A Serious “Bug” in Volkswagen’s Legal Hold Process

Fortunately, legal holds don’t appear very often, but companies need to take them very seriously and have a secure plan in the event that one happens. Equally important, companies must not veer away from the plan when a hold is triggered. Take the recent case surrounding Volkswagen (VW). In a nutshell, VW in-house attorneys tipped off employees about an upcoming litigation hold. One in-house counsel apparently indicated to employees that they should destroy certain documents and a hard drive that pertained to VW’s emissions cheating issues.

In light of the impending litigation hold, 30 to 40 employees were told that emissions-related data should be kept on USB drives and put on the company’s computer system “only if necessary.” Thousands of documents were deleted, but many were later recovered during the investigation. The not-so-elaborate cover-up finally broke down when a VW employee admitted it to regulators. Six current and former employees—one top compliance officer and five department heads in product development and engineering—were indicted.

In our white paper, “Is it Worth the Risk?  How to Implement a World Class Defensible Legal Hold Process” we discuss the significance of legal holds in today’s corporate environment, why you need gold-standard legal hold automation software, and strategies to fuel your company’s path toward a robust legal hold process.

Download this new white paper to discover how a cutting edge legal hold platform allows team members to gain real-time access to the status of collection requests, know when actions were issued, which tasks are in progress and which legal actions require immediate attention.

Our new white paper offers the following insights:

• Why you need a world class legal hold process
• A little history of recent landmark legal hold cases and why they should concern you
• Current best practices of legal holds
• Essential features to know before shopping for legal hold software
• The problems associated with using antiquated or inappropriate legal hold tools

A powerful legal hold solution offers a quick and highly cost-effective way to supercharge your automated business processes, as well as your bottom line. Reduce the ever-present risk of costly court cases. The stakes are high, and the time to act is now.