Retention and legal holds
What this page is — every legal hold in force, and every document currently under retention or hold, with the status that tells you whether it is safe, overdue, or frozen.
What it is for — so records are kept exactly as long as policy requires, and nothing caught by a dispute, audit or investigation is destroyed while it matters.
The problem it solves — a record needed for a dispute is destroyed on schedule because nobody connected the hold to it.
Route: /org/papers/records → Retention & Holds · Permissions: View file plans, record series, retention status, legal holds, disposition and vital-review queues. to
look; Manage record series/file plans, apply/release legal holds, execute disposition and stamp vital reviews. to apply or release holds.
1. What it is
Two cards:
| Card | Shows |
|---|---|
| Legal holds | Each hold — active or released, its scope, reason, and when it was applied and released |
| Documents under retention or hold | Each document with a keep-until date or under an active hold |
A legal hold freezes everything it covers. It can be scoped four ways:
| Scope | Covers |
|---|---|
| Organisation | Every document |
| Project | Every document in one project |
| Folder | Every document filed in one repository folder |
| Document | One document |
A document is "under hold" if its own hold flag is set or any active hold covers it.
What a hold blocks — everywhere, not just on this page:
| Action | Refusal |
|---|---|
| Destroy | Excluded from the disposition queue; re-checked at execution — document is under an active legal hold; disposition is blocked |
| Changing retention | document is under legal hold; retention cannot be changed |
| Finalize | document is under legal hold and cannot be finalized |
| Revoke, supersede | document is under legal hold and cannot be revoked / superseded |
| GDPR erasure | The party's data is withheld and reported |
| Auto-classification by folder | Retention is not computed |
2. Why you would use it
- Destroying evidence is a serious matter. A hold is the one control that makes it impossible, including for administrators.
- Scope follows the matter. A dispute with one supplier freezes one project or folder, not the estate.
- The reason is permanent. Every hold records why, which is what an auditor or a court asks.
- One table shows what is safe. Green, amber and red statuses tell you where each document stands.
3. Step by step
Apply a hold
- Apply hold → pick the scope; for project, folder or document, pick which.
- Enter the reason — required, and part of the permanent record.
- Confirm. Everything in scope is frozen at once.
Release a hold — Release on its row; the confirmation quotes the recorded reason.
Audit past holds — tick Show released.
4. Field reference
Apply hold
| Field | Rules | Refusal |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Organisation, project, folder, document | invalid scope_kind: use organization, project, folder or document |
| Target | Required for anything narrower than organisation | scope_id is required for project-scoped holds · project not found in this organization |
| Reason | Required | a reason is required to place a legal hold |
Documents under retention or hold
| Column | Holds |
|---|---|
| Document | Opens the workspace |
| Record series | Its classification |
| Keep until | The retention date |
| Status | On legal hold (red) · Retention elapsed (amber — it is in the disposition queue) · Retained (green) |
Sorted soonest keep-until first; documents held with no retention date come last.
Empty states — No active legal holds is the healthy default. Nothing is currently under retention or hold means no document has been classified into a Time series yet.
5. Worked example
A supplier, Northwind Traders, threatens litigation over a services dispute.
- The general counsel applies a Folder hold on Legal/Northwind with reason "Litigation hold — Northwind dispute, preserve all correspondence and contracts, ref LIT-2026-014".
- Two Northwind invoices whose retention elapsed last month disappear from the disposition queue. Their status changes to On legal hold.
- A records manager, unaware, tries to destroy one from a stale browser tab. The last-run panel reports document is under an active legal hold; disposition is blocked — the check runs at execution, not just at page load.
- A paralegal tries to finalize a draft settlement in the same folder: document is under legal hold and cannot be finalized. The counsel moves the draft to another folder to proceed.
Eight months later the matter settles. Release — the two elapsed invoices appear in the disposition queue immediately.
6. The admin contract
| Must be true | Where | What breaks without it |
|---|---|---|
| The role holds Manage record series/file plans, apply/release legal holds, execute disposition and stamp vital reviews. | Role editor | No Apply or Release |
| Documents are filed in folders, if folder holds are used | Repository | A folder hold misses documents filed elsewhere |
| Someone owns releasing holds | Your legal process | Holds outlive the matter and block legitimate disposition forever |
| Retention is classified before disputes arise | File Plan | There is nothing on this page to see |
7. Downstream
| When… | Then |
|---|---|
| A hold is applied | Destroy, retention changes, finalize, revoke, supersede and erasure are refused for everything in scope |
| A hold is released | Retention and disposition resume; elapsed documents appear in the queue at once — the clock was never paused |
| A document moves out of a held folder | It is no longer covered by that hold |
Retention keeps running during a hold. Check what is overdue in the scope before releasing.
8. Don't confuse this with…
| Security tags | Decide who can see a document. A hold decides whether it can be destroyed |
| Disposition | Where elapsed documents are acted on |
| Archiving | A lifecycle state. A hold is a governance freeze |
9. Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause |
|---|---|
| A document expected in disposition is missing | It is covered by a hold — check its status here |
| Finalize refused on a draft | The draft is inside a held scope |
| Retention cannot be changed | The document is under hold |
| A folder hold did not cover a document | It is filed in a different folder |
| Released a hold and documents flooded the queue | Their retention elapsed during the hold |