This thread has been interesting indeed, but I keep coming back to my decade of working with lawyers and wonder if we're not simply morphing yet another vague phrase into a new context.  

Many lawyers I have worked with refer to something called the "legal record", which in my experience refers to, essentially, a matter or case file.  It is the culmination of all of the "stuff" (production sets, legal hold notices and responses, forms and spreadsheets documenting the litigation response process, etc) related to an individual legal response.  Is this perhaps what Mr. Medina is referring to as a Legal Hold Record?

I have read Carol's blog post and liked it very much.  In particular, I enjoyed her suggestion that the term "record" in and of itself may be a huge inhibitor to meeting the real needs at hand.  Carol - I couldn't agree more.  That said, I don't think we should abandon it; rather it proves we still have work to do to clearly articulate and "bake-in" useful terminology across our various processes that will allow our organizations to govern all of its information in a way that maximizes value, mitigates cost and risk, and doesn't confuse the populous unnecessarily.

Chris' and Luciana's points about record status being a result of specific value appraisal is something I completely agree with as it facilitates application of specific management tactics.  I am less fond of Non-Record, however.  Affirmative valuation is better than default valuation, in my mind.  All information has some value; the nature, scope and duration of value is what varies ... and that is what our job is - to help our organizations figure that balance out. Plus, life simply isn't black and white, and is perhaps why we seem to have this same conversation again and again.

In the end, what I think Mr. Medina has shared is an interesting case study of what worked for one or more of his clients, but I don't think we have unearthed a novel approach that is broadly applicable.  In other words ... it still *depends* and mileage will vary.

Cheers,
Julie

Sent from my iPad

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