1st Things 1st: The Litigation Hold Letter (A Blast from the Past)

J0309498 All – as part of my ‘repairs’, I’ve looked at some of the blog logs (say that 3x fast) and since this item was posted over six years ago, it’s still ranked as #1 on the site!  So, it seemed like this was the perfect opportunity to republish it.  The letter itself is slightly updated, but the post is reproduced verbatim:

Wow…this is my 100th post!  Who knew I could pontificate this long?

In analyzing the new California Electronic Discovery Act (I’m going to start calling it “CEDA” for short), I might as well start at the beginning.

The first thing that will occur if litigation arises?  There’ll be a bunch of litigation hold letters going around.  I say a bunch because it could manifest several ways; outside counsel to your adversary, outside counsel to inside counsel, inside counsel to the enterprise, the CIO/CTO to the IT department, the CEO to the CIO/CTO…you get the idea.  In some cases, as illustrated above, the letter may not even be coming from an attorney.

What might the letter look like?  Here’s an example of a litigation hold letter theoretically issued from outside counsel to an adversary (in PDF format).  The names were changed to protect the innocent (and the guilty, for that matter).

This is only a sample to give you an idea of what a letter of this kind might look like.  The purpose is to illustrate items you may or may not have thought about.  Like snowflakes, no two letters will ever be exactly the same.  Only a professional with personal knowledge of your specific requirements should ever create and/or issue a litigation hold letter.

Enough disclaimers?  Ok then…chew on this for a Monday.

Almost…There…

Hey – everyone’s raving about the new Star Wars film, so why shouldn’t I get in on it?!?!?!

Speaking purely about the blawg, the week started out like this:

Jabba_the_Hutt

As of this moment, it’s ending more like this:

baby-ewok

If you’re a subscriber, hopefully you’re receiving this through your feed.  It’s one – of many – tweaks that were needed to get the site back into shape.

I’m not quite done, but we should be pretty close by Monday. Thanks again for your patience!

Welcome to My New, Improved(?) Blawg

Just a short note to let you know that I’ve migrated the blawg to a new platform.  It’s a bit of a job migrating 577 posts that have accumulated since 2008, and there are a few tweaks to complete; however, since I depart tomorrow morning for the State Bar of California 88th Annual Meeting, it will remain a work in progress for the next couple of weeks.

I’ll also re-establish subscriber feeds soon.  Thanks for your patience.