for all its perceived faults. SOX has reset the tone for major reforms with huge implications for IT and the practice of enterprise content management (ECM) in the UK and Europe. The spotlight falls particularly on email, for several reasons, relating to the nature of the medium, its use or misuse for serious business negotiations, and above all its inconsistent and disorganised archiving and management.