Doug Austin

Scoring Preserve-in-Place vs. Collect-to-Preserve for Slack Legal Holds: eDiscovery Best Practices

Brad Harris of Hanzo just posted an interesting and entertaining topic regarding Slack legal holds, where he did a comparison “head-to-head match” between collect to preserve (CTP) and preserve in place (PIP), scoring the battle in the way judges score a heavyweight boxing match! And here is the link to a terrific webinar you may have missed.

In the post (Legal Holds in Slack: Should You Collect Data to Preserve It or Preserve in Place?), Brad notes: “Ediscovery can feel like a fight sometimes, with every choice feeling like a struggle: when do you initiate a legal hold? Which custodians are subject to that hold? What data do you need to preserve? Then there’s the question of how best to preserve relevant data. Should you preserve data in place or preserve it by collecting it and transferring it to an external storage repository?”

To address those questions regarding Slack legal holds, Brad conducts his “head-to-head match” between CTP and PIP, within the following categories:

  • Round 1: Availability – of the capabilities to all Slack users
  • Round 2: Cost – comparison of the two alternatives
  • Round 3: Risk of Data Spoliation – for each of the alternatives
  • Round 4: Early Case Assessment Tools – within Slack (PIP) or outside of Slack (CTP)
  • Round 5: Security Risks – with regard to exposure of the data

So, which option “won”?  You’ll have to read his post for that here!

Also, last week, Hanzo conducted the webinar Three Things You Need To Know About Slack’s New Legal Hold, where Brad moderated a terrific discussion with panelists Jessica Abud (Manager Corporate Litigation at IBM), Will Anderson (eDiscovery Analyst at Uber) and Max Baez (Product Manager at Slack), whose name is one letter off from Max Baer, who actually was a boxer (what are the odds?).

The panel discussed eDiscovery challenges with collaboration apps and eDiscovery best practices for collaborative data (including acceptable use guidelines for use of Slack, which employees tend to treat less formally than email – sometimes too informally).  Baez discussed what Slack Legal Holds capability enables (and, importantly, also what it doesn’t enable – at least currently) and Brad discussed Hanzo’s new integration with Slack Legal Holds (announced here) and the benefits it provides.

The webinar was a terrific discussion of the new Slack legal holds feature, the challenges and considerations of organizations (like IBM and Uber) considering discovery of collaboration data and best practices for leveraging the technology.  Click here to check out the webinar on-demand!

So, what do you think?  Do you feel knowledgeable regarding the new Slack legal holds feature?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclosure: Hanzo is an Educational Partner and sponsor of eDiscovery Today

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.

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