Litigation Hold
A directive that suspends the normal disposition of records relevant to anticipated or active litigation, investigation, or audit, requiring them to be preserved until the matter is resolved.
A litigation hold (also called a legal hold or preservation hold) is an instruction to stop the routine destruction of records that may be relevant to reasonably anticipated or ongoing litigation, an investigation, or an audit. Once a hold is in place, the affected records must be preserved — even if their retention period would otherwise call for disposition — until the matter is resolved and the hold is released.
Litigation holds are essential to defensible disposition: an organization can confidently destroy records on schedule precisely because it can reliably suspend that destruction when preservation is required. Failing to preserve relevant records after a duty to do so arises is spoliation, which can lead to serious sanctions. Effective holds depend on promptly identifying custodians and relevant records and documenting the preservation.