Legal Holds Directories

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Dynamic directories
  • Create a dynamic directory with Microsoft Entra ID
  • Manage a dynamic directory
• Static directories
  • Create a static directory
  • Add single custodians
  • Import a CSV directory
  • Import Microsoft custodians during data preservation creation
• View and edit custodian information

Introduction

On Everlaw, the recipients of legal hold notifications are known as data custodians or simply custodians. Later, if documents from these custodians are uploaded to a particular database, these custodians will become regular Everlaw custodians that are stored in document metadata and searchable in the query builder. The process of linking custodians from legal holds to uploaded documents is covered in Connecting Legal Holds to Uploading Documents section of the Introduction to Legal Holds article.

Before adding custodians to a legal hold, legal hold org admins must first create a directory to store custodian information. You can add just the custodians to whom you plan to send legal holds, or you can upload entire directories of employees and select the employees that will receive hold notifications and become custodians later.

There are two types of directories in the Everlaw organization, dynamic directories and static directories. Dynamic directories are created through an open connection with an external directory service such as Microsoft and automatically update when changes are made to that external directory. Static directories are created by a CSV upload or manual entry and cannot automatically update. The two types of directories can coexist in the same organization.

Both types of directories are stored at the organization level and are accessible to all users with legal hold org admin or org admin permissions. When creating a new hold notice or data preservation, these users will be able to select from any directory in the organization.

In addition, legal hold org admins will be able to access and view all their directories at the database level when managing holds that are associated with Everlaw databases. (For more information on associating legal holds with databases, please visit the Introduction to Legal Holds article.)

To view all the people in a particular directory, select the "View" button next to the directory name. Within a directory, you will be able to sort and filter on any property column by typing in a keyword. You will also be able to export a report of all people in the directory, add selected people to hold notices or data preservations, and view all legal holds using custodians from that directory.

If you have multiple directories in your organization, you will also see an "All directories" view in your directory dropdown, which will allow you to see and act on all people in all directories in one large table.

Dynamic directories

You can create dynamic legal hold directories in Everlaw by connecting a Microsoft Entra ID Directory (previously known as Azure Active Directory). These dynamic directories streamline the process of creating legal holds and keep the custodian information in existing legal holds up-to-date.

Once connected to an Entra ID directory, Everlaw automatically pulls information about the people in your Microsoft organization to Everlaw. Updates from the directory then propagate automatically to your legal holds. This means that if you have a custodian on a hold notice whose email changes, the reminder will be sent to the updated email address the next time a hold reminder is sent to that custodian. No action is required on your part for these updates to occur.

Create a dynamic directory with Microsoft Entra ID

The following are required when connecting to a Microsoft Entra ID directory:

• Everlaw Legal Hold Organization Admin access
• Login credentials for the Microsoft Entra ID directory you want to connect 

To connect to your Entra ID directory:

1. Go to your Organization Admin Home page .
2. Go to  Legal Holds > Directories.
3. Select + Add directory. Then select New Dynamic Directory.
   
4. A Microsoft popup will appear. You will be asked to log in, then asked to grant permissions for your organization.

Once permissions have been granted, the New dynamic directory wizard will appear. This wizard allows you to name your new directory and choose the properties you’d like to import to Everlaw. 

5. In the Dynamic directory name field, enter a name for the directory. 
6. Select Next to move to the next step: Properties.
7. Choose one or more properties for the directory.

8. Select Next to move to the next step: Settings.

9. In the Static people with duplicate identifiers section, choose what you would like to do with any duplicate custodians. Custodians are considered duplicates if they have the same email or employee ID as a custodian from a static directory (a directory not created by an open Microsoft connection) that already exists in your organization.
   The Everlaw directory system flags duplicate custodians but does not force you to resolve all duplicates before connecting a directory or creating legal holds. 
   • If you want to have the Microsoft directory overwrite information about duplicate custodians, switch on the Merge into dynamic directory and overwrite.
   • If you do select this option, choose one of the following options to specify how you want identify people in Everlaw:
     • Identify by duplicate employee IDs
     • Identify by duplicate emails

10. In the Retain people removed from Microsoft Entra ID section, choose one of the following options:
    • Retain all people (default): Retains a record of all people who have ever existed in the directory, regardless of if they have since been deleted from the the Entra ID directory
    • Retain only people on legal holds: Does not retain people deleted from the Entra ID directory, unless they are included on any drafted, issued, or released hold notices or any data preservations.

11. In the Disconnection section, you can select whether to send yourself and/or other users a notification if the dynamic directory has been disconnected from the associated Entra ID directory. 
    • This option (Send notification email…) is selected by default.
    • If you choose to keep this setting enabled, enter all intended recipients in the Recipients text box. 
12. Select Next to move to the next step: Summary.
13. Review the summary of your selections. Then select Create dynamic directory. 

Manage a dynamic directory

Once the directory has been created, you can find it on the Organization Admin page under Legal Holds > Directories. It will be marked with a green CONNECTED tag.

To view the directory information select View. This is identical to directories created by CSV import. 

Once the directory has been connected, updates to custodians happen automatically. Whenever a change is made on the Microsoft side — including updating a custodian’s information, adding a custodian, and deleting a custodian — that information is sent to Everlaw, and the change is made immediately.

To see when your directory was last synced with Microsoft, select the three-dot menu on the individual directory’s page. The date and time of the last sync is listed under STATUS.

From this three-dot menu, you can also:

• View or edit your directory settings
• Disconnect from and/or reconnect to the Entra ID directory
• Delete your directory, severing the connection completely

Static directories

Create a static directory

To create a directory, select the Directories subtab of the Legal Holds tab on the org admin page. You can create a new directory by clicking the "New directory" button either in the center or at the upper right of the page.

To add people to your directory, click on the “Add people” button, then select whether you want to add a single person or import many people from a CSV file.

Add single custodians

To add people one by one, fill out the side panel of properties that pops up, then click Add. The only required field for adding a person is the person's email address, and all email addresses must be unique. However, please note that if a person's manager email field is not filled out, Everlaw will not be able to send automatic escalation notices to that person's manager.

Import a CSV directory

If you want to add multiple people at once, you should add people by CSV. To do so, first download the CSV template provided on the CSV upload page.

Once you’ve ensured that your CSV of user data is in the required format, upload your CSV to the page and follow the instructions in the wizard to map CSV column headers to people properties. Everlaw will automatically detect the following columns in your CSV: name, email, other emails, business phone, mobile phone, fax number, preferred language, company name, role, department, office location, manager name, manager email, employee type, employee start date, employee end date, and notes. Any other columns in your CSV will automatically be mapped to and stored in the Notes field. 

In order to import, an included column must be mapped to the “Email” field. If your CSV includes a person whose email address already belongs to another person in the database, you’ll be taken to an “Overwrite settings” step. Here, you’ll need to select whether you want to overwrite existing custodians. You can also choose to overwrite values only if the new values aren’t blank.

You can also set up an automatic import of a CSV to your directory using Everlaw's legal hold directory API. For instructions on how to set up this import, please refer to our API documentation.

Import Microsoft custodians during data preservation creation

When creating a Microsoft data preservation on Everlaw, Everlaw will automatically detect which of these custodians exist in your Microsoft organization. If any detected custodians exist in your Microsoft organization but have not yet been added to the Everlaw directory, you will see a warning page where you can automatically add them to the directory.

The directory entry will be populated with the custodian’s first and last name, primary email address, manager name, and manager email address, taken from your organization's Azure Active Directory (Entra ID).

If any of the custodians in your organization have a Microsoft User Principal Name (UPN) that differs from their email address, we will still be able to identify that custodian and add them to the directory with the correct email address. You will be able to enter either the UPN or the email address, and we will correctly populate the email field with the custodian's email address.

View, edit, and export custodian information

After upload, all people will be displayed in a table on the Custodians tab. Clicking on the person's row in the table will bring up a side panel where users can view and edit the properties associated with that person. This side panel also contains information about the legal holds associated with that custodian, sorted by database or matter.

You can export the information about that custodian by clicking on the Export button at the bottom of the custodian side panel. The export will be a zip file containing two CSVs. The first CSV will contain information about the selected custodian's properties, and the second CSV will contain information about the selected custodian's legal holds.

If a person has not yet been added to any issued legal holds, you will also see a Delete button at the bottom of the side panel. Click on this button to delete the person from the database.