Preserving data & evidence

Once a dispute is reasonably foreseeable, you have a legal duty to preserve relevant records — including electronic data. Acting early protects your case; deleting or losing evidence, even routinely, can seriously damage it.

Why it matters

If relevant evidence is destroyed after a dispute becomes likely, a court can impose sanctions, exclude evidence, or instruct a jury to assume the missing material would have been unfavorable. That is called spoliation, and it can hurt an otherwise strong case.

Put a litigation hold in place

A litigation hold is a written instruction to everyone in your organization who may have relevant records, telling them to stop deleting and start preserving. The sooner it goes out, the better — ideally as soon as a claim or dispute looks likely.

What to preserve

Think broadly: emails and attachments, text and chat messages, contracts and drafts, accounting and payment records, photos, and the files on phones, laptops, servers, and cloud accounts. Electronic records often matter most, and metadata can be evidence too.

Suspend routine deletion

Automatic email purging, document-retention schedules, and device wiping or reassignment all need to be paused for anything potentially relevant. “We always delete after 90 days” is not a defense once the duty to preserve has been triggered.

Don’t alter the originals

Preserve records in their original form and avoid editing, re-saving, or “cleaning up” files. If you’re unsure whether something matters, keep it — and ask us before deleting anything.

Tell us early

The earlier we’re involved, the more we can do to lock down the evidence that proves your case and to put a defensible preservation process in place. If a dispute is brewing, reach out before records start to disappear.