Legal hold

An instruction, once litigation or a regulatory inquiry is reasonably anticipated, to preserve records and often to route them through counsel, including a defense record or concession log. A legal hold can change what a defender is permitted to say out loud in a live challenge and how a concession is worded. Confirm with your legal or compliance function whether a hold is in effect before the challenge starts, not during it.

A pause on an organization's normal data or record retention and deletion schedule, triggered by an open finding, complaint, or regulator inquiry, ensuring evidence connected to an active matter is not deleted simply because a routine retention period happens to expire during that matter.

A directive that suspends normal deletion of records once litigation or an inquiry is reasonably anticipated, so relevant evidence is preserved. Destroying records that should have been on hold is a distinct and serious problem, independent of the underlying incident.

A directive, typically issued by legal counsel, that suspends normal deletion of records because litigation, a regulatory investigation, or a government inquiry is pending or reasonably anticipated. Overrides every other factor in a deletion decision while active.

A documented, time-bound exception that pauses a dataset's deletion pending active litigation or a statutory retention requirement, without exempting the dataset from criticality and exposure scoring or from having a named legal owner.