A landmark study released Monday by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business has found that 98.2% of “Reply All” emails sent at Hartwick, Dunne & Associates — one of the Loop’s largest law firms — could have been “entirely avoided if the sender had simply taken a breath, looked out a window, and quietly reflected on whether 174 people truly needed to read their thoughts.” The study estimates the firm lost approximately $2.1 million in billable hours to Reply All activity over the six-month research period, a figure researchers arrived at by multiplying the average partner billing rate ($847/hour) by the cumulative time spent reading, composing, and emotionally recovering from unnecessary mass emails.

The study, titled “The Reply All Epidemic: A Case Study in Collective Digital Suffering,” tracked every email sent at the firm over a six-month period and found that of the 14,847 Reply All messages sent, only 263 — or 1.77% — contained information that was relevant to more than two recipients. The remaining 14,584 were classified as “unnecessary” (41.2%), “performative” (28.6%), “passively aggressive” (17.9%), or, in 47 cases (0.32%), “genuinely unhinged.” An additional 12 emails defied all existing classification frameworks and have been forwarded to the psychology department for further analysis.

“What we found was a workplace trapped in a cycle of reflexive communication that no one wanted but everyone perpetuated,” said lead researcher Dr. Alan Whitfield, a professor of organizational behavior. “Someone would send a firm-wide announcement, and within minutes, dozens of people would Reply All to say ‘Thanks!’, ‘Got it!’, ‘Great!’, or the most baffling one of all — a single thumbs-up emoji sent to 174 attorneys billing at $800 an hour. We calculated the cost of that one emoji at $1,247 in aggregate reading time. It is, to our knowledge, the most expensive thumb in the history of American jurisprudence.”

The study identified several recurring Reply All archetypes at the firm, each assigned a “Disruption Impact Score” (DIS) on a proprietary 10-point scale. The most common was “The Acknowledger” (37.1% of total volume, DIS: 3.2), employees who Reply All simply to confirm they received the email, adding no information that could not have been conveyed by simply continuing to exist. Second was “The Comedian” (24.3%, DIS: 5.7), employees who Reply All with a joke that, according to the study, “landed with an average of zero out of 174 recipients.” The study notes that Comedian-type replies generated 2.4 follow-up Reply Alls on average, typically from other Comedians, creating what researchers termed a “humor death spiral.” Third was “The Accidental” (18.8%, DIS: 8.9), employees who clearly meant to reply only to the sender but instead broadcast messages ranging from mildly embarrassing to “career-alteringly personal.”

The most damaging category, however, was “The Thread Reviver” (11.6%, DIS: 9.4), employees who Reply All to an email chain that had been dormant for days or weeks, “resurrecting a conversation that everyone else had already grieved and moved on from.” Thread Revivers were responsible for an estimated 340 secondary Reply All chains, which the study describes as “cascading informational events with no discernible purpose.” One revived thread from March generated 87 Reply Alls over four days and ultimately required intervention from the firm’s IT department, its HR department, and, briefly, its general counsel.

Hartwick, Dunne & Associates managing partner Barbara Clements released a measured response to the study. “We take workplace communication seriously, and we are reviewing the findings,” she said in an email — which, sources confirm, was immediately followed by eleven Reply All responses, including one that read simply “Wow,” another that contained a GIF of a cat falling off a table, and a third from a senior partner who wrote “Please stop replying all” — to all 174 recipients. The firm’s internal Slack channel then saw a 430% spike in usage over the following hour, suggesting the energy had simply migrated platforms.

The study recommends that firms implement a mandatory “Reply All Cooling Period” — a 15-minute delay before any Reply All email is actually sent, during which the system displays the message: “Are you sure? Are you really, truly sure that everyone needs to see this?” Initial trials of the system at a smaller Wacker Drive firm reduced Reply All volume by 84%, though researchers noted a corresponding 200% increase in passive-aggressive Slack messages, a 67% rise in “seen but not responded to” read-receipt anxiety, and what the study calls a “measurable but hard to quantify increase in hallway sighing.”

Chicago’s corporate community has taken notice. Several Loop firms have reportedly begun exploring “Reply All Awareness Training,” a two-day workshop that costs $4,500 per employee and includes modules on “Digital Impulse Management,” “The CC-to-BCC Pipeline,” and “Finding Your Voice (And Keeping It to Yourself).” One LaSalle Street financial services company has gone so far as to physically remove the Reply All button from employee email clients, a decision that its CEO described as “the single greatest productivity improvement in company history.” The firm’s Q4 output rose 12%, a figure the CEO attributes entirely to the button removal, though analysts note the company also laid off 15% of its workforce during the same period.