Guide
Resolving legal matters often depends on timing and documentation. If your organization is facing potential litigation, regulatory scrutiny, or internal investigations, having the right data preserved and accessible is critical. This is where a legal hold and preservation software solution can make all the difference.
When you receive a legal hold notice, it means you are required to retain certain data that could be relevant to a pending or anticipated legal case. Missing or deleted data can have serious consequences. With modern collaboration tools like Slack and Teams replacing traditional email threads, preservation has become increasingly complex.
This guide can help even experienced attorneys understand how to manage these evolving requirements. Even more essential is having a guide to legal hold and preservation, and the right tools to support that work, particularly in preserving communication from platforms not designed with compliance in mind. That is where Hanzo steps in.
A legal hold (also known as a litigation hold) is a process that directs an organization to preserve all forms of relevant information when litigation is reasonably anticipated. Legal teams typically issue a legal hold notice to custodians—employees who may have control over or access to data that needs to be preserved.
Failure to comply with a legal hold can lead to claims of spoliation (destruction or alteration of evidence), sanctions, or worse. Traditionally, a company might instruct employees not to delete emails or shred documents. Now, with data stored in places like Slack, Confluence, or Google Workspace, the preservation process needs to be much more robust.
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, particularly Rule 37(e), set out standards around electronically stored information. The rule essentially says that if a party fails to take reasonable steps to preserve data that should have been kept, courts can impose serious penalties.
This makes it clear: legal hold solutions must account for all the places relevant data might exist—not just emails and PDFs, but chat messages, links, attachments, comments, and more.
Communication in the workplace no longer exists in a single location. Teams now use a mix of chat platforms, shared documents, task boards, and social media. Slack, in particular, has revolutionized team collaboration. However, with its growth has come a sharp increase in requests for Slack legal hold capabilities.
Slack is fast, informal, and full of valuable context. A casual DM between colleagues could later become evidence in a contract dispute, employment case, or regulatory matter. Slack was not originally built with compliance in mind—that is where Hanzo comes in.
Hanzo’s legal hold software allows enterprise organizations to preserve Slack data—channels, messages, reactions, attachments, and even deleted content—in a way that meets legal standards. Unlike systems that merely export raw data, Hanzo’s tools preserve Slack content in its native context, meaning the information appears exactly as it did to users at the time. This is essential for demonstrating the authenticity and accuracy of records during review.
Importantly, this capability extends beyond Slack. Hanzo also supports legal holds for Teams, Google Workspace, and other dynamic collaboration platforms, ensuring organizations do not miss critical communications across tools.
Legal teams once relied on manual workflows to issue and monitor legal holds. These methods can be risky and inefficient, particularly for companies managing hundreds or thousands of custodians across complex systems.
Legal hold solutions today go beyond sending out email notices. They track acknowledgments, automate reminders, maintain audit trails, and integrate directly with data sources. This ensures that the hold is not just issued, but followed.
Hanzo’s Illuminate platform brings this functionality together with intelligent data mapping. By helping teams identify where relevant data is stored, Hanzo allows for quick, targeted preservation efforts, minimizing business disruption and litigation risk.
Instead of exporting entire drives or email servers, Illuminate filters for relevance, so only the necessary information is preserved. This saves time, storage, and review costs, while also ensuring compliance. From issuing the initial legal hold notice to navigating the discovery phase, technology like this helps in-house legal teams and law firms preserve data and maintain control.
The rise of remote work, cloud-based storage, and real-time messaging has reshaped how companies communicate. With convenience comes the challenge of maintaining defensible records. That is why data preservation must be a priority—not just for legal departments, but for IT and compliance teams as well.
Hanzo’s Chronicle product captures and archives web-based content as it changes, making it ideal for regulated industries that need to demonstrate past site versions, product claims, or disclosures. Whether it is a pharmaceutical company needing to show historic labeling or a financial firm documenting compliance with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Chronicle creates a living record.
Preserving this kind of information is not just about avoiding penalties. It is about staying ahead. When you know your data is secure, review-ready, and accessible, you can approach legal hold challenges with confidence.
Preserving data during litigation isn’t just best practice—it’s legally required. A poorly executed legal hold can lead to spoliation claims, court sanctions, or unfavorable rulings that damage your case and your reputation. That’s why it’s critical to have a dependable, efficient system in place.
Modern legal hold solutions, like Hanzo, go beyond basic preservation. They automate notifications, track acknowledgments, and maintain detailed audit trails, ensuring your organization meets legal obligations without overwhelming your team. With the ability to adapt to evolving data sources like collaboration tools and dynamic websites, Hanzo helps make your preservation strategy both defensible and future-proof.
As your company expands, so does the complexity of your data environment. Collaboration platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Asana are essential for productivity—but they also introduce new challenges when it comes to legal holds. Messages, edits, reactions, and attachments can all be part of the evidence chain. If your legal hold process doesn’t account for these sources, you may be putting your organization at serious risk.
Outdated preservation methods often can’t capture the full context or dynamic nature of modern communications. That’s where Hanzo comes in. Our platform is designed to evolve with your business, helping legal, compliance, and IT teams enforce consistent, legally defensible holds across both traditional systems and cutting-edge tools. We make it easy to preserve content in place, maintain detailed audit trails, and adapt policies as your tech stack grows.
With Hanzo, you get more than just a software tool—you gain a strategic partner that understands the realities of enterprise collaboration and litigation readiness. Let us help you stay proactive, compliant, and confident in the face of change.
Let us help you create a better system for data preservation that keeps your team compliant and confident, safeguarding critical information across all systems, without disrupting your daily operations. From issuing defensible legal hold notices to automating preservation across modern collaboration platforms, the right technology gives your legal and compliance teams the control they need when it matters most.
Hanzo is built for exactly this kind of challenge. Our legal hold solutions are designed to keep pace with how your teams work—fast, flexible, and digital-first. Call us today to build a strong, proactive data preservation strategy that gives your business the confidence to move forward.
