Slack has changed how teams communicate, which means legal holds have to account for unstructured conversations across channels, messages, and files. Preserving data is now about understanding where it's stored and how to preserve it. Legal teams must stay compliant to reduce risk and preserve important information.

Do you remember when legal holds were straightforward, and teams identified custodians, preserved email, and shared drives? The entire process was structured and predictable, which led to its greatest benefit: it was contained.

Nowadays, this isn't the case. Conversations don't just occur in a vacuum. Teams communicate via Slack and a host of messaging platforms, creating more collaboration app data.

This means they're making decisions in these channels as well, and sharing files across various threads. A single, clean ecosystem of messages within an email is no longer the way legal teams work.

Rules have changed, complicating how data is stored and how legal teams handle it. Because of this fast-paced environment, a single deleted thread could pose a spoliation risk. So now more than ever, teams need to preserve data, especially when communicating on platforms like Slack.

What Is the Purpose of Legal Holds?

Legal holds preserve relevant information. They do this anytime attorneys anticipate litigation. But on Slack and similar communication platforms, data is exchanged and created at such speed, in unstructured formats, that things can get twisted.

The unstructured data looks like:

• Channel messages
• Direct messages
• Threaded replies
• File attachments
• Edited or deleted content
• Reactions that provide context

With all this communication data building in enterprise Slack accounts, it's important that legal teams have a simple way to preserve these conversations and any important or sensitive information through proper digital data preservation.

How Slack Changes the Nature of Preservation

Slack is continuous. This means that conversations are ongoing, with evolved threads over time.

Context builds among teams. It's also a collaborative platform where multiple team members can contribute simultaneously. It's also editable, unlike emails, since messages can be changed or deleted depending on each company's specific settings.

There's a risk of preservation and legal compliance with Slack. Slack is informal, which means conversations carry more weight than specific statements. From there, information can be misconstrued, creating challenges for Slack data protection.

Where Legal Holds Start to Break Down

The issue isn't the legal hold itself; it's implementing legal holds that don't account for the specific nature of communication, especially in a Slack environment.

If team members can delete information, there's a good chance data will be lost before anybody can completely implement it. This is why custodians need clear expectations on what they should preserve and what important conversations they can overlook.

The next issue with Slack is visibility. Legal teams often don't know which channels are most important or who's communicating with whom. It can also be difficult to track which channel is responsible for key decisions.

Visibility like this matters. Without it, incomplete holds pose a risk to everyone, especially in terms of Slack's legal compliance.

What an Effective Slack Legal Hold Looks Like

For starters, legal teams need to understand the Slack-based environment. They might need to work with their IT department to better learn how the platform is configured. If there are retention policies in place, they need to understand them, along with whether they can edit or delete messages.

Teams should also focus on communication patterns and which channels are the most relevant. Teams should also never rely just on custodians to preserve Slack data.

Instead, they should implement automated preservation. Automated preservation works to reduce human error. Additionally, custodians should understand what they need to preserve and why, focusing on strong communication practices.

This might include informal conversations and support a more effective eDiscovery collection.

Assisting Legal Teams With Legal Holds in Slack

Slack messages move fast, which can lead to important data being deleted without realizing it. Now more than ever, legal teams need the best legal holds process in place. Logikcull makes the entire process simple by preserving, collecting, and reviewing Slack communications in one convenient location.

For teams that rely on Slack, you need to stay protected and in control. Schedule a demo today.