Here is the  third installment of the Office 365 series with Tom O’Connor of the Gulf Coast Legal Tech Center and Rachi Messing, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft Legal. This week Rachi and Tom discuss the Litigation Hold features of O365 and how they impact the discovery process.

The duty to preserve is, of course, originally a common law duty, that is the part of the law that is derived from custom and judicial precedent. In the original  colonial states that flowed naturally from the English common law but as the country grew, the newer stated tended to rely on their own state constitutions and court decisions for this obligation.  In Federal courts, a long line of decisions emphasizes the common law duty to preserve.

Regardless of the forum and the source of the obligation, O365 has some unique ways to deal with preservation and holds, with a feature set that can simplify the manner in which a hold is performed and provide a true repeatable, defensible process.