Preservation with a Pro

Avoiding Overreach with Smart, Defensible Workflows

Preserving data for litigation is a high-stakes balancing act. Legal teams must secure relevant evidence as soon as litigation is anticipated; however, overzealous preservation can increase costs, raise privacy concerns, and hinder the discovery process. The key is to preserve smartly and defensibly – capturing the right data in place, not all the data. In this article, we’ll explore how Elite Discovery helps law firms and corporate legal departments achieve this by coordinating automated preservation-in-place and rigorous audit trail tracking for enhanced defensibility.

The Importance of Defensible Preservation

In any litigation or investigation, the duty to preserve relevant data is both a legal obligation and a key aspect of defensible discovery. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e), parties must take “reasonable steps” to preserve information that may be relevant to a dispute. Failing to preserve important data can lead to significant sanctions, such as adverse jury instructions or even default judgments (as illustrated in this case). However, over-preservation creates unnecessary expense, complicates review, and risks including sensitive or irrelevant information. Striking the right balance is challenging.

Elite Discovery addresses this challenge by implementing smart workflows that utilize technology to cast a precise preservation net, leaving an audit trail of what was preserved, when, and why. This way, if questions arise months or years later, your team can demonstrate reasonable and good-faith efforts to meet preservation duties. Through modern eDiscovery platforms and tools, Elite Discovery has built defensibility and efficiency into the preservation process from the start.

Automated Preservation-In-Place with Modern Platforms

Imagine a mid-size tech company facing an employment discrimination lawsuit. The relevant information is spread across various data sources, including Office 365 emails and a corporate Slack workspace. Rather than exporting everything potentially responsive from these data sources, you can avoid over-preservation and collection through preservation-in-place. Rather than immediately collecting entire data repositories (which can be disruptive and costly), preservation-in-place “locks down” data at the source so that it cannot be altered or deleted.

For example, Elite harnesses Onna’s eDiscovery suite to enable legal teams to preserve data across multiple custodians and apps with a single click–data can live in Onna’s repository or remain in the original source system under hold. For example, if discovery of Slack messages is required, Onna can place Slack workspaces on hold in place, while maintaining a fully defensible, comprehensive audit log.

Similarly, Everlaw provides an integrated legal holds module that connects directly to data sources, like Microsoft Purview, which lets users set a legal hold on Office 365 content (such as Outlook mailboxes, Teams chats, or OneDrive files) from within Everlaw’s interface. Because the data remains in the source (e.g., Microsoft’s servers) but is protected from deletion, there’s no need to over-collect early on. This approach is both efficient and court-vetted: it satisfies preservation obligations while minimizing unnecessary data movement.

Our experience with these platforms enables you to preserve all critical data in place and only export what is necessary. No mass export of large collections of emails, no unnecessary interruption to business operations – yet potentially relevant ESI is safe and sound, ready for review when needed.

Comprehensive Audit Trails for Defensibility

Preservation isn’t just about what you hold—it’s also about demonstrating how it’s being held through comprehensive audit trails. Every action—from issuing a legal hold notice to a custodian clicking “acknowledge” to system-generated logs of data being locked down—should be recorded. These audit trails are the backbone of defensibility.

Modern eDiscovery platforms inherently log each step in the preservation workflow. Onna, for instance, supports preservation in near-native format “captured supported by a fully defensible, comprehensive audit log.” So, when Onna places a hold on a set of Google Drive documents, it also keeps a time-stamped record of that action, including who initiated it, which files were impacted, and confirmation that no changes occurred after.

Everlaw’s legal hold system not only tracks notices and custodian responses but even logs the reasons behind each decision in the hold process. For example, if a certain data source wasn’t included in a hold, the system might note, “Custodian confirmed no relevant data on personal device – decision logged on [date] by [user].” These notes illustrate a defensible process, not a negligent one.

In addition to platform logs, Elite Discovery ensures chain-of-custody records are maintained whenever data is collected. If an initial preservation-in-place transitions to a collection phase, every handoff is documented and every file’s hash value is verified to prove it hasn’t changed in transit. With AI, we can automatically generate detailed logs as we go, enabling counsel to trace produced data all the way back to preservation activities. Defensibility is built in by design, and the legal team can respond to any opposing counsel challenges with confidence.

Audit trail data isn’t just about defense – it also helps teams internally manage the preservation process. We can assist legal operations by sending reports on who hasn’t acknowledged a hold (in order to send reminders), see when data sources were preserved, and know when to release holds at the end of a matter. Replacing manual tracking methods (such as ad-hoc spreadsheets) with automated logs eliminates human error and ensures nothing slips through the cracks during a litigation hold.

GenAI Agents for Smarter Scope and Reduced Overreach

Beyond the core platforms, Generative AI is emerging as a crucial tool in right-sizing the preservation scope. Elite Discovery is at the forefront of exploring GenAI agents that assist eDiscovery professionals in making data preservation more intelligent. By leveraging AI to analyze past matters, recognizing patterns to identify relevant data, and suggesting preservation parameters for new cases, we can be even more precise in determining how broad our preservation efforts should be.

GenAI can also help analyze the risk of over-preservation, which can lead to higher storage costs and more noise for reviewers to sift through. An AI model trained on the organization’s data landscape could flag when a proposed hold is grabbing excessive data and even proposes a more targeted scope, such as relevant sub-folders instead of an entire SharePoint site. Insights like these align with broader organizational trends of using AI for data minimization. In fact, modern machine-learning models can auto-classify and deduplicate records at ingestion, resulting in slimmer preservation sets and lower storage bills without sacrificing relevant content. That’s why 44% of corporate legal teams used GenAI tools in 2024, and 75% were expected to rely on them by this year.

Bringing It All Together: Elite Discovery’s Defensible Workflow

The power of these tools and techniques truly comes to life when orchestrated by experienced practitioners. By ensuring automated platform features and AI intelligence are utilized to their fullest in a manner that is tailored to each case, Elite Discovery acts as the conductor of this preservation symphony. By leveraging platform connectors and legal hold modules in solutions like Onna, Reveal, Everlaw, and CloudNine, we build a unified workflow legal teams can rely on. Throughout the process, Elite’s team monitors the dashboards, checking custodian compliance and hold acknowledgment, and verifying that holds are successfully in place on each system. Each step is logged by the system, and Elite supplements this with any necessary manual documentation, creating a complete narrative of preservation to give you peace of mind as well as measurable efficiency.

Conclusion

You don’t have to choose between thoroughness and efficiency. Through the savvy use of eDiscovery platform modules and emerging GenAI guidance, you can preserve the data you need with the documentation to defend it. In an era of exploding data volumes and increasing judicial scrutiny, our smart workflows leveraging state-of-the-art eDiscovery solutions and GenAI technology are not just an advantage; they’re fast becoming a best practice for those who aim to do preservation right, every time.

For more regarding Elite’s eDiscovery expert services, click here.

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