Everywhere else you have a company email account and it's your principle way to have a paper trail.
"Not using email" is definitely a kids phase. Then you go work for a non-startup company and email is everything.
An ambitious startup idea would be oust Microsoft Outlook from this role - find a way to globally distribute the meeting room asset tracking stuff securely and seamlessly.
One of the companies I am talking about has revenue in the billions and operations across the globe and is publicly traded. The employees, young and old, want to communicate in real time, to get things done quickly. Many employees even have chat access to the highest levels of the company, including the CEO.
That's one reason for every lawyer's advice on corporate emails: anything older than at most 2 months must get automatically deleted, even when there is no interaction from you, preferably without exceptions. Things that require longer term storage should simply be printed out and stored offsite. Anything you find offensive, anything about your employment conditions, ... should likewise be printed out and go to offsite storage.
This is not destruction of evidence because you're doing this as a standard policy "to save space and to declutter" (hah !), not as a reaction to being sued. As to why that argument convinces anyone when large companies can reasonably be expected to get sued very regularly ... But it is pretty well established in legal precedent.
You can download the emails of course, but then the accusation that, firstly, this is against your contract (it probably is forbidden in your contract), and secondly the emails could be faked will definitely be there. And of course, policies are likely in place to prevent you from doing this, even if they're very unlikely to be effective.
I felt like that little detail was very much missing from the conversation here and yet I feel it is very important.
What does my paper trail get me? Evidence to be spun into a scenario that justifies firing me if the wind ever blows the wrong way.
Wow, all moving to proprietary, incompatible solutions. What an improvement kids are these days! It sounds like we are back in the 80s of computing. Thanks, I'll keep the email I can use virtually everywhere.