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Sedona Releases International Legal Holds Commentary

I am excited to report that the Sedona Commentary on Managing International Legal Holds has just been released for Public Comment. This was a four-year project for a number of us who served on both the brainstorming and the drafting team and it is nice to see that our vision held up. 

Even though legal holds are largely an American phenomenon, counsel in both the U.S. need to understand the complicated but important relationship between the duty to preserve data and the sometimes conflicting right to privacy. Maintaining the privacy of personal data is viewed as a fundamental right in many parts of the world and increasingly in the U.S. 

The Commentary doesn’t profess to have all the answers for balancing legal obligations with privacy rights but it does provide a thoughtful series of practice points that counsel should consider when faced with an international preservation obligations. I recommend it as the starting point for every international legal hold consideration. 

Kudos to Ronni Solomon for leading this effort and to our co-editors for bringing in this project “on time” and “on budget.” A further thanks to Jay Francis, our Steering Committee Liaison who helped with the drafting and participated in just about every drafting meeting we held over the past several years. 

You can get a copy from the Sedona Conference by clicking on this link.

John Tredennick is the founder and CEO of Merlin Search Technologies,
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