We’re going back to basics here with some definitions, since it’s not always clear what is meant by a legal hold (aka litigation hold).  Basically, if your company’s legal counsel thinks that you will be subject to litigation soon, they will issue a legal hold, which means that you are required to preserve certain documents and records (as opposed to destroying them after they are no longer needed).  For electronic discovery, this often means that tape backups should be preserved rather than re-used, and that any electronic documents should be saved in their current state, almost as if encased in amber like a mosquito in Jurassic Park.

After all potentially responsive documents are preserved, then any documents that are not relevant to the litigation may be discarded.  This is called culling, and can be done with a number of litigation support software packages.  Most of these document review platforms come with some kind of search functionality, so you can reduce the number of documents quickly by only find docs authored by a certain person, or within a certain date range.

Finally, until the litigation has been resolved, the litigation hold is ongoing, so any documents that are produced that relate to or reference the litigation may be discoverable.  In addition, if any data is found to have been deleted or otherwise altered, sanctions may be imposed on legal counsel for a failure to properly issue a legal hold.

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