TIL a coffee shop chat in Denver made me rethink our e-discovery process

I was grabbing coffee last Tuesday and overheard two lawyers talking about a case that blew up because of a single, un-deleted Slack channel. They said the other side found 3 years of internal jokes that got twisted into 'proof of intent'. It hit me that our firm still treats e-discovery like a box-checking step, not a real risk. We've been using the same basic keyword list since 2020. Now I'm pushing to audit all our comms platforms, not just email, before any big filing. Has anyone else had to completely overhaul their discovery approach because of one casual tool like Slack?

2 comments

2 Comments

jade27117d ago

Man, that's a scary story. It makes me wonder about the tools people use to get around the official ones. Like, what if your team has a private WhatsApp group or uses something like Signal for quick questions? That stuff wouldn't even be on the company server to find with a keyword list. The real risk might be the chats you don't know exist because people wanted a "less formal" space.

jade_grant9517d ago

My old boss told me about a case where they found a secret Trello board with case notes. It was a total mess. @jade271 is right, the real danger is the stuff people set up because the official tool feels slow.