A legal hold is a defensive measure that businesses adopt to prevent themselves from getting into any trouble. If a company anticipates litigation or there is a possibility of legal action in the future, a business saves all its documentation and records to address audits or investigations.
After a Legal Hold Process Development has taken place, businesses must refrain from data disposal so that the required data remains available till litigation is over. Legal hold is a complicated as well as a complex task because it comprises a large number of documents that could be dispersed across various countries. Therefore, preserving all these documents can be a hectic as well as challenging task because there are multiple categories of documents and various holds at the same time.
Of course, you can’t afford to violate this because then your whole business is at risk. It is important to have a functional and efficient Legal Hold Process Development. With a good system, you can minimize the risk of litigation failure and also lower the cost and resources required to handle documents manually. In this blog, we have discussed the top 6 reasons to have a legal hold solution.
1. To avoid penalties for non-compliance
In case Legal Hold Process Development is ignored, there can be various impacts of it. Other than a bad legal proceeding that can result in the loss of a legal battle, there can also be the imposition of sanctions due to non-compliance. Other than penalties such as monetary fines, there can be dire consequences such as a judgment in favor of the opposing party.
2. Dissemination of instructions becomes easier
With an effective legal hold system, you can preserve the concerning documents more easily. Let’s elaborate on it some more. Suppose you need to hold a legal document, you would have to talk to the custodian of that document to deliver the right instructions for preserving it.
Custodian is the personnel who have possession of that particular document. At times, they can’t get to all the personnel who are holding that record. This becomes more difficult if a corporation operates in more than one location because it is challenging as well as frustrating to find that one person who is responsible for the record.
In such cases, it is difficult to figure out all the people who might be holding a particular record. Even if all concerned people are identified, sometimes the legal department faces communication challenges.
An effective solution is to approach the HR department which can identify the person responsible for the document to be put on hold. By directly approaching that person, you can minimize the hassle as well as confusion of approaching the right person. Moreover, you can give instructions properly. It then becomes the responsibility of HR to ensure that the concerned person has completely understood the instructions.
A good system allows your in-house legal team to get access to the involved machinery so that they can perform their own forensic and devise a plan to respond to the legal complaint. The legal hold system minimizes the time and effort in reaching out to the custodians. Furthermore, it prevents employees from deleting or discarding any file that can affect the litigation outcome. The best part about having a Legal Hold Process Development is its ability to perform operations on its own- without the involvement of IT or without needing any major IT assistance.
3. To Ensure Compliance of concerned personnel
At times mere sending of notifications fails to have the desired effect. There can be communication gaps such as the failure of the notifications to reach the concerned person. Sometimes the custodians can’t respond to the notifications. This can be deliberate or accidental. Therefore, it becomes important to keep a follow-up.
Keeping a follow-up can be way too challenging because it is quite a bit of a task to keep track of all concerned people or custodians. They can be in other parts of the world which makes it even more difficult. Due to such gaps in communication, the court proceeding can suffer. You can go knocking at the doors of the custodians to ask them to respond. It is draining as well as time-consuming because you can’t possibly reach out to all the custodians. They might be too many, or they can be living far too away.
4. Makes the Process Hassle-free
An automated Legal Hold Process Development makes the process simple. It is an automated system that identifies the concerned people themselves and reaches out to them. One-stop interaction, i-e HR makes the process simple as well as quick. Since the process is automated, there are lesser chances of mistakes. The system generates reminders on its own and follows up on the response of custodians. It does not involve any spreadsheet or manual handling of documents; therefore, there is greater accuracy.
In case a custodian fails to respond, an effective legal hold system can escalate the issue and bring it to higher management’s notice for further action.
5. To err is human
The in-house legal team comprises human beings. It is quite possible that once they have intimidated the custodians about the state of a legal hold, they lose track of follow-up. The whole business and all stakeholders cannot afford to suffer due to honest mistakes or negligence of a few people.
Therefore, an automate system ensures all notifications have sent out at the right time and there is a system keeping a follow-up of these notifications. This ensures a smooth and speedy process that does not involve any error or mistake.
6. To ensure control and consistency
An automated legal hold system ensures everything is standard. This means a system keeps a log of activities and engages in further decision-making based on information available to it. It keeps templates of various notifications and sends them out at the right time to the right people.
With an effective and goof – self-ruling complex in detail, the lawful bands can battle the lawful fight either confidently as they’re unnamed of all duds in disposition. With automated reminders, custodians make sure to comply with the instructions. They act according to what is instruct to them or whatever is desire of them.
Final Word
The legal Hold System provides a lot of advantages. They prevent the over-use of resources while expediting the process of a legal hold.
Contoural Inc is a professional and expert company that can help you with Legal Hold Process Development as well as Policy and Schedule Development. We believe in taking responsibility for the legal hold process so that you can fight your legal battle with complete focus and undivided attention.
