If a company is anticipating a legal proceeding against it,it will opt for a litigation hold. So,what is litigation hold? It is nothing but securing and preserving all the information that the company has. Sometimes,litigation hold is also referred to as stop destruction request. Usually this process is put into motion when a company faces an audit or governmental investigation for manipulating evidence or using illegal methods to get information.
Any company has the responsibility of keeping any data or information pertaining to its business. This means holding onto hard copies of documents,video tapes,digital and electronic images,recordings,emails,spreadsheets,voice mails,financial data,and any information stored on computers or laptops of employees. This can be a challenging task and usually the responsibility is taken by the legal department of the company when it is expecting a litigation.
Usually a business will get a litigation hold notice from a law firm when legal proceedings are initiated against the business. The notice will identify records and information that business may intentionally or unintentionally destroy or tamper with. Once the notice is received,the business will swing into action by informing the IT department to safeguard the information that is mentioned on the notice. The IT department of the business is will go about securing the records and sending instructions to the employees to stop destroying all the relevant information. Once all the information and records are secured and preserved,the business then informs the judge of the trial that it has accepted the litigation hold notice.
Any loophole in the system which allows unintentional or intentional destruction of any kind of information or record has to be closed. This responsibility lies with the legal department of the business. Also,when data and information is being preserved and secured,a lot of unrelated information is also saved. In such a case,the business has the right to filter out unimportant information.