Legal Hold

Legal hold software helps organizations preserve electronically stored information and related records when litigation, investigations, audits, or regulatory reviews are anticipated or underway. It centralizes the process of identifying custodians, issuing preservation notices, and tracking acknowledgments so legal and compliance teams can manage holds more consistently. This category is often used by in-house legal departments, eDiscovery teams, records managers, and compliance professionals that need to reduce the risk of spoliation and improve defensibility. For buyers comparing the best legal hold software, the focus is usually on simplifying workflows while maintaining clear documentation of every action taken.

Common legal hold tools include notice distribution, automated reminders, custodian response tracking, matter management, and reporting features that show who received instructions and when. Many platforms also support policy templates, audit trails, escalation workflows, and integrations with email, document management, and broader legal operations systems. These capabilities help teams coordinate preservation efforts across departments, limit manual follow-up, and keep matters organized as obligations change. In practice, legal hold software supports faster response times, better compliance oversight, and more reliable recordkeeping throughout the hold lifecycle.