eDiscovery - Message Litigation Holds

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In this article, we will explain how Litigation Holds work. Administrators can use this option to preserve emails in the archive, ensuring that their retention periods don't change as a result of a Retention Adjustment, Folder Based Retention (FBR) task, or retention preservation policy. An eDiscovery Case identifies messages and places them on Litigation Hold. As long as the Litigation Hold is in place, all emails included will not be purged from Mimecast until the Litigation Hold expires.

Litigation Holds are used when you need to make sure certain emails are not purged by your Mimecast account configuration settings. There may be an expectation that certain emails should remain accessible indefinitely due to impending litigation. The Litigation holds will override any emails included in the Mimecast Retention.

If your company has regular purge cycles for Mimecast, or if users have FBR policies, it may be necessary to prevent emails from being purged during these cycles. During a purge cycle every three months, if some emails are required for litigation, they can be marked with a Litigation Hold, and they will not be purged until the hold expires.

Creating a Litigation Hold

Creating a litigation hold is a two step process.

1. An eDiscovery Case must be created (unless implementing a hold on all company emails), which contains the search criteria for emails that are to be held.  This ensures that future emails matching these search terms will also be included in the case.
2. A Litigation Hold must be created.

To create a litigation hold:

1. Log in to the Mimecast Administration Console.
2. Navigate to Archive | Litigation Holds.
3. Click on the New Litigation Hold Definition button.
4. Complete the Litigation Hold properties dialog as follows:

Field / Option	Description
Description	Specify a description for your Litigation Hold.
Notes	Specify the details for the hold (e.g. subject matter and/or reason for the hold).
Hold Expires	Specify a date when the Litigation Hold expires. This is set to one year from today's date by default. Once a Litigation Hold expires, any messages covered by the eDiscovery Case are subjected to any applicable retention alterations (e.g. purge requests). If you are unsure when the Litigation Hold is required, ensure the date is far enough in the future, and set a reminder to adjust this if necessary.
Discovery Case	To place a Litigation Hold on an existing eDiscovery Case, click on the Lookup button to the right of the field. Select the eDiscovery Case to which the Litigation Hold should apply. All the messages referenced by the searches contained in the eDiscovery Case will be affected. Only one eDiscovery Case can be assigned to each Litigation Hold. Once the Litigation Hold has been saved, the eDiscovery Case is locked and cannot be amended.

5. Click on the Save and Exit button.

The Archive | Litigation Holds menu item lists all active and expired holds, and their status is displayed in the right-hand column. The status will either be Active or Expired. Each message in the archive will also display Retention information, such as Litigation Holds. This can be accessed through the View drop down menu available for each email in the archive and is described in the Viewing Email Retention Information page.