Integrated legal hold for managing the entire legal hold process
With StoredIQ Legal Hold, companies benefit from a simplified yet robust solution for managing the entire legal hold process. As an integral part of DiscoveryIQ, StoredIQ’s eDiscovery application, users can follow an intuitive eDiscovery-based workflow for executing legal holds. From notification, to tracking acknowledgement, to analyzing custodial data, and finally collection and preservation – legal and IT users gain complete control and insight into the duty to preserve process with a reliable, repeatable, and auditable solution that seamlessly integrates hold notifications with the collection and preservation of data for eDiscovery, records management, or information governance initiatives.
Hold Notifications
Using DiscoveryIQ, a user can quickly select potential custodians and initiate a hold notification, determine follow-up and reminder intervals for non-responders, and schedule escalation notifications for non-responsive custodians to a custodian’s manager. After notifications have been distributed users can track acknowledgements at-a-glance within the matter dashboard.
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Early Case Analysis
Once potential custodians have been notified users can take advantage of StoredIQ’s unique Analyze Anywhere technology to enable a user to quickly perform analysis on live data sources prior to preservation, then select a subset to collect for legal hold. Legal teams can perform early case analysis on data where it natively resides, cull obvious non-relevant data based on 100s of possible analytic dimensions, and get an immediate look at the scope of matter data at the earliest possible point in the legal process.
Preservation and Collection
With a few simple clicks, data is copied from the data source to a secure repository. To ensure that the copy is forensically sound, a hash is performed on the source file and is compared to a hash of the copy on the repository. In addition, the entire set of metadata associated with the file is retained, including the full file path of the original object. This original location data is invaluable since source location provides significant insight for the legal analyst or counsel during downstream formal review, enabling a faster, qualitatively enriched review process.
Single Instance and Incremental Collection
One of the most unique and critical features of StoredIQ Legal Hold is ‘single-instance’ preservation. Often, the same files are relevant for multiple cases, and in these cases, StoredIQ will copy and place on legal hold a single instance of that file on the repository. If that file is required for multiple matters, each matter will utilize that single copy, saving cost, storage space, and as importantly, the time and bandwidth required to access the data. And, since StoredIQ can perform incremental collections, only files that have been modified since they were last collected will be recollected for preservation, further reducing the time for collection. When all matters are concluded and the obligation for legal hold is removed, the file will then be available for disposition from the repository.
However, since StoredIQ Legal Hold is synchronized across all governance applications, including eDiscovery, Records Management, and Compliance, a file that is no longer relevant for a legal matter, may still in fact be obligated to legal hold for other use cases, and will therefore continue to be held.
The entire legal hold process is documented with comprehensive audit trails, preserving the authenticity and chain of custody, and is integrated with all market-leading immutable storage platforms for retention.
Hold-In-Place Option
StoredIQ also supports the ability to hold data ‘in-place’ by changing the permissions on the data to prevent the custodian from opening or editing the contents. While generally not recommended, there are specific instances where legal hold-in-place is appropriate. For example, with Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint 2010, a hold-in-place feature is supported intelligently. On these platforms, users are not locked out of their data that is on hold, but a secure copy is made on the system instead. Consequently, StoredIQ supports this intrinsic legal hold in-place capability on these types of advanced data sources.
Key Features and Highlights
- Integrated Legal Hold and Collection: Single solution which seamlessly integrates hold notifications with the collection and preservation of data.
- Hold Notification: Quickly select potential custodians and initiate a hold notification to be sent via email. Notifications can be sent immediately or scheduled for delivery.
- Auto-reminders: Schedule notification reminders to non-responsive custodians, eliminating the need for manual follow-up.
- Auto-escalations: Schedule escalation notifications for non-responsive custodians to a custodian’s manager, simplifying the legal hold process while maximizing compliance.
- Automated Tracking: Acknowledgements can be tracked at-a-glance within the matter dashboard providing immediate visibility into the status of all legal hold notices across all cases. Legal and IT users can drill-down by case to view the status across all custodians.
- Single-Instance Legal Hold: If a file is required for multiple matters, StoredIQ will copy and place only a single instance of that file on legal hold, saving storage space, time, and bandwidth required to collect the data.
- Incremental Collections: Only files that are new or have been modified since the last collection will be collected for preservation, further streamlining the collection process.
- Hold-in-Place: StoredIQ also supports the ability to hold data in-place, typically recommended for advanced systems that provide robust hold-in-place technology and for existing archives that don’t contain work-in progress data.
- Notice Library: Hold notices can be saved as templates in the Notice Library for reuse in future matters.
- Template Variables: Variable fields such as Matter, Custodian, etc. can be automatically populated in templates to deliver customized custodian notices, eliminating manual effort.
- Single-Click Hold Release: Quickly and easily release multiple custodians from legal hold with a single click.
- Active Directory Integration: Custodians can be dynamically populated into DiscoveryIQ from Microsoft Active Directory®. Custodians deleted from Active Directory remain in Legal Hold until formally released.
- Audit Reports: Every action within the legal hold process is documented with comprehensive audit trails, preserving the authenticity and a chain-of-custody.
- Digital Signature Hashes: Ensures data is unchanged, preserving all metadata
- Synchronized Legal Holds: Synchronizes the legal hold process across all use cases and applications