Track and Modify a Legal Hold

Once a legal hold is issued, you can monitor and update it as appropriate. For example, you might need to export a report on the status of the hold, or edit the included questionnaire to request additional information. 

You can do these actions, and more, from the Legal Holds tab of the Organization home. Read this article to learn more about how to track and modify your legal hold.

To learn how to create a legal hold notice, see our Legal Holds: Hold Notices article.

Requirements

Required permissions: To update a legal hold, you must have Legal Hold Organization Admin or Organization Admin permissions and have permission to access the matter/database in which it is housed.

Legal hold notice actions

Once a hold is issued, you can:

• Track the acknowledgement status for each custodian, including released custodians
• Manually send notification, escalation, and reminder emails
• Issue the hold to additional custodians
• Edit the hold notice issuer, hold notice email, escalation email, notification email, and reminder email
• Add or edit a questionnaire
• Export reports of legal hold activity
• Release some or all custodians from the legal holds tab
• Delete the legal hold

Access the Legal Holds tab

On the Legal Holds tab, you can see high level information about each hold notice.

To get to the Legal Holds tab, go to Organization home > Legal Holds.

On this tab, hold notices are nested under the matter/database they belong to. Expand a matter/database to see any hold notices within it. To find a specific hold notice, enter a keyword to filter.

You can filter by: 

• Matter/database name
• Hold notice/data preservation name
• Matter/database field name
• Matter/database field values

The hold notice card displays all the high-level information about the hold notice object

• The status
• The total number of custodians
• The number of custodians who have not acknowledged and acknowledged the notice
• The number of custodians who have been released from the notice
• The directories used in creating the hold notice

To take action on a hold notice, select it. This takes you to the page for that hold notice. From here you can release the hold, add additional custodians, modify the hold notice emails, and manually send hold notice emails.

Hold notice page

The page for each hold notice lets you take actions to modify the hold notice, as well as export reports about the status of the hold.

Release all custodians

If you no longer need to have custodians under hold, or if you are preparing to delete the hold notice, you can release all custodians. To do so:

1. Select Release all custodians. This opens a dialog to configure the release.
   
2. Choose Send release notice emails to custodians or Don't notify custodians. If you decide not to notify, you cannot send release notice emails at a later date.
   
3. Select Continue to move on.
4. If you choose not to notify custodians, select Release now to release them. If you chose to send a release notice email, select Continue to move on to writing the release email.
5. Select Write release notice to start writing the notice. Use merge fields to personalize the notice.
   

   Note

   The person designated as the issuer of the original hold notice is automatically designated as the issuer of the release. To change this, see the steps below to change the issuer. 

6. When you're done, select Done editing.
7. [Optional] Select Send test email > Send test now to send a test email to designated recipients. Your email is automatically added to receive it.
   
8. When you're ready, select Release & send emails.
9. Choose whether or not to send summary emails, and add any recipient email addresses for the summaries. Recipients receive a summary email including: 
   • The text of the release email
   • The date that the release was sent
   • The name of the associated database/matter
   • The custodians released

Delete a hold

A hold must be released to be deleted. 

Once the hold has been released, take the following steps to delete it:

1.  Select the three-dot menu, then select Delete hold notice.
   
2. Select I acknowledge the deleted hold notice cannot be recovered, then select Continue.
3. Choose whether or not to send summary emails and, if you decide to send summary emails:
   •  Decide whether or not to Export and attach custodian table with summary 
   • Designate the recipients. You are automatically added as a recipient.
     
4. Select Delete. This kicks off deletion, which removes all history and events associated with that hold notice.
   
   

   Important

   The only record of the hold notice is the creation and deletion in the Historic User Activity page.

Modify the legal hold

To modify the hold notice, you can:

• Issue the hold to additional custodians
• Edit the hold notice issuer, hold notice email, escalation email, notification email, and reminder email
• Add or edit a questionnaire

Issue to more custodians

To add additional custodians to the hold notice:

1. Select the three-dot menu
2. Select Issue to more custodians. This takes you to the directory page.
3. Select the custodians. See the Custodians to issue section of the Legal Holds Notice article for more detailed instructions on how to select custodians.
4. Select Next to move on. This takes you to the Summary step. 
5. [Optional] Select Preview/Test emails to see and send tests of the hold notice email, auto-renotification email, auto-escalation email, and reminder email.
6. If everything looks good, select Issue & send emails.

Edit the hold notice and/or questionnaire

To edit the hold notice and/or questionnaire:

1. Access the edit dialog from one of two locations in the hold notice page. Either:
   • Select the three-dot menu and then Hold notice email and questionnaire
     
   • Go to Questionnaire responses and select View/Edit questionnaire
     
2. [Optional] Make any edits to the hold notice email.
3. Select Next to move onto the questionnaire.
4. Make any edits to the introduction or questionnaire. 
5. When you're done, select Save and resend emails.  This resends the questionnaire to the custodians for them to fill out. If the hold notice was also edited, custodians are required to acknowledge the hold notice again. 

Change the issuer

To change the person designated as the issuer:

1. Select the three-dot menu, then select Issuer contact.
2. Enter the name and email address of the person who should be designated as the issuer.
   
3. Select Save.

Change the auto-renotification, auto-escalation, or reminder settings

You can add or edit the auto-renotification, auto-escalation, or reminder settings for the hold notice. To do so, select the three-dot menu, then select which settings to edit.

This will take you to the page to edit those settings. For more detailed instructions on each, see the relevant section of the Legal Holds: Hold Notices article:

• Auto-renotification settings
• Auto-escalation settings
• Reminder settings

Custodians tab

The Custodians tab includes a table that displays the Custodian, Hold status, Acknowledgement status, and Communication history for each custodian. If the hold notice requires custodian acknowledgement for reminder notices, there is also a Reminder status column. This column displays the current state of acknowledgement for the most recent reminder.

Communication history contains a record of every event involving that custodian. An event is logged whenever:

• A hold notice is sent
• An Auto-renotification or manual renotification is sent
• An Auto-escalation or manual escalation is sent
• A Reminder email is sent
• A custodian acknowledges the hold
• A custodian is released from the hold 

Manually send renotify, escalate, release, or reactivate

From the Custodian tab, you can renotify, escalate, release, or reactivate custodians. To do so:

1. Select one or more custodians from the table.
2. Select Renotify, Escalate, or Release. If custodians have been previously released, you can select Reactivate. This opens the relevant email message.
   
   

   Note

   Sending a manual renotification or escalation message resets the automatic renotification or escalation cadence. This means that if automatic renotification messages are sent every 7 days, and a manual renotification message was sent 4 days after an automatic renotification, then it will be an additional 7 days before another automatic renotification message is sent.

3. [Optional] Select the message or Edit x message to edit it. When you're done, select Done editing to go back.
4. Select Send to send the message.

Export legal hold information

To export a report that includes the name, hold status, acknowledgement status, and communication history of a any subset of custodians:

1. Select the custodians to include. Select the checkbox next to Custodian to select all the custodians.
2. Select the three-dot menu, then select  Export report.
   

Questionnaire responses tab

In the Questionnaire responses tab of the Hold Notice page, you can see a summary of the number of custodians who have responded to the questionnaire. 

To see the individual responses, export them to CSV. To do so, select Export responses, then select the notification at the bottom to download it.  

This downloads a few CSVs. Each includes the questions as the column headers, with each individual response filling a row:

• Questionnaire_[time and date questionnaire was sent]: This file includes responses to the questionnaire that was sent at the specified date and time, including those that are archived in favor of a more recent response. An answer will be archived when the custodian edits their response to the questionnaire. Archived responses are indicated with Archived answer in the leftmost column of the CSV. A new CSV is generated each time the questionnaire is edited and sent out.
• Consolidated responses: Contains only the most recent responses to the latest version of the questionnaire, if it has been edited and resent. 

Activity tab

The Activity tab is a chronological list of every event in the hold.

From the tab you can:

• Select # custodians within the table to open a dialog listing the custodian names associated with that event
• Filter by event date by entering a date range using the From and To entry boxes
• Select Export to export a CSV of events, filtered by the date range you select

Access a legal hold in a database

Users with Legal Hold permission at the database level, but without Legal Hold Organization Admin permission, can see the details of a legal hold from within the database. To do so:

1. Go to Data transfer > Legal Holds. This takes you to the Legal Holds page, where all the legal holds in that database are displayed.
2. To see the details of a legal hold, select View. This takes  you to the details page of that legal hold. The information displayed on this page mirrors that on the Custodian, Questionnaire, and Activity tabs of the Organization page. However, without Legal Holds Organization Admin permissions, you can only view and export information, not modify the hold.