Extract from Jim Gill’s article “Ediscovery Challenges with Slack and MS Teams”
The rise of collaboration tools like Slack and MS Teams has brought about new challenges for legal departments. While these platforms have become the new water cooler in remote workplaces, they pose unique information governance and ediscovery challenges. This is due to the informal and casual nature of chats on these platforms, which includes the use of emojis, memes, and GIFs, making it difficult to preserve, collect, or produce these messages for legal matters and investigations. Additionally, the complexity of collaboration data, which spans across multiple channels, adds to the difficulty. Furthermore, the sheer volume of data generated on these platforms has increased exponentially since the pandemic, making it challenging for legal departments to review the messages effectively.
That’s why we’ve created this four-part blog series to discuss challenges with Slack and MS Teams before and during litigation and how technology can help, as well as best practices.
Collaboration Data Challenges
Collaboration tools like Slack and MS Teams pose distinct challenges for legal departments that are not seen in other forms of communication, particularly from an information governance or ediscovery perspective. One reason is that people tend to be more casual and informal in their chats on these platforms. After all, since the shift to a more remote workplace in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, chat platforms have become the new water cooler around the office.
