Anyone can now create volumes of fake email, text screenshots and other deepfake ‘evidence’ with minimal effort. It not only shows up in cases, it raises the bar for authentication of real evidence. You may need more than a simple chain of custody to demonstrate reasonable effort and completeness of your discovery process.
This trend makes me nostalgic for all my compliance mode Enterprise Vault implementations to comply with SEA Rule 17a-4. 3 years of 100% capture archive made my 30(b)(6) affidavits simple and definitive for that time span. It also gave counsel time to perform reasonable investigations and scoping searches before they had to pull the legal hold trigger in many scenarios. In a world awash in AI slop and the gaslighting assault on science-based truths, eDiscovery practitioners are challenged to up our preservation and authentication game.
An immutable archive is one of the only ways to ‘prove a negative’ when your opponent levels accusations of tampering or ‘recalls’ seeing documents that never existed. Default enterprise M365 or Google configurations are not 100% capture or retention. They are optimized for business value and storage management over preservation. Rapidly evolving collaborative communication and records systems require ongoing, documented testing and tuning to close potential gaps. This aligns with best cyber security and disaster recovery practices. The key is ensuring that legal stakeholders participate in change management with clear, practical requirements aligned with your litigation and regulatory profiles.
Defensibility should be built into enterprise data lifecycles. Retroactive audits are challenging, expensive exercises. The good news is that most modern, cloud architecture can be configured to support rolling archival preservation without degrading business efficiency or ballooning your storage budget for most scenarios.
My thanks to the briefing and meeting inquiries already floating in ahead of LegalWeek 2026. I am NOT excited about the venue change, but I am looking forward to connecting with peers old and new. Assuming that Calendly does not sabotage bookings, grab a time slot while they are available. I am prioritizing prospective clients with active, complex matters over product release briefings this year, so reach out if you cannot find a time slot and I will make it happen. Book a LegalWeek meeting with Greg here.
Greg Buckles wants your feedback, questions or project inquiries at Greg@eDJGroupInc.com. He solves problems and creates eDiscovery solutions for enterprise and law firm clients.
Greg’s blog perspectives are personal opinions and should not be interpreted as a professional judgment or advice. Greg is no longer an investigative journalist and all perspectives are based on best public information. Blog content is neither approved nor reviewed by any providers prior to being published. Do you want to share your own perspective? Greg is looking for practical, professional informative perspectives free of marketing fluff, hidden agendas or personal/product bias. Outside blogs will clearly indicate the author, company and any relevant affiliations.
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