How does Legal Hold Pro work?
Legal Hold Pro is a simple, secure, Web-based tool for managing the notification and compliance process for a legal hold.
To create a legal hold, click the Initiate Legal Hold button. This opens a form in which you specify the custodian(s) by
entering email addresses, complete the text of the hold describing the parameters, and attach any pertinent electronic files.
In addition, you can give the new legal hold a due date and priority level. You can also create and use legal hold templates
to save time and foster greater consistency.
The custodian(s) then receive an email generated by Legal Hold Pro that indicates they must take action on the
legal hold. Embedded in the email are two buttons, "I Accept" and "Contact Me". Each custodian selects his/her response
by clicking the appropriate button. Clicking "I Accept" is a one-step process, however a web browser will be to inform the
custodian that their response was sent successfully. When a custodian needs more information he/she can click the "Contact Me" button.
This opens a web browser with a message box where he/she can enter a question and then finalize it by clicking "Confirm".
If you have added an optional Custodian Interview, recipients of the legal hold can also be asked to respond to a questionnaire
you've created for the hold. The interview form can be enabled and displayed when a custodian accepts a hold.
As the sender of a hold you can monitor the progress of the Legal Hold and the responses from Custodians in the Hold Center.
The Legal Hold Pro system is elegantly designed, completely self-contained, and secure. The following is a list of key benefits of Legal Hold Pro:
• Compliance-as-a-Service – Defensible process that helps achieve best practices
• Low Up-front Costs – No hardware, software licensing, or implementation services costs
• Low Total Cost of Ownership – No maintenance costs
• Rapid Deployment – Deploy in hours rather than months
• Enterprise-class Infrastructure – Secure, geographically dispersed data centers
• Continuous Upgrades – Never worry about upgrades
To track the notification progress, users can receive an email copy of every legal hold response and contact request.
Additionally, all holds and resulting responses are organized and stored within Legal Hold Pro for easy future
reference. This powerful feature eliminates the need to retain paper records that are hard to manage.
Creating a legal hold is as easy as sending an email. Simply follow these steps:
- Click the "Initiate Legal Hold" button – You can then either "start from scratch" using a blank form, or select from a previously stored legal hold template.
- Enter the Matter Name, Id# (optional) and Hold Name (required)
- Optionally set a due date, a date for your next hold, and set the priority level
- Enter the text of the legal hold to provide custodian(s) with details and parameters of the hold
- If the legal hold requires information contained in a separate file, click "Attach File"
- Click "Send", and your hold notification will be sent at that time.
Entering a due date will communicate to the custodian when a response (acceptance) to the hold notice is needed. Legal Hold Pro does not send
automatic reminders; rather, you can generate reminders at any time by entering the View Legal Hold screen. Use “Send Reminders” from the top of
the page to notify all outstanding custodians who have not yet accepted the hold, or send reminders to specific custodians by choosing the option
from within the Legal Hold History panel.
By entering a date in the "Reissue Date" field, Legal Hold Pro will send you a reminder the date you specified to alert you that it is time
to send active custodians a refresh reminder. You'll have a chance to make any edits to the hold if appropriate,
and then simply click the "Reissue Hold" button to send out a new hold notice. When you select "Reissue Hold",
all active custodians will be asked to re-acknowledge their acceptance of the hold, and their responses recorded in a single "Legal Hold History"
for a complete audit trail.
You can create a template from any existing hold notice, or by starting a hold notice from scratch. Either select an existing hold
(double-click to view legal hold), select an existing template (Create From template), or initiate a new hold from scratch. Once you've
created your template legal hold notice, select "Save as template".
templates can have fields that are automatically filled ("autofill") when you initiate a new hold using the template.
An autofill field is defined using a field name surrounded by double brackets, or "[[" and "]]" – for example, to create an autofill field called Matter Name,
use the following format [[Matter Name]]. You can place this field name any number of times in your template.
When you initiate a new hold using the template, you will be presented with a pop-up dialogue box listing all the defined autofill
fields in the template. You enter the values for the field, and Legal Hold Pro will automatically insert those values into the
defined locations in your notice (very similar to a mail-merge in MS Word). If you leave field values blank, you will see a warning
that those autofill fields were left unchanged in the template.
Legal Hold Pro supports creating interview templates, which can then be associated with any legal hold. Start by creating a custodian
interview template. Go to your template Library and click on the "Custodian Interview templates" tab. Select "Add Interview" to create a
new questionnaire. You will be asked to choose a name for the interview template. Next, you can choose to include the questionnaire
when custodians are accepting a hold by checking the "Include questionnaire…" checkbox. If you leave this box unchecked, the custodians
will not be asked to complete the questionnaire (for example, you may create an interview form that you will use yourself to capture responses
when interviewing custodians on your own). You can also customize the text that a custodian will see when responding to a questionnaire.
Next you can add any number of questions to the interview template, either as free text-answered questions or multiple-choice questions.
Continue clicking on the "Add Question" selection until you are done entering questions, then select "Save Interview".
When initiating or editing a legal hold, you will have the option of associating a saved interview template with the hold by choosing the
"Custodian Interview" drop-down, and selecting the appropriate template.
You can also resend a custodian interview to all custodians that have not yet replied using the "Send Interview" button in the View Legal Hold screen.
Some of the possible uses of custodian interview templates include:
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Capturing initial feedback from custodians about where and how they store data (e.g., what computers and electronic devices they use) or
typical information management and governance practices
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Capturing information about job responsibilities and user roles
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Soliciting information about a custodian's involvement with a particular issue and additional parties that should to be contacted
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Recording notes from verbal custodian interviews or collection requirements as part of the fact record for a legal hold
When a custodian interview questionnaire is completed, the answers submitted are recorded in the Legal Hold History under the associated custodian.
Clicking on the blue "interview response" icon will open a view showing the questions and answers provided.
You can also click on the "interview" icon next to a custodian if you want to complete the questionnaire on behalf of the custodian.
Yes, we have architected every aspect of Legal Hold Pro to provide maximum security including the following:
- Our servers are operated in a scalable, redundant SAS 70-compliant data center with 24x7 monitoring.
- Our application uses best-practice security methodologies to protect your information and identity.
- Our system never stores your actual password. Our support staff will gladly help you reset your
password, but will never know what it is.
- We maintain detailed audit logs to flag unusual behavior so we can help protect against abuse of our
system.
- Your contacts are only visible to yourself (and our support staff, if you need assistance).
To check the status of your legal hold, log in at legalholdpro.com to go to the Legal Hold Center.
Click the legal hold you want to view. The "View Legal Hold" page is displayed, showing the current status of
legal hold, as well as who has accepted or requested contact. The "Legal Hold History" section retains a complete audit trail of all actions related to
the hold by you or your custodians. The history includes when actions were taken and by whom. All pertinent
information is conveniently accessible on this single page.
When viewing a list of holds in your Legal Hold Center, you can use the “Filter” option to enter a custodian name, then filter the list of
displayed holds to show only those holds for which the search criterion matches. When finished, you can restore the complete list by clicking
on “Filter” again, the selecting Cancel.
The status icons are designed to help you get an instant indication of what is happening with your
legal hold:
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Custodian released from hold |
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Note on hold |
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Hold sent to custodians |
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Contact request from custodian |
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Custodian complied to hold |
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Custodian Interview |
The email is generated by the Legal Hold Pro system and is sent using the sender’s email address.
We have created a form that organizes the key information,
making it readable and actionable. Here is a sample email formatted in HTML:
The message indicates the sender, due date, priority, and file attachment name(s).
The main area contains the legal hold title, message, and the "I Accept" and "Contact Me" buttons.
Lastly, the footer includes a link to the legal hold for those recipients receiving email in
plain text format.
No, Legal Hold Pro is designed to be an open system. Anyone with an email address and Internet access can
receive and respond to a legal hold notification.
As the creator of a legal hold, you can edit your legal holds. Find the legal hold in your Legal Hold Center and click to
open. Click the Edit Hold button to edit all of the available
fields, including custodians, hold description, due date, attachments, and others.
When you click "Send" you will have the option to ask for compliance from the custodians or to keep the
previous responses. It will be up to you as the manager of the hold to decide if the changes made are
minor and do not change the scope of the hold. The system tracks in detail which version with which each custodian complied.
If you have added new custodians, you can also choose to send the hold only to new custodians, or to all.
Legal Hold Pro tracks all custodian actions based on the email address. If an email is invalid, that custodian’s email must be “released”
and the corrected email address added as a “new” custodian. Edit the View Legal Hold screen from the Legal Hold Center by selecting the hold.
In the Legal Hold History panel, identify the invalid email address and use the option to “Release Custodian” from the drop-down list. Next,
select “Edit Hold” and add the correct email address as a new custodian. When finished, select “Send” and then click “No” to only send
notification to newly added custodians.
Yes, registered users can attach files to hold notifications when logged in. Select the Attach File button.
Find the desired file(s) and click "OK". Be sure to wait for the green circle with the check (to the right of the attached) to confirm
upload is complete. The maximum file size for attachments is 4 MB.
Importing your contacts is a quick process that enables Legal Hold Pro to automatically look up your email addresses as you specify
custodians for a hold. This makes the process of issuing a hold faster.
We currently support importing contacts from Microsoft Outlook for Internet Explorer users,as well as direct import from a .CSV (comma-separated values) file format.
To import from .CSV, go to the "Contacts" tab and click the "Import from CSV" selection. You will then be walked through a three-step wizard to select your file, map fields
to Legal Hold Pro settings, and then upload. Duplicate email addresses will not be created, although any changes found to contact name or comment field will be updated.
Privacy and security are our utmost concern. We respect our users and their information,
and will not use your contacts database in any way.
Legal Hold Pro supports the following web browser applications:
Internet Explorer 7+
Firefox 3+ (PC, Mac)
Chrome (PC, Mac)
Safari 3+
Opera 9+ (PC, Mac)
For optimal performance, we strongly recommend that you use the most current version of your Web browser software
A great application to use for spell checking is the
Google toolbar. For Firefox users, a spell checker is built into the browser.
If you have a standardized legal hold notification that you use often you can load it as a template. Enhance the templates by using
auto fill tags and the process of creating your legal hold notification will be easier and more efficient. If you have a few different
types of holds that you have to issue again and again, templates can help streamline that process.
When you initiate a legal hold, you will have the option of choosing from your template list or starting from scratch.
When you select a template you have built, all of the fields you filled in as part of your template will be pre-populated.
From there, enter the rest of your information, review and hit send.
Auto fill is a feature used in Legal Hold Pro templates. Often times the same information appears in many places in the legal hold notification.
For example the plaintiffs name may appear in the "Hold Title" as well as several times in the body of the document. By assigning an auto fill tag to
the plaintiff you will enter the information once and it will be entered throughout the document.
To create an auto fill tag simply surround the tag title by two sets of square brackets and place this tag any where you want that information to
appear. To continue with the plaintiff example in the "Hold Title" you may put "Your Company Name v [[Plaintiff]]". When a
template is used that contains auto fill tags a dialog box will pop up with a form. The form will list each of the auto fill tags used with a
text field to enter the information. After completing the form and click "Auto Fill", the information entered will show up in place of the auto
fill tags listed throughout the document. Please note, when using auto fill the names of fields ARE case sensitive, so [[Plaintiff]] and [[plaintiff]]
are two different tags.
From the Template Library screen, simply select the Template you wou wish to edit and click Edit, make your changes, and click “Save Template”.
If you prefer to keep an existing template, you can create a new template using the “Create From Template” option instead and save using a
different template name.
Select the template you with to remove and click "Delete". It will be removed from your template Library. This process is not reversible.
Yes. If you edit an existing interview template that is attached to an active legal hold, the changes to the template will be reflected for any custodians
that are completing surveys after that point. You can also add or change an interview template when editing an existing hold notice. Once you've completed
your edits, you can either reissue the notice to all custodians (which will reset their acknowledgement status back to "pending").
Alternatively, you can save the changes without sending the edited hold, then use the "Send Interview" selection to send the custodian interview to
any active custodian associated with that hold. If an interview template was previously associated with the hold, the "Send Interview" selection
will send a reminder just to those that have not previously completed an interview form.
Legal Hold Pro supports the following file types:
Microsoft Office documents (.doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, etc)
Image files (.jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .tif, .png, .bmp)
PDF files (.pdf)
Text files (.txt, .rtf, etc)
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