Extract from Exterro’s article “Navigating eDiscovery Triggers and Strategic Disclosure”
For a couple of weeks, we’ve been exploring the process of developing an eDiscovery playbook for in-house legal teams, based on a recent webinar we hosted and whitepaper we published. In the first two parts of our series, we examined the foundational elements of a modern eDiscovery strategy: shifting away from fragmented workflows and building a unified, cross-functional team roster. However, even the most aligned team cannot succeed if they do not know exactly when to mobilize.
In eDiscovery, timing is a critical component of legal defensibility. The moment your organization identifies a potential legal dispute is an inflection point. By implementing a standardized framework for identifying preservation triggers and executing strategic disclosures, you ensure that your team applies early-stage intelligence before legal risk and data volumes compound.
What is a preservation trigger?
An eDiscovery preservation trigger is an event that gives rise to an organization’s legal obligation to preserve relevant Electronically Stored Information (ESI) because litigation is “reasonably anticipated.” The moment a preservation trigger crosses an organization’s legal threshold, it mandates the official initiation of the eDiscovery workflow, including the issuance of legal hold notices. In a structured playbook such as we are discussing here, organizations must explicitly categorize trigger events to remove ambiguity and ensure a consistent response.
