LONDON --

It began as an off-color e-mail from a woman to a lover, then exploded across the Internet, onto newspaper front pages and into a disciplinary hearing against five lawyers.

And it may develop into a milestone case in the legal debate about privacy and the Internet, say analysts.

"Some things are only meant to be said, not written down!!!!" wrote one of the hundreds of people who forwarded the e-mail chain.

It started when Claire Swire, 26, sent a joke about sperm banks to her close friend Bradley Chait, 27, and nine other people.

Then Swire and Chait traded private e-mails about an intimate moment, which he forwarded to six male friends with the tag, "Now that's a nice compliment from a lass, isn't it?"

"Beggars belief," wrote one of the friends, who said he felt "honor bound to circulate this" to other acquaintances. They passed it around the London financial community, then it spread exponentially across the Atlantic and around the globe, with a growing body of commentary.

"Never trust a bloke," read a note from a woman who forwarded it.

"What a great chick!" wrote a man.

"Boys, you're going to love it. Girls you're going to cringe," wrote another woman.

Within a week, the tale was headlined in British newspapers. The lad and lass fled their houses to escape tabloid reporters, and Chait's employer, law firm Norton Rose, was conducting a disciplinary hearing.

"Norton Rose takes a robust approach to e-mail abuse," read an announcement posted on the firm's Website. "The firm has clear rules that specifically prohibit the sending and receipt of non-work related material; in particular obscene, discriminatory or defamatory material and junk mail."

The statement did not mention Chait by name, but said, "Implementation of the firm's disciplinary procedures began as soon as the firm became aware of the circumstances."

"I cannot comment on this at all," said Andrea Turrell, a spokeswoman for Norton Rose, who confirmed that Chait's case was being considered, but declined to name another four colleagues also facing discipline.

The firm, which has not disciplined anyone else for Internet abuse, hoped to close the matter before Christmas, she said.

While legal experts believed that the law firm could discipline Chait if his contract warned against bringing the firm into disrepute, the broader implications were less clear.

"At the moment in the United Kingdom, the legislative framework is incoherent," said Bill Thompson, an Internet consultant.

Thompson has written critiques of Britain's recently enacted Regulation of Investigatory Powers act, known as RIP, which gives employers the right to monitor employees' phone calls, search their computers, and check who they are calling on company mobile phones.

That law could conflict with the Data Protection Act of 1998, which gives some guarantees of privacy, and the European Convention on Human Rights, which gives people freedom of expression, he said.

"Little did we know that a salacious e-mail about oral sex would provoke the debate so early in the day," he said.

Many companies have purchased software to identify sexual explicit or proprietary material as it passes through an e-mail.

Such monitoring has led to a string of dismissals or suspensions in the United States and Britain: 23 from The New York Times in February for swapping offensive e-mails, 40 from the telecommunications company Orange in September, and 41 from Royal & SunAlliance for circulating a lewd cartoon.

The Swire-Chait e-mail exchange, however, may be covered under different laws because it came to the attention of the public, and their employers, because one of the parties transmitted it outside the companies.

"The reading has been that you cannot be guaranteed privacy in a public place," said Tim Eicke, an attorney who has written widely about privacy and human rights issues. "The law is still developing and has not arisen in this context."

The question, says Thompson, is whether the law can move as fast as the technology. "Frankly, I'm not optimistic about the ability of judges to deal with a case like this."