Legal disclaimers on Financial services sites

We are often asked by our clients about our experience with what is / is not required in terms of legal disclaimers. This is true on all sites but is particularly sensitive on financial services sites where compliance is more stringent.

From a user's point of view we recommend the minimum interference with the browsing experience as possible. If we can get away with a discrete link to legal information in the bottom navigation then we will. I have never known a user to read legal information even when they are forced to. However, in some cases compliance departments or law firms force disruptive experiences on their site's users with all sorts of pop-ups and series of long-winded pages with compulsory 'I accepts' at the bottom. In some cases the experience is poor enough that I am sure the company is losing business as a result, to the point where there is a clear business case for taking on the additional risk of less severe disclaiming.

From a non-solicitor's point of view it seems that there is little case law or few accepted standards as to what is necessary and what is not? It seems to be about reaching what is termed a 'defensible position' i.e. you have done enough to cover yourself should you need to. But where is the boundary for this defensible position? Different firms seem to interpret it differently. Are there any guidelines, standards or case law which solicitors currently use?

And to make things more complicated... how do you deal with these legal disclaimers on a global site where the user can move (on a single or multiple servers) through sub-sites which have products or services which are governed by jurisdictions of many different countries? Can you have a 'read once, global disclaimer' or do you, as a user, have to continuously accept new disclaimers?