Preservation of Data Letter

A sample Preservation Letter. 

Remember that you will want to make certain that all data is preserved in its original format.  This is so the metadata can be more easily obtained.  This letter is intended to protect ESI (Electronically stored information)

XXXXX and Associates, P.S.

749 Some Street, Suite 400, Your Town, WA 98416

Phone:  (253) 677-1245                                                                                                     Janis Miller, Esq

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April 22, 2012

 

Mr. XXX XXX, President,

Some sort of company

300 Stellar Jay Way

Your Town, WA 98111

 

 

Re:    XXXX v. XXXXX           Case No. CV-11-0046

Preservation of Electronic Discovery

 

 

Dear Mr. %%%%%%%:

 

Oh behalf of our client, Mr. XXXXX XXXXX we do hereby demand that you do now preserve all documents, tangible things and electronically stored information (“ESI”) potentially relevant to any issues in the above entitled matter.

 

You should anticipate that much of the information subject to disclosure or responsive to discovery in this matter is stored on your current and former computer systems and other media and devices (such as but not limited to: personal digital assistants, voice-messaging systems, and online repositories).  Electronically stored information (hereinafter, “ESI”) should be afforded the broadest possible definition and includes potentially relevant information electronically stored as:

 

• Digital communications (i.e., e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging);

• Word processed documents (i.e., Word or WordPerfect documents and drafts);

• Spreadsheets and tables (i.e., Excel worksheets);

• Accounting Application Data;

• Image and Facsimile Files (i.e., .PDF, .TIFF, .JPG, .GIF images);

• Contact and Relationship Management Data (i.e., Outlook);

• Calendar and Diary Application Data;

• Online Access Data (i.e., Temporary Internet Files, History, Cookies);

• Presentations (i.e., PowerPoint);

• Network Access and Server Activity Logs; and

• Back Up and Archival Files

 

ESI resides not only in areas of electronic, magnetic and optical storage media reasonably accessible to you, but also in areas you may deem not reasonably accessible. You should take due care to preserve potentially relevant evidence from both these sources of ESI, even if you do not anticipate producing such ESI.

 

The demand that you preserve both accessible and inaccessible ESI relevant to this matter is limited, reasonable, and necessary.   For good cause shown, the court may order production of the ESI, even if it finds that it is not reasonably accessible. Accordingly, even ESI that you deem reasonably inaccessible must be preserved in the interim so as not to deprive our client of his right to secure the evidence, or the Court of its right to adjudicate the issue.

You are directed to immediately initiate a litigation hold for potentially relevant ESI, documents and tangible things, and to act diligently and in good faith to secure and assess compliance with such a hold. You are further directed to immediately identify and modify or suspend features of your information systems that, in routine operation, operate to cause the loss of potentially relevant ESI.

You should anticipate that certain ESI will be sought in the form or forms in which it is ordinarily maintained. Accordingly, you should preserve ESI in its native format.  Do not use any program that will remove or degrade the ability to search the ESI making it difficult or burdensome to access or use the information efficiently in the litigation. 

You should anticipate the need to disclose and produce system and application metadata and take steps to preserve it. System metadata is information describing the history and characteristics of other ESI. This information is typically associated with tracking or managing an electronic file and often includes data reflecting a file’s name, size, location and dates of creation and last modification or access. Application metadata is information automatically included or embedded in electronic files but which may not be apparent to a user, including deleted content, draft language, commentary, collaboration and distribution data and dates of creation and printing. For e-mail, metadata includes all header routing data and attachment data, in addition to the To, From, Subject, Received Date, CC and BCC fields.

Please preserve all documents and other tangible items that may be required to access, interpret or search potentially relevant ESI, including logs, control sheets, specifications, file lists, network diagrams, flow charts, instruction sheets, data entry forms, abbreviation keys, user ID and password rosters.

Please confirm that you have taken the steps outlined in this letter to preserve ESI and tangible documents potentially relevant to this action. If you have not undertaken the steps outlined above, or have taken other actions, please describe what you have done to preserve potentially relevant evidence.

If you should have any questions, contact my office immediately.

 

Very Truly Yours,

 

                                                             Ms. Jane I Awesome, Esq.,

                                                             XXXXXX and Associates

 

 

JM:k90