If there is one thing rarer than an adult who doesn’t drive in Los Angeles, it’s a professional who doesn’t use e-mail.

But there are a select few holdouts who depend on communicating the old-fashioned way: they actually talk to people. And some of them are among the best-known people in Los Angeles.

Charles Munger, chief executive of Wesco Financial and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has been Warren Buffett’s right-hand man since the two met in 1959 but his left hand has never held a Blackberry.

“My life has worked pretty well for me conducted the way I always used to do it,” said Munger, 81, who doesn’t plan to start using e-mail. “I was raised in a different generation.”

Munger, like other e-mail abstainers, has his staff sift through messages.

Nancy Flynn, executive director of the ePolicy Institute in Columbus, Ohio, said that the last time she ran across a company that didn’t have e-mail was 10 years ago. “E-mail is pretty ubiquitous. For the most part, everybody uses it,” she said.

Still, Flynn said that she does have a rare encounter with executives that have managed to avoid using e-mail throughout their careers. She described executives of that sort as uncomfortable with the latest technology.

That fits Munger nearly perfectly.

At Wesco, Munger’s secretary, Doerthy Obert, is assigned the task of going through his e-mail usually less than 20 a day. “It takes getting used to, and he has other more important things to do. If you work for a person, you know what is important and what is not important,” she said.

State Sen. Gilbert Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, has an e-mail address all Assembly members and Senators are given one but he largely relies on other ways to communicate. “He likes to sit down with somebody, shake their hand and look them in the eye,” said aide Edward Headington. “He is just kind of old school in that respect.”

But Cedillo may be moving from old school to new school. Headington said that his boss recently got a Blackberry, though it’s unclear how much he will use it.

Even at companies where management uses e-mail, more assistants are becoming first-responders mostly because of the volume. “It used to be that if you had a decision maker’s e-mail address, you would be pretty certain it would get to that decision maker,” said Flynn. “Now, you really can’t be sure who ultimately will read your e-mail.”

With new e-mail responsibilities, come new dangers. Flynn said that assistants worry about deleting critical missives or sending out e-mails in their boss’ names that could be misconstrued.

Rocio Mata, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the International Association of Administration Professionals and an executive secretary said she doesn’t send confidential e-mails in her boss’ name and instead deals primarily with e-mails confirming meetings or thanking someone for their help.

She also avoids erasing important messages by letting her boss know about every e-mail she thinks should be deleted. “Ninety percent of the time, I would print it out, save a copy and make sure that he had a copy no matter what,” she said.

There is a movement by a few companies to give employees a break from it all. Jay Ellison, the chief operating officer of Chicago-based U.S. Cellular, instituted “no-e-mail Fridays” last August throughout the company.

“It takes the stress level out of the business,” he said. “It prepares you for the weekend.”