Email - Avoiding Email from Your Site Being Treated as Spam or Rejected
LegalServer allows users to send email messages from your site. For example when adding a case note.
These emails are sent by our server, but have a "From:" that is the user's email address (our clients want the recipients to see who created the message). These emails often run afoul of anti-spoofing and other spam/junk email rules because the message from janesmith@abclegal.org did not come from abclegal.org's server, but our mail server (mail.legalserver.org).
Google and Yahoo started rejecting most spoofed emails in February 2024. Rejected emails do not end up in someone's Spam/Junk folder.
In this Article:
- Optional No Spoofing (For Most Emails Sent from LegalServer)
- Exempt our Mail Server (Email Sent to Staff)
- Email Sent to Others (and Staff)
- Microsoft Mail Servers
Optional No Spoofing (For Most Emails Sent from LegalServer
There is a setting we can enable on a site that disables spoofing. Most emails sent from LegalServer will come from "noreply@<your site abbreviation>.legalserver.org".
Why do you say "Most Emails"?
This will not override places where you have set an explicit "From" other than "noreply@legalserver.org" or "noreply@<your site abbr>.legalserver.org". For example in a Send Email block.
An emailed case note will include the case's email address and the sender's email in the "reply-to" header. In this example, user Foobar Bazmin emailed a case note to user rwilhoite from the ronw-demo site:
Any well-behaved email program will reply to Foobar and the case:
Submit a ticket from your site (Help menu > Support Request) if you want this option enabled. There is no cost.
Exempt our Mail Server (Email to Staff)
This will only affect email sent to your staff. To prevent it from being tagged as spam, your incoming mail server can provide an exception for our server. Your staff or vendor who administers your email service can do this. Let them know that you want to exempt mail coming from this source:
mail.legalserver.org IPv4 address: 18.221.246.237 IPv6 address: 2600:1f16:c7d:ab00:ec2:ea57:2c:9a7e
Email Sent to Others (and Staff)
These options are primarily for avoiding email sent to your clients, pro bono users, or others from being tagged as spam or blocked, but can help with email sent to staff if you can't exempt our mail server as in the previous section.
Specific Features that Send Emails
Look at the feature sending the email and see if setting the "From" address to "noreply@legalserver.org" or "noreply@<your site abbreviation>.legalserver.org" is an option.
Probably the biggest potential source of pain for most sites will be sending emails to clients via the Send Email block, the Email PDF of Profile block, and when emailing links to external forms.
All of those allow you to configure the "From:" for the email to be "noreply@legalserver.org" or "noreply@<your site abbreviation>.legalserver.org" if you prefer. Gmail, etc., should treat such emails as not being "spoofed", and thus not run afoul of their restrictions.
SPF
Your organization's SPF record can include the following:
include:_spf.legalserver.org
Any existing SPF entries related to LegalServer email should be removed.
DKIM
LegalServer staff can help you implement DKIM by providing a DKIM key you can add to your organization's DNS records.
We create the keys with the default selector "legalserver". If you want a different selector, put that it in the support request.
If you want a DKIM key, file a support request from your site (Help menu > Support Request).
Microsoft Mail Servers
One of our clients struggled to stop getting email from LS tagged as spam/junk. This is the final chapter in their story. Your mileage may vary, don't run with scissors, etc.:
"[Microsoft person] escalated it to a subject matter expert who recommended that I remove the advanced filter and change my Tenant Allow Spoof rule from external to internal, which I did last night. I started testing in the wee hours of this morning and so far everything is looking good. I'm actively monitoring mail flow, and everything is being delivered to Inboxes.
Honestly the fix is counterintuitive to me, because the sender is external to my domain. But apparently by marking it as internal, we're actually telling exchange online protection that it is an internal server and can be trusted. It's weird, but it works."
Weird indeed. But maybe helpful to others.