Skip to main content

Legal Holds

A legal hold, also called a litigation hold, is the process by which a company instructs its employees to preserve specific data for potential litigation. Anyone responsible for that data (an internal employee or another relevant party) is a custodian, and a custodian cannot delete, modify, or destroy the data while the hold is in place.

The data subject to a hold typically includes electronically stored information (ESI) along with printed papers, logbooks, and reports.

Data Location

Data lives in one of two locations. A primary location holds the current working version of the data, where users and systems interact with it directly. A secondary location archives, backs up, or replicates the primary in near real time, holding the historical record of previous versions and copies.

A child site using Archive Only Mode can serve as a secondary archive location. A legal hold can be placed in either the primary or the secondary location.

Files.com supports three approaches to applying a legal hold. You can freeze files in place by modifying the relevant permissions and disabling automations that would make changes. You can synchronize the relevant files to an archive-only site. Or you can use the snapshots feature to create a read-only archive of the data, stored within a hidden folder in your site.

Changing Permissions and Automatic Processes

The first approach is to freeze the data in place by preventing future changes. This option requires significant work because it touches many different settings — user permissions, folder expirations, automatic renaming, automations that make changes, syncs, and retention rules — and users and systems that interact with the data are likely to notice.

To apply this type of legal hold, modify the target folders' Permissions so that users cannot delete or modify the contained files and subfolders, and disable any File Expiration settings. If the target folder is the source of a Sync, modify the sync so that the After copying action is set to Keep a copy on this site. If the target folder is the source for an Automation that moves or deletes files, disable the Automation.

Choose this option when you don't have scripted processes that would be disrupted by changing users' permissions and you don't want to make copies of the files. This option also fits when the data must remain in its original region and that region differs from your site's default region.

Copy Relevant Data to Archive Location

Applying the legal hold to an archive location is far less likely to be noticed by users and systems that interact with the primary data. This approach requires an appropriate secure archive location, such as a Child Site set to Archive Only mode.

Once the archive location is in place, use a Sync to copy the relevant data to it. Because the copied data cannot be changed in the archive location, you do not need to modify any of the settings or permissions for the primary location or its users. This method is much less likely than the first to disrupt business processes that rely on the source files.

This option fits when you need to keep copies of any new or changed files created after the legal hold starts, since the sync continuously copies new files from the primary location to the archive location.

Snapshot the Affected Data

The third approach is to create and finalize a snapshot of the relevant files. Snapshots are stored in a hidden directory. The snapshot's creator and Site Administrators can read and download the files, and authorized visitors can access them through an associated Share Link.

Choose the creator and sharing settings with the hold's access requirements in mind. For a hold intended for administrators, create the snapshot with a Site Administrator account and do not attach a Share Link. The creating account retains read access to the copy even if its administrative access or permissions to the original files later change.

A Site Administrator must finalize a directly created snapshot within 96 hours or it is automatically removed. Confirm that all pending file operations have finished and the intended files are present before finalizing for the hold.

Finalization immediately prevents new requests to change the snapshot's contents for everyone, but operations accepted beforehand can still finish and change those contents, even if they were queued at finalization. The finalization date records when the snapshot was finalized, not when those operations finished; see Snapshot Lifecycle.

Unless the site uses Archive Only Mode, Site Administrators can still delete a finalized snapshot, and an expiration date still removes it. Archive Only Mode retains expired snapshot files for Site Administrators, while expiration ends access for other users and Share Link visitors. Set its retention to match the hold rather than relying on finalization alone.

This is the most convenient way to apply a legal hold, but a snapshot will not capture new updates to files. To continuously capture newly changed files, use the sync-to-archive approach instead.

Exporting Data for eDiscovery

A legal hold typically covers both the electronically stored information (ESI) and any audit trail logs that show access details.

The files and folders (ESI) under legal hold can be downloaded manually through the Files.com web interface or any FTP/SFTP client, or programmatically through the Files.com Command Line (CLI) App, SDKs, or APIs.

The Files.com logs can be accessed manually through the Files.com web interface, or programmatically through the Files.com Command Line (CLI) App, SDKs, or APIs.

When a legal hold is no longer required, restore the target folder Permissions, File Expiration, Sync, and Automation settings to their prior configuration.