Extract from Jim Gill’s article “A Few Considerations When Preserving Slack Data for Ediscovery”
Court rulings in the past few years have codified what people working in ediscovery have known all along: Slack (and other collaboration app data) is discoverable during litigation and should be preserved the same as email as stipulated in Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP).
With that in mind, here are a few things to consider when preserving Slack data for ediscovery.
Cost
In ediscovery, data volume translates to costs. The more data you have entering the top of your ediscovery funnel, the more you’ll pay to process, review, analyze, and ultimately produce that data. Not only does more data translate to higher processing and review costs, but it also results in higher routine expenditures for data storage and transfer.
When you over-collect data to preserve it, you pay for it. First, you pay to transfer that data to an external repository. Then you pay every month to store it there safely. And that’s before you even use it. You’ll still need to pay for each gigabyte of data that you eventually process, review, analyze, and produce. It can add up fast.
Be careful that you don’t negate the cost savings of preserving data in place by later exporting or collecting everything you’ve preserved. The goal is to preserve broadly and collect narrowly—which means you need to use ediscovery tools that allow you to do both.
