Extract from Meg McLaughlin’s article “6 Tips For Defensible Legal Holds”
The end of the year is a great time to take stock of what’s worked, what needs improvement, and what needs a full HGTV-style renovation. Legal holds, that routine-yet-critical function of any corporate legal team, is worth including in your audit.
After all, legal holds are the first step of traditional ediscovery and ensure that evidence is preserved for downstream processes such as collection, processing, analysis, and review. So, it makes sense to check in on your processes and systems from time to time to ensure that everything is as streamlined as possible, and, of course, completely defensible.
When and How to Initiate a Legal Hold
Let’s say a trigger event has occurred and you can now reasonably anticipate litigation. Start by determining what type of data is likely to be important. For example, in the case of an injury, video evidence showing the incident could be critical. This is also the sort of evidence that typically gets overwritten within a few hours or days if not flagged for preservation.
