This week’s blog post for IPRO’s blog is about the silent custodians – it’s a Good Friday to talk about them!  See what I did there?  😉  Some potentially responsive custodians may be important to your case, even if they’ve never said a word in responsive communications.

Here are a few scenarios where silent custodians may be identified that have important ESI to your case:

• Email with attachment sent to a recipient, the sender has left the company and his/her email archive has been purged, leaving the (silent) recipient as the only custodian with a copy of the email and attachment.
• Text to a supervisor that says “we need to have a meeting to discuss the Johnson project” – that supervisor doesn’t respond via text, but a search of their email collection identifies a calendar item later that same day called “URGENT!! Johnson project discussion”.
• Slack group discussion regarding company trade secrets where there seems to be no messages from one of the group members who has left the company and formed his own similar company. You find out that from the Workspace Admin that he had rights to edit and delete the messages he sent in Slack, leaving you to pursue the remaining group members for potentially responsive ESI that will help uncover potentially stolen intellectual property.

So, how do you find these silent custodians?  And, in what forms of communication do you need to look for them?  You can find out on IPRO’s blog here. 😉  It’s just one more click!

So, what do you think?  Do you know how to find the silent custodians in your cases?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.