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What Is a Legal Hold?
A legal hold, also known as a litigation hold or preservation order, is a process that an organization uses to preserve all forms of relevant information when litigation is reasonably anticipated. The purpose of a legal hold is to ensure that evidence that might be relevant to litigation is not destroyed, modified, or otherwise made inaccessible..
What is ILM Legal Hold Management ?
Enables the application of legal holds on data that needs to remain available for legal compliance. Conventionally legal cases are a container for syntactically related objects. These objects correspond to the data of the current system and client on which the legal holds are to be created.
Terminologies
Data object – Corresponds to records or a tuple of records in the database or in an archive file.
Origin – Origin here refers to a data source which defines the place where the BOR object key was found. It can be an archive file or a record in database.
BOR key – Derived from the key fields of the BOR object, these are used to identify an individual single instance of the SAP business object type.
Legal case – A semantic collection for a set of BOR objects and their respective keys on which the legal hold is created.
Legal hold – A unique identifier that marks a given BOR object key to be part of a legal case. It refers to the BOR object key added as part of the legal case.
Legal Holds Propagation – Propagating the holds to archived BOR objects or ArchiveLink references (in the ILM store)
·In a live application system, you can apply legal holds to the following data categories:
BOR objects from the database and archive files at ILM store
ArchiveLink documents
Attachments that are linked to BOR objects (automatic hold using BOR objects)
PrintLists
Legal Case Management
Refers to the process of organizing, tracking, and managing legal cases or matters within a law firm, legal department, or any organization that deals with legal matters. It involves a set of practices, software tools, and workflows aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of handling legal cases. Here are some key aspects of legal case management:
1. Client and Case Information:
Legal case management systems typically start by capturing and storing detailed in
formation about clients, cases, and related parties. This includes contact details, case
types, case numbers, and key dates.
2. Document Management:
Efficiently managing documents is a critical part of case management. This includes storing, organizing, and retrieving legal documents such as contracts, pleadings, discovery materials, and correspondence.
3. Calendar and Deadline Management:
Legal professionals deal with various deadlines, including court dates, filing deadlines,
and appointments. Case management systems help track these dates and send
reminders to ensure compliance.
4. Task and Workflow Management:
Legal case management software often includes tools for assigning tasks to team
members, setting priorities, and tracking progress. Workflow automation can streamline
repetitive tasks and ensure consistency.
5. Time and Expense Tracking:
Lawyers often bill clients based on their time and expenses. Legal case management
systems may include time-tracking functionality to record billable hours and expenses
related to a case.
6. Conflict Checking: To avoid conflicts of interest, case management systems can
perform automated conflict checks to ensure that the firm doesn't represent clients with
conflicting interests.
7. Reporting and Analytics: These systems can generate reports and analytics to help
lawyers and firms assess their performance, monitor case progress, and make informed
decisions.
8. Integration: Legal case management software can integrate with other tools and
services, such as legal research databases, accounting software, and court e-filing
systems, to streamline processes.
9. Security and Compliance:
Given the sensitive nature of legal information, these systems often have robust security
measures and compliance features to protect data and ensure adherence to legal and
ethical standards.
10. Accessibility and Collaboration:
Modern legal case management systems are designed to facilitate collaboration
among team members and allow secure access to case information from different
locations or devices.
11. Client Portals:
Some systems offer client portals, allowing clients to access case-related information,
documents, and updates, promoting transparency and client engagement.
What is a legal case?
A legal case is a container for syntactically similar objects (BOR objects). These objects are referred to as legal hold(s). We use transaction ILM_LHM (Legal Hold Management) to view a list of all existing blocks that are due to a legal case. You can access legal case management via Transaction ILM_LHM (Legal Hold Management).
Overview and Display of Existing Legal Cases
Select a line and click the Display button to see the details of a legal case. Next, we’ll explain the meaning of the individual fields and the list of BOR objects using the example of creating and changing legal cases.
Create or Modify Legal Case
Now you can start to include data in the new legal case. You can do this in two ways (both functions can be found at the bottom right of the window): Add Objects Use this button if you want to include exactly one entity of a BOR object type E-Discovery Use this button when you want to do the following: Add one or more entities of a BOR object type Add one or more entities of a BOR object type, including the linked entities of other BOR object types.
You select the first function (Add Objects button) if you want to include exactly one entity of a BOR object type in a legal case. We also call this the manual addition of objects. After you’ve clicked the Add Objects button, specify the following:
The logical system from which the entity (document) originates.
BOR object type, which you can select either from the Recently Selected Objects group or by clicking the Info System button and searching for the appropriate object type in the following popup window.
Key of the entity
The system has included the entity you specified in the legal case. Among other things, the following information is displayed for each BOR object type entity:
BOR object type and its short description
Key of the entity and the logical system to which it belongs
Storage location (the system is therefore able to determine whether the entity is in the database or in the archive)
Which user recorded the objects, when, and with which functionality (in our example, using the Add Objects button to manually add objects)
Whether the system was able to determine the original documents belonging to the legal case (the block due to the legal case can also extend to these documents)
E-Discovery –
Where the data (entities) relevant to the legal case are searched for and included in the legal case based on search criteria that you specify. You specify the search criteria using a variant.
Propagation of Legal Holds
With this process, actual lock (set as a property) is created/deleted on the archive file at store. Propagation of legal holds is a manual activity. It must be done once the legal cases are created/deleted in ILM_LHM transaction. Propagation of legal holds happens at legal case level which means that the user can find the legal case GUID being set on the file at the archive store.
Propagation for BOR objects
Use report ARC_LHM_PROPAGATE_LEGAL_HOLD to assign legal holds to archived BOR objects that have been added to a legal case (in an ILM-certified storage system). You can schedule the report as a periodic background job.
If a BOR object that has not been archived yet is added to a legal case, and is then archived, the legal hold on this BOR object is set in the storage system at the same time as the deletion program for the archiving run, which means the report is not needed in this case.
Extraction of Data Objects with Legal Hold Data blocked in a legal case can’t be subjected to data destruction. In Transaction ILM_DESTRUCTION (Data Destruction), a small lock appears in front of a file as soon as a document a BOR object type entity from this archive file is involved in a legal case. As a result, the entire archive file can’t be deleted.
A Document Prevents Destruction - In extreme cases, the destruction of an entire archive file with thousands of documents aren’t possible because a block has been set for a single document in the archive due to a legal case.
In this case, report RSARC_EXTRACT_LEGAL_HOLDS (Extraction of Data Objects with Legal Hold) can be used. If you have archive files with legal holds that could already be deleted according to the retention period of the data, the report extracts the data objects in the archive file that are affected by the legal case into a new archive file. The legal hold information and the information on the retention period is of course completely taken over. The source file, on the on the other hand, is released from the legal hold block so that you can carry out the final deletion for it.
As an alternative to report RSARC_EXTRACT_LEGAL_HOLDS (Extraction of Data Objects with Legal Hold), you can also carry out the extraction in Transaction ILM_DESTRUCTION. To do this, select an archive file that is marked with the lock icon, right-click, and select Extract Data Objects with Legal Hold. In this way, you can only process the run you’ve just selected, unlike the report.
Close or Delete Legal Case
You can change the status of a legal case. When the legal case is closed, set the status 50 (Case Closed) for it. This status is the prerequisite for you to be able to delete the case. If you set it and save your entries.
Transaction ILM_LHM ensures that it can close the legal case and thus remove all objects from the Blocked Data table. This is also necessary so that the blocks can be removed from the related archive files.
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