Litigation hold
A legal instruction to preserve specific data relevant to anticipated or ongoing litigation, overriding the normal retention schedule for that scoped data until the matter resolves. A real, recognized exception when properly scoped and time-bound; a disguised indefinite retention policy when it is not.
Defined in 2 GAGE programs, which carry 5 distinct definitions of it. The wording above is taught in Certified AI Data Governance Professional (CADGP).
How each discipline defines it
The same term does different work depending on who is using it. These are the definitions as each program teaches them, unedited.
A legal instruction to preserve specific data relevant to anticipated or ongoing litigation, overriding the normal retention schedule for that scoped data until the matter resolves. A real, recognized exception when properly scoped and time-bound; a disguised indefinite retention policy when it is not.
A legal duty to preserve documents and communications reasonably anticipated to be relevant to actual or threatened litigation, which can override a routine retention or auto-deletion policy and make destroying covered material after the duty attaches a separate legal problem.
A legal obligation to suspend normal retention and deletion schedules for data reasonably anticipated to be relevant to pending or threatened litigation; a hold pauses deletion but does not exempt a dataset from being precisely scoped, documented, and revisited the moment the hold lifts.
A legal duty to preserve records relevant to a reasonably anticipated claim, investigation, or enforcement action, which suspends routine document destruction and auto-deletion policies for those records once the duty attaches.
A legal obligation to preserve documents and records once litigation is reasonably anticipated, which overrides any standard document retention schedule and must be confirmed with counsel the moment it may apply.
Where it is taught
The exact lessons this term appears in. The first 7 topics of every program are free with a free account.
- The "we have always had this data" trap: age does not launder a dataset · Consent, Purpose, and the Law of Data, Certified AI Data Governance Professional (CADGP)
- Hoarding versus liability: what storing everything actually costs, in dollars and exposure · The Money of Data, Certified AI Data Governance Professional (CADGP)
- The Liability Risk Assessment and Mitigation Strategy · Legal Frameworks and Liability Navigation, The AI Lobbyist: Certified AI Policy Strategist
- Your Influence Architecture, Documented and Defensible · Compliant Influence Architecture, The AI Lobbyist: Certified AI Policy Strategist
- Protecting Client Intelligence: Information Security for Policy Campaigns · Defensive Operations, The AI Lobbyist: Certified AI Policy Strategist
Terms it appears with
Not an alphabetical neighbourhood: these are the terms taught in the same lessons, ranked by how often they appear together.