Whose job is it to apply a litigation hold and make sure scheduled disposition actually stops?

A litigation hold (also called a legal hold or preservation hold) suspends the routine destruction of records that may be relevant to actual or reasonably anticipated litigation, audit, or investigation. When a hold is in effect, the records it covers must be preserved even if their retention period has expired and disposition would otherwise be due. Getting this right is a shared responsibility, but the roles are distinct.

Who issues the hold

Responsibility for deciding a hold is needed almost always sits with legal counsel — in-house or outside attorneys. They determine when litigation is reasonably anticipated (the trigger), define the scope of relevant material, identify the custodians who hold it, and issue a written hold notice. This is a legal judgment, not a records or IT decision, because the duty to preserve attaches before a lawsuit is formally filed.

Who makes disposition actually stop

Issuing a notice is not the same as stopping destruction. Several parties make the hold real:

• Records and information management staff map the hold to records series and retention schedules, flag affected items, and ensure scheduled disposition is suspended for in-scope records.
• IT and system administrators apply technical holds — disabling auto-deletion, pausing email and backup purge routines, and preserving systems and devices that handle relevant data.
• Custodians (the employees who created or hold the records) acknowledge the notice and stop deleting or altering material under their control.

The hold should override the retention schedule, not the other way around. Many programs implement this through a documented hold register and system controls that prevent disposition flags from firing on held records.

Why coordination matters

Failure at any link — a notice that never reaches IT, an automated purge no one paused — can lead to spoliation findings and sanctions. The defensibility of the process depends on documenting when the duty arose, who was notified, what was preserved, and when the hold was eventually released so normal disposition can resume.

For a fuller picture of how preservation interacts with scheduling, see the retention and disposition topic hub.

In short: counsel owns the trigger and scope, records and IT make preservation operational, and custodians comply. The duty is collective, and so is the liability when it fails.