OpenText Core Legal Hold

A legal hold, also known as a “litigation hold,” supports a duty to preserve potentially relevant data. Once issued, organizations must suspend normal document retention and destruction policies to preserve all potentially relevant information.

A legal hold is triggered when litigation is reasonably anticipated, parties receive notice of potential claims or threats of legal action, internal or regulatory investigations commence, or efforts are needed to meet compliance obligations.

By implementing a legal hold, steps are taken to ensure that evidence remains unaltered and available for scrutiny. Defensibility of the legal hold process is key for legal teams as it is a way to verify that data was handled properly, and preservation obligations were adhered to.

Failing to implement a proper legal or litigation hold can have serious consequences. Courts may impose sanctions for spoliation (the destruction or alteration of evidence), which can include adverse inference instructions to juries, monetary penalties, or even, in severe cases, default judgments.

The legal hold process involves a series of steps to maintain compliance and mitigate the risk of spoliation of evidence. Understanding these components helps organizations develop robust litigation hold procedures that meet legal requirements while minimizing disruption to business operations.

Legal hold software automates critical aspects of the preservation workflow and helps legal departments and IT professionals centralize legal hold management, be more efficient, and automate time-consuming, risky manual processes.

Legal hold software should help to create a repeatable, automated workflow. It should centralize end-to-end workflows and allow legal teams to convert time spent on manual, repetitive tasks, into productive, higher value work–reducing time spent on critical activities from hours or days to minutes.