Addleshaw Goddard has made an ironic error after accidentally revealing the identities of a number of its clients to each other while trying to promote a data protection event.

Earlier this week the firm sent an email to clients advertising the benefits of attending an Addleshaw Goddard seminar on data protection. One of the highlighted points for consideration was the "Practical steps to ensure your suppliers do not put you in breach of data protection law”. Unfortunately the email was sent without blind-copying any of the recipients. As one commented to RollOnFriday, the irony of making a "cock-up in an email selling your services in relation to data protection is almost off the scale".

"It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife."

The other strand of the seminar was “How to conduct a security review and what to include in your data breach response plan”. Clients witnessed Addleshaw's data breach response plan first-hand when the firm swiftly dispatched the dreaded ‘recall’ email, which "only served to highlight the slip-up even further". One client suggested to RollOnFriday that it might be a cunning ruse to create a practical example for the upcoming talk.

A spokesman said, "On this occasion we clearly haven't put into practice what we preach. It was an uncharacteristic faux pas and we immediately apologised to those contacts on the distribution list".