Hold It!

Ok, I Just Got A Litigation Hold -- What Do I Do Now?

While many may not have been familiar with the term several years ago, today it has become the red flag for any business that finds itself involved in litigation.

Let's start at the beginning -- just what is a legal hold?

A legal hold comes about when litigation arises and involves the records or documents relevant to the matter.  It does not require all information to be held – not everything created or received by an organization necessarily needs to be saved. However, for the relevant information, legal holds suspend the retention schedule requirements for those records.

So, what to do with your company’s Records and Information Management (RIM) program once litigation or discovery commences?

First, determine what specific data and date ranges are relevant to the hold. Once that is ascertained, a well written RIM Program will help you with the following steps.

Step 1:
After determining what records and information should be preserved, make sure that the information is being preserved by the business. Keep abreast of the requirements in order to maintain compliancy. Being under a legal hold doesn’t mean the documents have to be in your office or on your computer. Hopefully, your organization has in place controls and processes to manage the data both in active and archived locations.

Step 2:
Maintain compliancy. It is important that you maintain a compliant organization throughout the course of the litigation. Adhere to the retention schedules of all records and information not covered by the legal hold. That’s why it is vital to have a comprehensive retention policy in place in the event of litigation. It is just as important to inform all employees, especially those that deal with the records placed on hold, why they can or cannot do and why these actions are required.

Step 3:
The documents and data involved in legal holds often are located within a company’s computer systems. That’s why it’s important that the Records Manager and Legal work closely with the IT department. If there are systems that are eligible for retirement, IT must be brought in to ensure preservation of data subject to the hold. As long as there is a controlled process that assures that data relevant to a legal hold is being preserved, plans for retiring systems can commence.

Step 4:
Those pieces of data that don’t fit neatly into relevant categories must also be reviewed. Data that doesn’t need to be held for the litigation obviously must still be retained if it is within its period. If possible, make sure this ‘abandoned’ or ‘orphaned’ data is classified correctly. You can reduce further discovery costs in the event Legal needs it in the future.

Step 5:
Meet with litigators to review the holds that have been in place for an extended period of time. And of course, when records and information is released from the hold, make sure the retention schedule is followed to assure compliance with the company policies.

For more information, visit DocuTech's website for Records Retention Consulting Services.