Lessons from Pension Committee

When anticipating litigation:

- Implement a written litigation hold, identifying and including all key players

- Suspend routine document destruction policies, including auto-deletion of ESI.

- Preserve backup tapes if they are the sole source of relevant information, as well as materials in your control from former employees and third parties.

- Consider the need to preserve and collect information from an employee's home computer or mobile device.

During document collection:

- Supervise document collection with the assistance of IT professionals.

- If custodians will assist with document collection:

- Oversee the process and review the efforts.

- Give written collection instructions, including a broad description of the relevant documents to be collected.

- Avoid asking custodians to make relevancy determinations.

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