Legal hold
Also called litigation hold, preservation hold, eDiscovery hold
An instruction to keep records that may matter to a dispute or investigation, which overrides normal deletion for as long as it stands.
A legal hold tells a system to stop deleting certain records because they may be needed in a dispute, an investigation or a regulator's request. It is placed on named people or groups and stays until someone lifts it.
While it stands, it outranks the ordinary rules. The company's keeping period can run out and the user can press delete, and the held record is still there for the people running the hold.
AI chats can be held like mail and documents, though what a hold reaches differs by product. Find out for each approved AI tool what a hold covers and who may place one, and agree it with legal before a dispute makes it urgent.
For example
A dismissed employee brings a claim. The company places a hold on her AI chats and her manager's, so chats either of them deletes are still kept.
Put it to use
Where you'll meet legal hold in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, how to use it there, and the mix-up most people make.
Daily Bytes Plus is in the Android app.