Legal Holds: Hold Notices

Legal hold notices are a critical first step in many litigations and investigations. Using Everlaw's legal hold notice tool, you can create, send, and track hold notices to designated custodians from a central location. Later, when you collect and upload data related to the notice, you can connect the data to the relevant custodian(s) on Everlaw.

Read this article to learn how to :

• Create and send hold notifications
• Create questionnaires 
• Schedule automatic renotification and escalation notices
• Send periodic reminders

To learn how to keep track of a hold after you have issued it, or to update it with new or different information, see the Track and Modify a Legal Hold Notice article. That article covers how to:

• Track custodian acknowledgement
• Add and release custodians
• Update the hold notice content and frequency

You can send unlimited  hold notices to as many custodians as you like.

Requirements

Required permissions

The following permissions are required to create or access legal holds:

• Organization Admin or Legal Holds Organization Admin: Create and track legal hold notices from the Organization Legal Holds page
• To view legal hold notices associated with a given database, you must be a Database Admin or Legal Holds Database Admin

Directory

All the custodians that you send a hold notice to must belong to a directory. Before you start creating your first legal hold, follow the instructions to create a directory and make sure the intended custodians are included.

Start a hold notice

To create a legal hold notice:

1. You can get started creating a legal hold notice in two ways:
   • To start a hold notice from the Legal Holds page, go to Organization home > Legal Holds > + New > Hold notice. This opens the dialog to create a new hold notice.
   • To start a hold notice from a pre-selected list of custodians, go to Organization home > Legal Holds > Directories. This takes you to the list of directories in your organization. From here:
     1. Select View for the directory with the custodians you'd like to include.
     2. Choose the custodians.
     3. Select Add to legal hold > Create new hold notice.
        
        This opens the New hold notice dialog where you will start creating the legal hold.

2. Select where the hold notice should live. Your choices are Existing matter/database or New matter.
   Consider the following:
   • If you associate your legal hold with a database, the legal hold will also show up in the Legal Holds tab for that database. Database admins will be able to view information about it.
   • Matters allow you to create a hold notice without associating it with an Everlaw database.
     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. 
3. If you selected Existing matter/database, choose the matter or database from the Matter or database dropdown.
   
   If you selected New matter, enter the Matter name, Timezone, and values for any matter fields. Fields with a * are required.
   
   When you're done, select Next to move on to the Hold notice details step.
4. On the Hold notice details step, enter a Hold notice name.
5. To start with a blank one, choose Start with blank. 
   To copy an existing hold notice, select Copy existing, then select the hold notice to copy.
   
6. Select Create  to move on to the Custodians to Issue step to start editing the new hold notice.

Custodians to Issue

On the Custodians to Issue step, you select the custodians to send the hold notice to. If the hold notice was created from the Directory tab, the custodians are already selected, but you can add or modify them here.

There are three ways to add custodians to your hold notice: manually, paste or upload from a specific directory, or copy the custodians from an existing hold notice/data preservation. 

Select custodians manually

Select the checkbox next to the name of each custodian to include. If you have multiple directories, you can filter to only the relevant one(s) under Filter by directory.

Paste or upload from one 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.

Copy selection from existing

If there is an existing hold notice or data preservation from which you'd like to copy the custodian list:

1. Select Copy selection from existing. This opens a dropdown menu listing your existing legal holds, data preservations, and external data preservations.
   
2. Select the object from which to copy the custodians from.
3. Select Copy selection. The custodians from the existing data preservation/hold notice are selected as custodians for this new data preservation/hold notice.

When you're done select custodians, select Next to move on to writing the hold notice email.

Hold notice email

In the Hold notice email step, you draft the hold notice email. To do so, you must enter the:

• Subject
• Hold issue name
• Hold issuer email address. This address is used as the reply-to email if custodians  reply to the hold notification email.
• [Optional]To add additional users from your Everlaw organization as recipients, select the Add cc plus (+) button and/or the Add bcc plus (+) button. The selected individuals are not custodians for the hold notice.

To edit the hold notice text:

1. Select anywhere in the body of the email or select Write hold notice. This opens a dialog box with an email editor.
   
   The Go to acknowledgement portal button is automatically included in the hold notice email and cannot be deleted.
2. [Optional] Select the Copy from button to copy the text from a previous hold notice email.
3. Write your email. Use Merge fields to personalize the email. For example, if your draft reads "Dear #CustodianName," each custodian's name will be in the greeting when they open the hold notice.
   If a custodian doesn’t have a value for a merge field, Everlaw automatically replaces the merge field with a fallback text. Hover over the merge field to see the fallback text, if present. In the image below, the fallback text for the #CustodianName merge field is "[Custodian Name]"
   
4. [Optional] Select the paperclip button to add an attachment. Here is some additional information about including attachments:
   • The total size limit of a hold notice is 7 MB, including the message content. 
   • Attachments are not included in a database’s billable size and there is no limit to the number of attachments that can be added to a hold notice, as long as they total below the limit
   • All file types are generally supported for attachments except for the list of file types not allowed by Amazon SES
   • To download currently attached files, select the file name of each attachment
   • To remove an attachment, select the X button next to the file name
5. When you're done editing your hold notice, select Done editing. This takes you back to the Hold notice email step.
6. [Optional] To see what the email looks like in an email inbox, select Send test email. This opens a dialog to select the recipients of the test email. To decide which custodian's email you will send, select View email as. Test emails are sent only to the selected recipients, not to any actual custodians or any cc/bcc recipients.
   

   Note

   The acknowledgement portal link on test emails is not a functional acknowledgement portal and does not contain the test email hold notification or any attachments to the hold notice.

7. When you're done editing, select Next to move on to the Questionnaire step. To save the draft and come back later, select Save draft.

   Questionnaire

   Including a questionnaire allows you to collect additional information from the custodians, such as identifying additional devices that may contain relevant data and additional custodians who should also be included in the legal hold.

   

   If you do not want to create a questionnaire, deselect Include questionnaire, then select Next to move on to the Auto-escalation settings.

   To create a questionnaire:

   1. To make the questionnaire optional, deselect Require questionnaire completion. To keep the questionnaire required, leave this option selected.
   2. [Optional] To copy an existing questionnaire, select Copy existing. You are able to make edits once you have copied it. This copies both the introduction and the questions.
   3. [Optional] To write an introduction to the questionnaire, select Write introduction. This opens a dialog with space to provide context and define key terms. Select Done editing when you're done.
   4. To start writing the questionnaire, select Write questions . This opens a dialog with a column listing the question types, space in the middle to write the questions, and a collapsible panel on the right with additional configuration options. 
      
   5. Choose a question type from the list on the left, or select Add to choose one from the drop down. The available question types are:
      • Multiple choice
      • Checkboxes
      • Dropdown
      • Short text
      • Long text
      • Date
      • Date range
   6. To write the question, select questionX and start typing, or start typing in the Question title box in the configuration panel. Then, write each response option (Item), if present, and configure additional details, such as conditional visibility. The section below has more details on configuring the questions. 
   7. When you're done writing the question, select Add to add another question.
      To add the next question to a new page, select Add under Page X. Whenever you add a new question, you can choose to add it to the current page or to a new page. 
   8. [Optional] In addition to configuring the questions and number of pages, you can add logic to your questionnaire. You should do this if one or more response(s) to one or more questions should result in skipping a question or completing the survey.
      Select Logic, then Add rule to configure the logic. When you're done writing the rule, select Done. You can add as many rules here as you want.
      Select Questions to go back to adding and editing questions.
   9. [Optional] When you are done adding questions and logic, select Preview to see and interact with a preview of the questionnaire. This can help you make sure it is written and flows as intended.
   10.  When you are happy with the questionnaire, select Save. This takes you back to the Questionnaire step. 
   11. [Optional] Select Send test email to send a test of the hold notice and questionnaire to yourself. This is another opportunity to do quality assurance before moving on.
       
   12. Select Next to move on to the Auto-renotification settings step of creating a hold notice.

Additional details about configuring questions

To finish configuring a question:

• For multiple choice, check box, and dropdown questions, fill in the values for the response options (Items). You can also choose to add an Other or a None option.
• Optionally, write a Question description that is displayed under the question title
• To make a question optional, toggle off Required
• To make the question conditionally visible:
  1. Select the Edit button next to Make the question visible if. This opens a dialog to configure the conditions for the question to be visible. 
  2. Next to If, select the question upon which this question' visibility is conditional. 
  3. Select Equals for a dropdown menu of the conditions you can configure. Then, configure the information for the condition.
     
  4. [Optional] To add an additional condition, select Add Condition.
  5. When you're done, select Apply.
• To delete a question, select the Delete button

Auto-renotification settings

The Auto-renotification settings step defines automatic renotification settings. Renotification emails remind custodians that they have not yet acknowledged their hold notice. If you turn on auto-renotification, these notices are sent automatically to unresponsive custodians after the selected interval. 

To keep the default auto-renotification settings, which send a reminder every 7 days until the hold notice is acknowledged, select Next to move on to the Auto-escalation settings.

If you do not want to send renotification emails, deselect Automatically renotify custodians of their holds.

Optionally, you can edit any of the renotification settings:

• To change the renotification interval, enter a number under Automatically renotify custodians of their holds
• To edit the subject, start typing in the Subject field
• To add cc or bcc recipients, select the Add cc plus (+) button and/or Add bcc plus (+) button
• To edit the message attached to the renotification emails, select Edit renotification message. This opens a dialog to edit the message. Select Done editing when you're ready to close the editing dialog.
  You cannot edit the hold notice message from here.
• To send a test email, select Send test email

When you're done, select Next to move on to the Auto-escalation settings.

Auto-escalation settings

The Auto-escalation step defines automatic escalation settings. Escalation emails inform the custodian’s manager that the custodian has not yet acknowledged their hold notice. 

If any selected custodian does not have an associated manager email, a warning dialog is displayed. Select Add managers to add a manager to receive the escalation notice. If you don't add a manager, escalation notices will not be sent for the custodian(s).

The default escalation setting sends an escalation email to the manager every 7 days, starting from 14 days after the hold notice was initially sent. To keep these settings, select Next to move on to the Reminder settings.

If you do not want to send escalation emails, deselect Automatically escalate hold notices to custodians' managers.

Optionally, you can edit any of the escalation settings:

• To change the escalation interval settings:
  • To change when the first escalation email gets sent, enter a new number for escalate X days after hold notice's send date
  • If you only want to send one escalation email, choose Escalate only once for each custodian
  •  To change the interval for how often an escalation email gets sent, enter a new number for Escalate once every X days until custodian acknowledges or hold is released
• To add bcc recipients, select the Add bcc plus (+) button
• To add cc , select the Add cc plus (+) button 
• To add additional cc recipients, select them from the Cc field.
  You cannot remove the custodian as a cc recipient.
• To edit the subject, start typing in the Subject field
• To edit the message attached to the renotification emails, select Edit escalation message to open a dialog to edit the message. Select Done editing when you're ready to close the editing dialog
  Note: You cannot edit the hold notice message from here.
• To send a test email, select Send test email

When you're done, select Next to move on to the Reminder settings.

Reminder settings

Some legal holds last for months or even years, and legal hold administrators have a duty to ensure that all custodians on those holds are periodically reminded that they are still under hold. Use the Reminder settings step to set up these reminder notices upon creation of the hold, so you don’t have to remember to send these notices months after the initial setup.

Reminders are different from automatic renotifications. While renotifications are sent shortly after the initial hold notice to custodians who have not yet acknowledged their legal hold, reminders are sent to all custodians regardless of acknowledgement status. Reminders are generally sent quarterly or half-yearly.

The default reminder email is sent every 3 months. To keep the default settings, select Next to move on to the Summary.

If you do not want to send reminders, deselect Automatically send periodic reminders to issued custodians.

Optionally, you can edit any of the reminder settings:

• To change the reminder interval:
  • To change the time period, edit the number and choose Months, Weeks, or Days to set the interval
  • To require acknowledgement with each reminder, select the checkbox next to Require custodian acknowledgement for every reminder.
• To add cc and/or bcc recipients, select + next to Add cc and/or Add bcc
• To edit the subject, start typing in the Subject field
• To edit the message attached to the reminder emails, select Edit reminder message to open a dialog to edit the message. Select Done editing when you're ready to close the editing dialog.
  Note: You cannot edit the hold notice message from here.
• To send a test email, select Send test email

When you're done, select Next to move on to the Summary settings.

Summary page and send hold notice emails

The Summary step displays a summary of all chosen settings. From here, you can:

• View a list of all custodians selected for the hold
• Send test emails for the initial hold notice, renotification notice, and escalation notice
• Make any necessary changes

If the summary looks good:

1. Select Issue and send emails. This opens a dialog to configure summary emails.
2. Choose whether or not to send summary emails, and add any recipient email addresses for the summaries. Recipients receive a summary email including: 
   • All the settings displayed on the summary page of the wizard
   • The text of the hold notice and any auto-renotification and auto-escalation notices
   • The date and time that the hold was sent
   • The name of the associated database/matter
3. When you're ready, select Send now to send the hold notice.
   

   Important

   Once emails have been sent, they cannot be unsent.

Custodian experience

Once the hold notice has been issued, custodians will receive the notice in their email inboxes. When a custodian receives a hold notice email and selects View and acknowledge hold, they are taken to  the legal hold acknowledgement portal. If there is a questionnaire included, they are prompted to begin the questionnaire.

When they complete the questionnaire, the custodian is taken to the page to acknowledge the legal hold.
 

After selecting I acknowledge the contents of [Hold notice name] and  Confirm acknowledgement, custodians see the following confirmation page, and receive a confirmation email including the date and time of their acknowledgement. 

If custodians try to access the portal again, they will see a notice informing them that they have already acknowledged their hold.

Custodians do not need to have Everlaw accounts to access this portal. If custodians do have Everlaw accounts, this portal will not be associated with their existing Everlaw account in any way.

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. See the Track and Modify a Legal Hold Notice article to learn more about each tab. Without Legal Holds Organization Admin permissions, you can only view and export information, not modify the hold.