Extract from Brad Harris’s article “Nailedit? DIY Might Be Harder Than You Think When It Comes to Preserving Collaboration Content”
Sometimes doing it yourself (DIY) is a sensible approach—there’s no need to call a contractor to patch a nail hole in a wall. But other times—like redoing a bathroom or building an addition on your house—you can quickly get in over your head if you try to go it alone.
The same common-sense approach applies to ediscovery: some jobs are easier than others. And while you might be able to extract relevant, discoverable content from a collaboration application like Slack without a specialized solution, that approach introduces a few substantial risks.
Hanzo and the Association of E-Discovery Specialists (ACEDS) ran a survey this fall to learn how corporate legal teams and law firms handled collaboration data from platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Chat. We produced a report of the results and also hosted a webinar discussing the findings, “The State of Collaboration Data and Corporate Readiness: Benchmark Survey Results.” We were surprised to learn that around 40 percent of Slack users and approximately 20 percent of Teams users are taking a DIY approach to preserve collaboration content. About another 10 percent on each platform reported manually searching through their collaboration content and taking screenshots to preserve relevant content.
If you’re one of those DIYers, here are five significant risks you’re taking with your collaboration content.
