Who is responsible for applying a litigation hold to email and chat, and who actually enforces it?

A litigation hold (also called a legal hold or preservation hold) is a directive to preserve information that may be relevant to anticipated or pending litigation, investigation, or audit. With email and chat, responsibility usually splits across several roles: one group decides the hold is needed, another translates it into a preservation action, and a third enforces it through systems. Understanding the difference between issuing a hold and enforcing it is the key to doing this well.

Who decides and issues the hold

The duty to preserve is triggered when litigation is reasonably anticipated, and the obligation rests with the organization as a whole. In practice, legal counsel (in-house or outside counsel) owns the decision. Counsel determines that a duty has attached, defines the scope (custodians, date ranges, topics, and data sources such as mailboxes and chat channels), and issues the written hold notice. Legal is accountable for the hold being timely, reasonable, and defensible.

Who carries out and enforces it

Issuing a notice is not the same as preserving data. Enforcement typically involves:

• Custodians — the employees who hold relevant email and chat. They must acknowledge the hold and stop deleting covered content.
• Records and information governance staff — they help identify where covered information lives, suspend or override normal retention and auto-deletion rules, and track acknowledgments.
• IT and messaging administrators — they apply the technical preservation: placing mailboxes and chat accounts on hold, disabling auto-purge or ephemeral-message settings, and preserving in place so content cannot be altered or lost.

The reason chat needs special attention is that messaging platforms often default to short retention or auto-deletion. Relying on individual custodians alone is risky; system-level preservation by IT is what makes a hold reliable.

Shared accountability

Courts generally judge the reasonableness and good faith of the whole effort, not any single person. Legal directs and documents; records governance scopes and tracks; IT executes the technical hold; custodians comply. Clear written policies, defined roles, and an audit trail of who was notified and what was preserved are what make a litigation hold defensible.

For related guidance on managing electronic communications, see the email and messaging topic hub.