Introduction to Legal Holds

Everlaw’s Legal Holds tool allows you to send hold notices to custodians in your organization and create data preservations on those custodians in Microsoft 365.

When it comes time to collect documents from your custodians, you can connect your legal hold custodians to documents uploaded in your Everlaw database.

You can create as many hold notices and data preservations on as many custodians as you like with no additional limits imposed by Everlaw.

The Legal Holds tool is designed to be managed at an organization level instead of a database level. 

Requirements

• Your organization must have an annual Everlaw subscription
• To create and modify legal holds, you must be an Organization Admin or a Legal Holds Organization Admin. To learn more, visit Manage Legal Hold Organization Admin Permissions
• You must be an Organization Admin to assign a user Legal Hold Organization Admin permissions

Key terms

Everlaw’s Legal Holds tool supports: 

• Hold notices: The communications you send to non-silent custodians. With hold notices, you can schedule automatic renotification and escalation notices, send periodic reminders, and track custodian acknowledgement.
• Data preservations:  Preservation-in-place hold objects created in external data sources, such as Microsoft 365. For Microsoft 365, you can create data preservations on your custodians in Everlaw and track the statuses of those data preservations without ever having to leave the Everlaw platform. For other software programs, you can use Everlaw's external data preservations to keep track of the data preservations you make in programs outside Everlaw.

Manage Legal Hold Organization Admin permissions

The Legal Hold Org Admin permission allows users to access the Legal Holds tab of the Organization Admin Home page. They have full access to everything in the Legal Holds tab, including all legal hold directories, hold notifications, and data preservations. 

Users who have Legal Hold Org Admin but not Organization Admin permissions do not have access to any other organization level pages or permissions. 

Assign Legal Hold Organization Admin permissions

To assign Legal Hold Organization Admin permissions:

1. Go to your Organization Admin Home page.
2. Select Projects and Users.
3. Select the Users tab.
   All existing users are listed in the Users table.
4. If the user doesn’t exist yet, add them now via the + Add users button. Otherwise, continue to the next step.
5. Find the user you want to assign permissions to. 
6. Click the user’s permissions listed in the table’s Organization admin permissions column.
7. Select Legal Holds.
   

Access Legal Holds

All Legal Holds in an organization are listed on the Organization Admin page’s Legal Holds tab. Those associated with ongoing investigations are also displayed at the database level under Data Transfer > Legal holds.

To access legal holds within a particular database:

1. Open the database via the project list located at the top of the page.
2. Go to Data Transfer > Legal Holds.
   This opens the Legal Holds dashboard.

Access Legal Holds at the organization level

To access legal holds at the organization level:

1. Go to your Organization Admin Home page.
2. Select Legal Holds.
   This opens the Legal Holds dashboard page.

The organization level legal holds dashboard displays all the hold notices and data preservations in your organization. These are sorted by database or matters.  This includes issued, drafted, and released hold notices, as well as drafted, pending, active, and released data preservations. Using the buttons at the top of the table, you can expand or collapse these matters to display all legal holds within them, and export a report of all holds in the organization.

You can filter down the displayed legal holds by keyword, hold status, and directory using the filter menu on the left side of the page. Filtering by keyword will search over database and matter names, database labels, hold notice names, and data preservation names; however, it will not search over the text of legal hold notices. The export will always reflect what is displayed on this page, so filtering down the holds on the display will also filter down the holds included in the export.

You can also manage your Microsoft login for data preservations from this page by selecting the Manage Microsoft 365 login button at the top right of the page. From here, you can see which account you’re currently logged in as, log out, or log in. You can also log into Microsoft 365 during the process of creating a data preservation, described in the Microsoft Purview data preservations article. 

Create new legal holds in matters or databases

From the Legal Holds tab, you can create a new hold notice, Microsoft 365 data preservation, or record of an external data preservation.

Here is information about each:

• New hold notice: Hold notices are communications you send to non-silent custodians. With hold notices, you can schedule automatic renotification and escalation notices, send periodic reminders, and track custodian acknowledgement. For more information, including instructions on how to create a hold notice, see our Legal Holds: Hold Notices article.
• New data preservation: Data preservations are preservation-in-place hold objects created in Microsoft Purview. You can create data preservations on your custodians in Everlaw and track the statuses of those data preservations without ever having to leave the Everlaw platform. For more information, including instructions on how to create a data preservation, see our Microsoft Purview Data Preservations article.
• External data preservation: An external data preservation allows you to create a record and track data preservations that you make and manage externally from Everlaw. For more information, including instructions on how to create an external data preservation, see our External Data Preservations article.

When you create a new legal hold, you decide to house it in either a database or matter. When deciding, consider the following:

• If you choose to associate your legal holds with a database, those legal holds will also show up in the Legal Holds tab for that database. Creating a new database from this page will add a database to your dropdown and allow you to immediately begin uploading data.
• If creating a database is not necessary, matters allow you to associate related hold notices and data preservations together without immediately creating an Everlaw database. If you choose to create a matter instead of a database, you won’t see a new database in your project dropdown.
  You should leverage matters instead of databases when creating legal holds for a particular investigation ahead of data collection. Later on, should you need to collect data, you can promote the matter to a database by clicking the Create database button next to the matter’s name in the table. (Please note that you must have organization administration permissions to promote matters to databases.) Once promoted, all legal hold information will automatically appear in the Legal Holds tab of that newly created database. 
• Hold notices and data preservations are intrinsically connected by being in the same database. When setting up a legal hold, you will need to create both a hold notice and a data preservation on the custodians relevant to the matter. If you want to create a silent hold on any custodians, include those custodians in the data preservation but not the hold notice.

Import legal hold matter and database fields

You can bulk import legal hold custom field values for legal hold matters and databases. This can save a significant amount of time when adding and/or updating field values across multiple databases/matters.

Before you start: Confirm that all fields you want have already been created in Everlaw from the Database fields tab.

To import database/matter fields for one or more legal hold(s): 

1. Go to Organization home > Legal Holds.
2. Select the import custom field data button.
   
   This opens the import field data wizard. There are two steps: Upload file and Summary. 
3. If you haven’t already, create a CSV file with the database/matter fields you want to import. This file should contain rows that represent matters or databases on your organization’s Legal Holds page. To get started with a template (recommended), select Download CSV template.
   
   This template contains a complete list of all matters and databases in column A, all existing custom fields in the organization as column headers (row 1), and previously defined field values in their corresponding column.
   Enter any new values that you want to add.
   
   You should apply the following formatting rules:
   • For multiple-select fields: Separate multiple field values in your CSV with commas enclosed within outer quotation marks.
   • For date fields: Use a yyyy/mm/dd format. If your date field also includes times, use a 24-hour format (e.g. 15:00 instead of 3:00 pm). Times will be uploaded in your local timezone.
4. When your file is ready for import, select browse to search for the CSV file on your computer, or drag and drop it into the dialog.
   
   This immediately moves you on to the wizard’s Summary step.
   
5. On the Summary step, you are shown a summary of your data uploaded in list form. Review this data for errors.
   If you find an error, select Previous to return to the previous page and reupload your corrected CSV file.
6. [Optional] For additional settings, select Edit Advanced settings.
   
   This opens the Advanced settings dialog. In this dialog:
   1. [Optional] In the Empty cells field, choose between: 
      • Don’t update existing field value (default): If the CSV contains an empty cell, the existing field value will not be updated
      • Delete existing field: If the CSV contains an empty cell, the existing field value will be cleared and left empty
   2. [Optional] In the Multiple-select fields field, choose between:
      • Replace existing field values (default): If the CSV contains values that are different from the current values, the field will be updated to contain only the new values
      • Add to existing field values: If the CSV contains values that are different from the current values, the field will be updated to contain both the current and new values.
   3. Select Save to close the dialog.

7. When you are ready to complete the import, select Submit.

Legal Hold directories

The Legal Holds Directories page displays all employee directories in the organization. All people in all directories are available to select from when creating a new hold notice or data preservation from the organization administration page. Admins can sort and filter, export reports, and take action on all custodians in these directories.

To access this page: 

1. Open your Organization Home page.
2. Select Legal Holds > Directories.

Clicking on a custodian’s row in the directory table will bring up a custodian side panel containing information about all of the legal holds that custodian belongs to in the entire organization, grouped by matter or database. The custodian side panel is described in more detail in the Legal Holds Directories article.

Export legal hold information

You can export two CSV reports from your organization’s Legal Holds page:

• Filtered legal holds: A list of all legal holds and their associated data (e.g. hold name, status, custom field values) 
• Custodian summary: A list of all legal hold custodians mapped to a comprehensive report of their legal holds and associated properties

Filters applied to the Legal Holds page table are applied to all exports.

Export filtered legal holds

You can export a CSV report of all legal hold information for your organization. Each row represents one instance of a legal hold (hold notice or data preservation).

The included information (column headers) is:

• Matter or database name
• Custom field values (each field has its own column)
• Hold name
• Service
• Data source
• Status
• Issuer name
• Issuer email
• Total custodians
• Not acknowledged
• Acknowledged
• Released
• Errored
• Pending
• Active
• Released
• Directories

To download this report from your organization's Legal Holds page:

1. [Optional] Enter a keyword to filter down to a subset of holds to export. A keyword can be a database or matter name, database label, hold notice name, or data preservation name.
2. Select the Export button. Then Export filtered legal holds (CSV). This initiates the download of the report.
   
   The exported CSV contains a list of all matters and databases in column A, all existing value fields as column headers (row 1), and field values in their corresponding column.

Export custodian data

You can export a CSV report of all of the legal hold information associated with each of the custodians in your organization.

Each row of the report represents one instance of a custodian in a legal hold (hold notice or data preservation). If a custodian is included in multiple legal holds, each is represented in its own row. 

The included information (column headers) is:

• Issuer name
• Custodian directory
• Issuer email
• Custodian name
• First issued date
• Custodian email
• Last issued date
• Other emails
• Release date
• Matter or Database name
• Business phone
• A column for each custom database/matter field
• Mobile phone
• Legal hold URL
• Fax number
• Legal hold type (hold notice or data preservation)
• Preferred language
• Hold name
• Company name
• Hold custom ID
• Role
• Hold version ID
• Department
• Service
• Office location
• Data sources
• Manager name
• Preservation start date
• Manager email
• Preservation end date
• Employee type
• Keywords
• Employee start date
• Status
• Employee end date
• Acknowledgement status
• Custodian notes
• Acknowledgement date

To download this report from your organization's Legal Holds page:

1. [Optional] Enter a keyword to filter down to a subset of holds to export. A keyword can be a database or matter name, database label, hold notice name, or data preservation name.
2. Select the Export button, then Export custodian summary (CSV). This initiates the download of the report.
   

The image below shows a portion of a completed export:

Connect a Legal Holds custodians to uploaded documents within a database

If you do need to upload data associated with a legal hold, first ensure that your legal hold exists within a database, not a matter. If needed, you can promote the matter to a database by clicking the Create database button next to the matter’s name in the Legal Holds table. (Please note that you must have organization administration permissions to promote matters to databases.) Once promoted, all legal hold information will automatically appear in the Legal Holds tab of that newly created database. 

Once a matter has been promoted to a database, the legal holds are automatically displayed on the Legal Holds tab of that database. You can then run an upload in that database and assign those documents to any custodian from any legal hold object. Those documents will then be associated with the selected legal hold custodian in the custodian side panel (Organization Admin Home page > Legal Holds > Directories). Once associated with documents, the legal hold custodian will also become a searchable custodian stored as document metadata in that database.

To assign documents to a legal hold custodian, proceed with whatever native upload you like (either through a cloud connector or by uploading documents on your machine).

For most uploads, during the Custodians step, you will be asked to assign custodians to your upload by selecting from a dropdown of existing custodians (or by typing in a new custodian name). All active and former legal hold custodians will show up in the custodian dropdown under the header From Legal Holds.

If you are uploading via Everlaw's cloud connection to Office 365, you will not be asked to assign the custodians from the legal hold. Instead, the custodian is identified on Everlaw as the custodian whose data you selected during the upload. This is the person identified by Microsoft as the custodian of the data. As long as this custodian's name and email address match the custodian from the existing legal hold, they will be linked appropriately on Everlaw.

Once the upload is complete, you can go to the Documents tab of your legal hold custodian's side panel to see all document sets associated with that custodian. Clicking on the topmost document set link in that tab will open a results table of all documents associated with that custodian.