Processes and Governance

Discovery response and legal hold

Manage eDiscovery and legal holds defensibly from start to finish. 

Manage litigation matters strategically and effectively.
Lower risks and reduce costs.
Anticipate and prepare for future needs.
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White Paper

Developing a Data Retention Policy to Meet Privacy Data Minimization Requirements

Recorded Webinar

Using M365 to Create a Personal Data Inventory

Article

Should You Combine Your Privacy and Records Management Programs?

How we help

Organizations face major risks and costs when litigation occurs. Because of the urgency involved, discovery actions and legal holds can disrupt business operations and consume available resources, making it hard for a company to get out of the reactive discovery mindset. A lack of proactive discovery processes can mean scrambled responses, potential spoliation of evidence under legal hold, and uncontrolled vendor expenses resulting in court sanctions or adverse verdicts.  

Instead of waiting for discovery requests to appear, organizations need to anticipate and prepare for future litigation requirements. 

We help organizations create proactive, documented, customized, and defensible information management processes and procedures that lower risk and reduce cost, so you can manage litigation matters strategically and effectively instead of remaining trapped in reactive mode. 

Explore our discovery response and legal hold services

Discovery Response and Legal Hold Process

Guides planning and execution of each stage of the discovery response process.

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If you’ve been asking yourself…

“How do we create a compliant and defensible process for triggering our discovery response process to retain information?”

“When do we not need to trigger our process? How do we document our decisions for either triggering or not triggering?”

“How do we track a number of legal holds?”

“How do we defensibly determine the scope of the legal hold, ensuring it is neither too narrow nor too broad?”

“How do different groups including legal, IT, and business units communicate and coordinate for any given legal hold?”

“At what point do we release a legal hold when the matter is adjudicated?”

“How do we ensure that automated disposition does not spoliate the holds?”

“How do we document our compliance?”

“How do we ensure the process is consistently invoked across all participants, even if an individual or group is unavailable or out of the office?”

“How do we coordinate preservation across multiple systems across all relevant media?”

…you’ve come to the right place.

Learn more about our services and explore related resources below.

Related resources

Recorded Webinar
Creating a Modern, Compliant, and Easier-to-Execute Records Retention Schedule for Privacy and AI
A well-designed schedule not only ensures regulatory compliance but also fosters collaboration with business units, reduces conflicts, and supports automation of classification and disposition processes. 
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Recorded Webinar
Information Governance 101
Gain an overview of the essential building blocks of an effective program including records and data retention, privacy and data minimization, and the role of technology, processes, and training in making governance sustainable. 
Access resource
Recorded Webinar
Using M365 to Create a Personal Data Inventory
Rather than investing in expensive and complex tools, organizations can take a more practical, scalable, and compliant approach by leveraging Microsoft 365 to manage personal data inventories more effectively.
Access resource

What We Do

Our discovery response and legal hold service

Our discovery response and legal hold service guides counsel and other stakeholders in the planning and execution of each stage of the discovery response process, including workflow diagrams to demonstrate each of the discovery phases and how they fit together. It is customized to the organization’s litigation profile, needs, and resources, coordinated across legal, IT, and business units, and reflects industry best practices. These defensible, cost-controlled processes work consistently across all litigation matters. 

Discovery Response and Legal Hold Process

Discovery Response and Legal Hold Process

We develop comprehensive, customized procedures, workflows, templates, and documentation for managing eDiscovery and legal holds from start to finish. 

Discovery is the requirement that organizations identify, collect, preserve, analyze, review, and produce information for legal proceedings. When such action is reasonably anticipated, a legal hold is issued: deletion of relevant documents is suspended. 

Waiting for litigation to occur can be both risky and expensive, especially for companies with high litigation profiles. Developing proactive processes and procedures and implementing them outside the glare of matter-specific discovery will have a much bigger impact in terms of cost savings than attempting to make a reactive eDiscovery process more efficient. 

Our Discovery Response and Legal Hold Process service includes the development of: 

    • An organization-specific, customized, step-by-step guide to executing the Discovery Response Process, the procedure addresses all phases of the Discovery lifecycle. It also includes review of draft procedures with in-house and outside Counsel as appropriate and incorporation of changes as needed. 
    • Used for tracking progress for each matter in which the company’s Discovery Response Plan is invoked, this acts as a case management document for each legal matter, allowing client’s inside counsel and paralegals to easily track discovery activities. 
    • Intended to complement the Discovery Response Process Workbook, these templates provide for the defensible and consistent preservation and collection of relevant data related to matters associated with litigation and/or regulatory inquiry. 
    • Customized to match client’s litigation and business needs, these client-customized documents include definitions of a Discovery Response Process team, roles, responsibilities (governance matrix), and metrics (measuring Discovery response). 
    • Provides outside counsel with the organization’s expectations of how eDiscovery should be conducted in any legal matter, in addition to other litigation readiness attributes. 
    • Reference guidelines for a variety of methodologies, including using existing technology or identifying new requirements applicable to common discovery activities. Provides alternate options if a deviation from standard operating procedures is indicated or warranted and describes scenarios for when alternate approaches may apply. 
    • Includes training materials to educate Legal and IT staff on the various elements and uses of the Discovery Response Process, incorporation of any necessary changes at the instruction of counsel, and an onsite (or virtual) visit to review deliverables, as well as training for Legal and IT functions on how to use the Discovery Response Process Workbook and associated templates. 

    Connect with a member of the Contoural team to learn more about our information governance consulting services.

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    As an independent provider, Contoural does not sell or resell any products, take product referral fees, or provide discovery services such as matter-specific document identification, document collection, or document review. Our advice is based solely on the needs of our clients and is not driven by the sale of products.