Create a Legal Hold Matter

On Everlaw, a matter is a space to organize custodians and legal holds (notices and data preservations) as part of an investigation or in the early phases of litigation.

You should create a matter on Everlaw when there is a need to start creating legal holds, or when you have defined an initial set of custodians who might be relevant to an upcoming legal matter, but you haven't yet collected any data for the legal matter.

This article describes how to create a matter.

For information on how to create legal holds within matters, see the following articles:

• Hold notice
• External data preservation
• Microsoft 365 data preservation

For information about working with an existing matter, see Manage Legal Holds in a Matter.

Requirements

To create a matter, you must be an Organization Admin or Legal Holds Organization Admin.

Create a new matter

A matter is a space to organize custodians who belong to a given legal matter or investigation, and to create and organize legal holds related to them. 

To create a new matter, you will:

1. Start a new matter
2. Define its settings
3. Define its custom fields
4. Grant (or restrict) user permissions
5. Leave notes [optional]
6. Add custodians

Step 1: Start a new matter

To begin creating a new matter:

1. Go to Organization home > Legal Holds.
2. On the Legal Holds page, select + New matter.
   
   This opens the New matter dialog that guides you through the steps to create a new matter. There are three steps: Settings, Custom fields, Permissions, and Notes.

Step 2: Define the matter's settings

On the New matter dialog's Settings step:

1. Enter a name for your matter in the Matter name field. 
2. Choose the time zone for your matter in the Timezone dropdown.
3. Select Next to move onto the Custom fields step.

Step 3: Define the matter's custom fields

On the New matter dialog's Custom fields step:

1. Enter values for any custom fields that your organization has created.
   Fields with an asterisk * are required.
2. Select Next to move onto the Permissions step.

Step 4: Grant (or revoke) user permissions 

On the New matter dialog's Permissions step, you determine which Admins should have access to this matter. To do this:

1. [Optional] Use the Restrict matter permissions switch to select whether or not the matter's permissions are restricted.
   Your options are:
   
   • Enabled (default): All current Organization Admins are automatically granted access permissions (unless explicitly removed). Legal Hold Organization Admins are not granted permissions by default. You can also grant and revoke individual's permissions.
   • Disabled: All Organization Admins and Legal Holds Organization Admins can access the matter
     
2. [Optional] If you choose to have Restrict matter permissions enabled, you can now grant or revoke user(s) permissions:
   • To revoke a user’s permissions: Select the revoke permissions button in the user’s row.
     
   • To grant permissions:
     1. Select + Grant permissions.
        
        An input box appears at the end of the list of users.
     2. Select the user(s) to grant permissions to.
        
        Then close the list by clicking outside of it or hitting "Esc" on your keyboard.
     3. Select Grant.
        
3. Select Next to move to the Notes step.

Step 5: Leave notes about the matter

[Optional] To add information about the matter, such as additional context or potential legal issues related to the matter, enter notes or a description in the Notes field.

When you're done, select Continue. 

This takes you to a wizard to add Custodians.

Step 6: Add custodians

At this point, you can choose to select the custodians to include in the matter. You can select custodians manually or add in a pre-selected subset:

• To select custodians manually: Select the checkbox next to the name of each custodian to include. Then select Select. The selected custodians are removed from the table and appear in a Selected list on the left side of the page.
  

  Note

  If you have multiple directories, you can filter to only the relevant one(s) under Filter by directory.

  
• To paste or upload from a specific directory: If there is a specific directory from you which you want to paste or upload a list of custodians:
  1. Select Paste or upload from one directory. This opens a dialog to select the directory.
     
  2. To select a directory, select one from the Directory dropdown.
  3. To add the custodians from the directory, you can either:
     • Paste the list of email addresses into the text box
     • Upload a CSV with one column of email addresses
  4. When you're done, select Next.
     The custodians whose email addresses match those in the selected directory are selected as custodians.  

When you're done, select Continue. The new matter is created.

Now what? See the Matter details page article for details about the page and to learn how to create a legal hold within it.