On Everlaw, legal hold notices and data preservations are housed within either a matter or a database. The Organization Legal Holds page lists each matter and database that contain at least one legal hold and allows you to access a details page to manage and take action on them. This article describes the details page and all the actions you can take on your matter or database related to legal holds.
To learn how to create a new matter to house legal holds, see our Create a Legal Hold Matter article.
Requirements
To view or modify a matter, you must:
- Be an Organization Admin or Legal Holds Organization Admin
- Have permission to access the matter. See the Manager matter permissions section for more details about matter permissions.
For databases, the details page is also present on the database Legal Holds page. To view this page, you must have Database Admin permissions. Database Admins who are not Org Admins or Legal Holds Org Admins can view the database Legal Holds page, but cannot take actions other than export CSV reports.
Access the Details page
The page for a database/matter contains all the information about all the legal holds within it and lets you take actions on them. To access the details page for a specific matter from the Organization Legal Holds page, select the View button for that matter/database.
For databases, this page is also present on the database Legal Holds page. To access this page from within the database, go to Data Transfer > Legal Holds.
Note
Database Admins can view the database Legal Holds page, but cannot take actions other than export CSV reports.
Use this page to understand and manage the current legal holds and custodians, and to create new legal holds. This includes actions to:
- Add more custodians
- Create new legal holds
- Modify existing holds
- Export reports on holds and on custodians
The main details page has three additional tabs to support these functions: Legal Holds, Custodians, and Notes.
Main details page
On the main page for each database/matter, you can take several actions in support of managing the database/matter:
- [Databases only] Go to the database Legal Holds page. To do so, select View in database.
- Create a new legal hold to house within the database/matter. See the Create a new legal hold section for details and instructions.
- Add custodians to the database/matter. If you want to include a custodian in a legal hold within the database/matter, you must add them first. To do so, select + Add custodians. From there, you can select custodians manually or add in a pre-selected subset. See step 12 in Create a Legal Hold Matter for detailed instructions on how to do so.
The three-dot menu has additional functionality for matters:
- Manage permissions to determine which Admins can access the matter: See Manage matter permissions section for detailed instructions.
- View or edit custom matter fields: See Organization Admin: Database Fields for detailed instructions.
-
Rename the matter: To do so, select the three-dot
menu, then select Rename matter. Type in the new name, then hit enter on your keyboard or click out of the field.
- Release all the custodians from all legal holds in the matter/database: See the Release all legal holds section for detailed instructions
-
Promote the matter to a database: When you do this, it creates a database (along with a default complete project) to which you can upload documents for review. You should promote the matter when you're ready to start uploading and reviewing documents.
To promote the matter, select the three-dot
See Organization Admin: Creating New Databases (starting at step 3) for detailed instructions.
Note
When you promote a matter to a database, matter permissions restrictions are reset to allow access by all admins by default. To manage organization admin permissions for a database, use the Disable OA access option on the Projects & Users page.
- If all holds have been released and/or deleted, you can delete the matter. To do so, select the three-dot
Create a new legal hold
On Everlaw, a legal hold can be:
- A hold notice that alerts a custodian about the hold and can include a questionnaire to collect additional information
- A Microsoft Purview data preservation to create a preservation-in-place for Microsoft data via an integration between Everlaw and Microsoft
- An external data preservation record of a data preservation created in a third party tool/platform
To create a new legal hold:
- Make sure you're on the details page for the correct database/matter. From the Organization Legal Holds tab, find the relevant database/matter and select the View button to navigate to the page for it.
- From the details page for the matter/database, select +New, then choose the legal hold that you want to create: Hold notice, Data preservation, or External data preservation.
- Continue with the steps to create the legal hold:
Manager matter permissions
When the Restrict access permissions setting is enabled, Admins with access to the matter can designate which Organization and Legal Hold Organization Admins also have access. If an Admin is not explicitly granted access to a matter with access permissions enabled, they cannot see that matter listed on the organization’s Legal Holds page. To update the settings:
- From the matter's details page, select the three-dot
- [Optional] Disable/Enable this permission: To do this, switch on or off Restrict matter permissions. When Restrict matter permissions is off, all Organization Admins and Legal Holds Organization admins can access the matter.
- [Optional] When the toggle is on, you can choose to grant or revoke permissions:
To grant permissions:
- Select + Grant permissions.
An input box appears at the end of the list of users. - Select the user(s) to grant permissions to.
Then close the list by clicking outside of it or hitting Esc on your keyboard. - Select Grant.
To revoke a user’s permissions, select the revoke permissions button in the user’s row.
- When you're done, select Done.
Release all legal holds
When custodians no longer need to be under hold, you can release all holds at once. This preserves the record and history of each hold, but updates the status to Released. To release all legal holds in a matter:
- From the matter's details page, select the three-dot
- If you want to send emails to the custodians notifying them that they have been released, select Send release notice emails to custodians.
If you don't want to send a notice, select Don't notify custodians. - To send a summary email of the action to designated admins, keep Send summary emails selected and select recipients to the Recipients entry box.
If you don't want to send a summary email, deselect Send summary emails. - Select Next to move onto the Data preservations settings step.
- Review the list of data preservations. If there are any external data preservations, you can choose whether or not to release them.
Keep Include external data preservations selected to mark these as released.
To exclude external data preservations, deselect Include external data preservations.
Note: Since you create an external data preservation as a record of a data preservation created outside of Everlaw, this does not update the status of the data preservation in the tool where it was created. - If you selected to send release notice emails in step 2, Select Continue to move on to writing the release notice for the hold. See [link to legal holds notice article release notice step] for detailed instructions on how to do so.
Otherwise, select Release all now to release all the custodians.
Delete a matter
When all holds have been released, you can delete the matter and the holds within it.
Important
Deleting a matter is final and permanent. We don't recommend deleting a matter unless it was made as a test or in error.
To delete the matter:
- From the matter's details page, select the three-dot
- Select the checkbox next to I acknowledge the deleted matter, along with its hold notices, data preservations, and external data preservations, cannot be recovered.
- Select Continue to move onto the next step.
- Make choices on each of the following options. By default, they are all selected. Deselect the checkbox for any that you do not want to include:
- Send a summary email per deleted hold notice, data preservation, and external preservation
- Export and attach custodian table with hold notice deletion summary
- Export and attach custodian and activity tables with data preservation deletion summary
- Export and attach custodian table with external data preservation deletion summary
- Select Delete. This permanently deletes the matter.
Legal holds tab
The Legal Holds tab lists all the hold notices and data preservations in the matter, along with information about the custodian status.
There are a few actions you can take from this tab:
- To go to the page for a given legal hold, select View in its row. This takes you to the details page for that specific hold. To learn more about the actions you can take from the page for a given hold, see the following:
- To export the legal holds from this matter/database, select Export legal holds. This exports a CSV with one row for each hold in the database/matter. The column headers have high-level information about the status of the hold and the number and status of custodians for each hold.
Custodians tab
The Custodians tab lists all the custodians added to the matter/database.
From this tab, you can add any custodian or subset of custodians to a new or existing hold notice or data preservation.
A custodian that is added to a data preservation without being sent a hold notice has a SILENT flag next to their name
A custodian who is not associated with any legal holds has a NO HOLD flag.
From this tab, you can select custodians to take action on them. When one or more custodians are selected, buttons with the possible actions appear at the top: Issue hold notice, Add to data preservation, and Export report.
Once one or more custodians are selected, you can:
- Issue a new hold notice or add them to an existing one. To issue a hold for the selected custodian(s), select Issue hold notice.
Then:- To add them to an existing hold notice, select Existing hold notice.
- To add them to a new hold notice, select New hold notice. Then follow the instructions to create a hold notice.
- Add them to a new data preservation or to an existing one. To add the selected custodians to a data preservation, select Add to data preservation.
Then:
- To add them to an existing data preservation (external or Microsoft Purview), select Add to existing data preservation. Then choose the data preservation to add them to.
- To add them to a new data Microsoft Purview preservation, select Create new data preservation. Then follow the steps to create a Microsoft Purview data preservation.
- To add them to a new external data preservation, select Track in new external data preservation. Then follow the steps to create an external data preservation.
- Export a CSV report that includes a row with the name of each custodian and a column header for any flags (NO HOLD or SILENT). To export a CSV report for one or more custodians, select Export report.
This downloads the CSV report.
- [For custodians with a NO HOLDS flag] Remove them from the matter. To do so, select the three-dot
Notes tab
The Notes tab includes information about the database/matter, if any has been added. Notes are helpful to add context and additional information about the issues at hand for Admins working on the matter.
Select Edit to update the Notes field.