As a matter of regular practice, I have always treated the retention of records and information separately when responding to a legal hold.  Any legal hold takes precedence over scheduled approved regular disposition.  Our ediscovery legal counsel office maintains a database of cases for which a legal hold has been placed and our offices check the database before we begin preparing records for retirement or disposal.  In fact, as we review all electronic recordkeeping systems in use to ensure they can meet records retention and disposition standards as part of a regular 3-year review cycle.  We also ensure those systems can also place a legal hold (either manually or based on global settings) on a set of records as an exception to scheduled regular disposition.  The legal hold, if it is to have any effect after being lifted, needs to be noted at the point of lifting the hold -  based on orders of legal counsel.  For example, if upon lifting a legal hold, legal counsel can direct records resume regular disposition which may have already passed (which would allow us to destroy upon lifting of the hold), or directions regarding lifting of the hold will stipulate to hold the case/records/documents for a certain amount of time to exhaust all appeal processes before resuming regular scheduled disposition.

These views are my personal views and reveal 30 years of past practices, and do not necessarily reflect the views and practices of the agency in which I serve.  Each case and set of records is a new challenge, and our office works very closely with the eDiscovery team in my agency's Office of General Counsel.

Tammy Strickler, CRM

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