4 Legal Hold Challenges Facing State Agencies

Legal holds have been a legal obligation for government agencies for decades. But in state agencies in particular, meeting that obligation has become increasingly complex.

Data is spread across departments and systems. Custodians rotate in and out. Many employees in charge of preserving information are not legal professionals. And the tendency to manage legal holds manually further complicates these types of challenges.

Below are four of the most common legal hold challenges facing state agencies, and how automation can help.

Challenge #1: Decentralized Data Systems

Most state agencies are made up of multiple departments, each using different systems to store and manage information. Relevant data may exist on individual desktops, email platforms, shared drives, cloud tools, or legacy databases, often with little consistency across the organization.

Solution: A Unified Platform with Reporting Capabilities

A centralized platform allows agencies to manage custodians, data sources, and preservation status in one place. Real-time dashboards connect teams internally, allowing leaders to see what custodians have responded, what data is preserved, and the status of each hold.

Challenge #2: A Dispersed and Untrained Workforce

In state agencies, legal hold responsibilities often extend beyond legal teams. Custodians may include IT professionals, program managers, and administrative staff. Many of these workers may not understand what a “legal hold” even means, and may disregard a notification when it arrives. Without consistent guidance and follow-up, custodians may unintentionally delete or modify relevant data during routine work, weakening preservation efforts and increasing risk.

Solution: Templates and Automated Notifications

Automated templates create consistent hold requests that reduce custodian errors. Once a template is sent, an automated notification system will send out reminders and questionnaires to custodians, ensuring that they acknowledge receipt and are complying with the hold. Our whitepaper on boosting custodian compliance for legal holds gives a more in-depth look at how automation enhances acknowledgement and defensibility.

Challenge #3: Legacy Technology and IT Constraints

Many state agencies rely on systems built for daily operations rather than litigation or eDiscovery. These legacy tools often lack native legal hold functionality, forcing staff to manually identify, extract, and preserve relevant data. On-premises email servers, messaging platforms, and older databases may not support automated preservation, making large-scale legal holds difficult to manage.

As data volumes increase, manual processes place additional strain on limited IT resources and raise the risk of errors.

Solution: Cloud-Integrated Preservation and Collection

An automated legal hold system is more than just a place to track and manage legal hold data. Agencies can also preserve and collect data straight from cloud sources, rather than relying on IT intervention to extract data from multiple locations. Data dispersed across such platforms as email, shared drives, and business apps can all be easily stored within one centralized tool.

Challenge #4: Employee Turnover and Reorganization

High workloads, budget constraints, and seasonal demands (such as election cycles) contribute to frequent staffing changes within state agencies. When employees leave or change roles, knowledge about where records are stored and what legal hold obligations exist can be lost.

Without a reliable way to track and reassign responsibilities, legal holds can quickly fall out of date, creating compliance gaps that are difficult to detect.

Solution: Up-to-Date Custodian Tracking

Automated custodian tracking allows agencies to update roles, reassign responsibilities, and maintain continuity as staff changes occur. Legal hold obligations remain tied to the matter and the data, rather than a single individual. This ensures preservation requirements remain in place and defensibility is maintained despite organizational change.

Casepoint’s Automated, Highly Secure Legal Hold Software

Many of the challenges state agencies face stem from manual legal hold processes that limit visibility, consistency, and accountability. Casepoint Legal Hold orchestrates the entire process, supporting defensible legal hold management across complex government environments.

Casepoint combines centralized tracking and automation with robust security and compliance capabilities, including FedRAMP®, StateRAMP, and Department of Defense Impact Level 5 and 6 authorizations. For agencies managing high volumes of data, Casepoint supports more than 600 file types, as well as powerful processing and searching capabilities, enabling faster review and production. The result is a secure, scalable legal hold solution that helps state agencies reduce risk while operating more efficiently.