Legal hold register
- On hold: 0 sources, 0 records at risk.
- Released with a reason: 0.
Legal Intelligence
Investigation and Evidence Preservation
Legal holds, defensible retention, chain of custody, authorised evidence collection and an investigation chronology.
Demonstration: Dunmore Building Services (fictional) · Construction services. Fictional data and a scripted answer.
The situation
- Organisation
- Dunmore Building Services (fictional)
- Who is asking
- Legal operations manager
- Industry
- Construction services
- What happened
- An internal investigation has opened and some relevant data sources delete themselves on short cycles.
The question asked
Which data sources must be placed on hold now so evidence is not lost?
What it reads, and who can see the result
- Data source inventory registerSystems with retention settings and custodians.
- Matter scope documentThe people and dates in scope.
- Reads
- The inventory of systems and their deletion cycles, and the matter scope.
- Does not read
- The content of messages or files at this step.
- Permission
- Legal operations' inventory access.
- Who sees it
- Legal operations, IT and the investigation lead.
Try it
Review each flagged record: confirm it or dismiss it. The totals and the answer below follow your decisions.
| Source | Custodian | Deletes | Records at risk | Finding | Decision |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Email, project team | Project manager | Never (archived) | 41,000 | Matched | None needed |
| Chat channel #site-4 | Site team | After 30 days | 12,600 | Deletes automatically after 30 days; the matter covers last quarter | |
| Site CCTV | Facilities | After 14 days | 280 | Overwritten every 14 days; footage from the relevant week may already be gone | |
| Finance system | Finance | Never | 8,800 | Matched | None needed |
| Departed manager's laptop | IT | Wiped on redeployment in 20 days | 3,300 | Device scheduled to be wiped and reissued | |
| Personal phone messages | Project manager | User-controlled | 900 | Not company-controlled; preservation depends on the individual |
- Flagged
- 4 of 6 · 17,080
- Place on hold
- 0 · 0
- Release
- 0 · 0
- Undecided
- 4 · 17,080
The answer
Simulated answer. Written for this fictional case, not produced by a live model. Only the figures in it are computed, from what you decided above.
4 of 6 sources are at risk of losing evidence, about 17,080 records.
Four sources delete or are wiped on a cycle shorter than the matter will run [S1]. The CCTV may already have overwritten the key week; that gap should be recorded now, not discovered later. A personal phone is outside the company's control, so preservation there is a request to the individual, not an instruction [S2].
You have placed 0 on hold (0 records at risk) and released 0; 4 sources are undecided. Anything undecided keeps deleting.
Relies on: S1 · Retention and deletion scheduleS2 · Matter scope memo
Review and approval
The legal operations manager with the investigation lead decides. Approving issues the holds to IT and the custodians for the sources placed on hold. It does not collect or read any data.
Not ready to approve. 4 flagged sources are still undecided. Confirm or dismiss each one first.
In the product this is a different person with the right permission. Here you play that role to see the rule.
What it produces
Preservation gap record
- Sources that had already begun deleting are recorded with the date, so the gap is documented.
Limits of this example
- A hold stops deletion going forward; it cannot recover data already overwritten.
- Preservation of personal devices needs the individual's cooperation.
- This is a scripted demonstration on fictional data. No model was called and no real organisation, person or result is shown.
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