LegalAI[Space]

Litigation and disputes · In-house counsel, cross-border disputes team

Scope a litigation hold in a United States case

An English company with a US subsidiary has been served with a complaint in federal court and nobody has told anyone to stop deleting anything. The run produces a custodian list, a scope note and a draft hold notice, and says plainly how the research was sourced.

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Agents
Research, Litigation & Disputes
First draft
A custodian list and a draft hold notice come back from one run, on the day the complaint is received.

The problem

Preservation duties attach before US counsel is instructed, and the automatic deletion policies on a European mail system will not pause themselves. A UK in-house team needs something defensible within hours, written in terms the IT team can act on, without pretending to be a US litigation practice.

  1. Step 01 of 05

    Open the matter and say what the sourcing is

    Jurisdiction is recorded as the United States, and the run panel notes that research here draws on ranked open-web sources while the citation gates still apply.

    Matters · Project Halcyon · SPA warranties and disclosureOpen

    Project Halcyon: SPA warranties and disclosure

    Buy-side warranty review, disclosure analysis and cited due-diligence grid.

    Client
    Halcyon Bidco Ltd
    Reference
    WC-2026-0412
    Practice area
    Corporate / M&A
    Jurisdiction
    England and Wales
    Responsible partner
    E. Vance
    No conflict check on file.

    Chat, on this matter

    Compare warranties with the disclosure letter.

    Three high-priority exceptions require action: the unregistered charge, the change-of-control right and the tribunal claim.

    Send a message… (@ to mention tools)BalancedPrepare for
    1. 25 Aug

      Disclosure exceptions matrix

      Chat

    2. 21 Aug

      Disclosure exceptions matrix

      Run · completed · 560 credits

    3. 18 Aug

      Project Halcyon: Disclosure Letter

      Document · indexed

    4. 16 Aug

      Project Halcyon: Share Purchase Agreement

      Document · indexed

    5. 4 Aug

      Matter opened

      Opened

  2. Step 02 of 05

    Ask the scope question

    What has to be preserved, from when, and how proportionality bears on the breadth of the hold at this stage.

    Matters · 14 Rowan Court, Flat 9 · ResearchSources ranked
    Matter: 14 Rowan CourtEngland and WalesResearch Agent
     
    Prepare for: Court-Ready · Deliver as: Word

    Where we looked

    • 1Your documentsLease, demand, correspondence
    • 2Primary law3 statutes, 1 judgment
    • 3Regulators and the recordNothing needed
    • 4Web searchOff for this question

    Authorities · 4

    • 1

      Law of Property Act 1925, s 146

      c 20
      not yet checked
    • 2

      Housing Act 1996, s 81

      c 52
      not yet checked
    • 3

      Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, s 168

      c 15
      not yet checked
    • 4

      Escalus Properties Ltd v Robinson

      [1996] QB 231 (CA)
      not yet checked

  3. Step 03 of 05

    Build the custodian list

    The complaint and the company's own organisation chart produce a first list of custodians and systems, with a second tier marked as likely rather than certain.

    Agents · Contract Agent · Employment Contract Compliance ReviewCompleted
    6 items need your confirmation14 authorities · Where we looked

    Senior Associate Employment Contract: English Law Review

    Summary

    1. 1.

      Clause 9(c), non-competeHigh

      The 12-month prohibition on working for any law firm anywhere in the UK, Ireland or EU, in any capacity, is almost certainly wider than reasonably necessary and therefore unlikely to be enforceable.

      Tillman v Egon Zehnder Ltd [2019] UKSC 32
    2. 2.

      Clause 11, data and monitoringHigh

      Blanket contractual consent is not an adequate basis for general employment processing, special-category data or unrestricted monitoring.

      UK GDPR, Arts 6 and 9
    3. 3.

      Clause 4, holiday carry-overHigh

      The unconditional five-day cap conflicts with mandatory carry-over rights where sickness, statutory leave or employer failure prevents leave being taken.

      Working Time Regulations 1998, regs 13 to 13A

  4. Step 04 of 05

    Draft the hold notice

    Prepare for: Standard, Deliver as: Word. The notice is written for recipients who are not lawyers, and includes an instruction for IT to suspend automatic deletion.

    Agents · Contract Agent · New runMatter: Northgate · senior associate hire

    Agent

    Jurisdiction

    Prepare for

    Deliver as

    Instruction

    What should the agent look for?

    Documents

    Drop a contract, or pick one from the matter

    Also on the matter

    • Offer_letter_v3.pdf2 pages
    • Staff_handbook_2025.docx61 pages
    • Board_minute_14_Aug.pdf3 pages
    Platform model · zero data retention · audit register on

  5. Step 05 of 05

    Send it to US counsel to check

    The action items name the questions for US counsel, and the memo carries its sourcing label into the Word download.

    Agents · Contract Agent · Employment Contract Compliance ReviewCompleted

    • Replace the UK/Ireland/EU non-compete with a 3 to 6 month restriction tied to competing corporate-law work.

    • Replace blanket data consent with a lawful-basis clause and a separate monitoring notice.

    • Remove the five-day carry-over cap and reference the statutory carry-over rules.

    • Narrow the client non-solicit to clients dealt with in the final 12 months.

    • Add an explicit working-time opt-out withdrawal mechanism.

    • Confirm the bonus clause states the discretion is exercised in good faith.

What comes back

A document, not a transcript.

  • A custodian and systems list in two tiers, with the reasoning behind the second tier written out.
  • A draft hold notice written for non-lawyers, including an instruction to suspend automatic deletion.
  • A scope note with Bluebook citations to the federal rules relied on.
  • Questions for US counsel, drafted so they can be sent without rewriting.

Authorities it checks

  • Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1)
  • Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(e)
Every source it may cite

What it does not do

  • Research for this jurisdiction runs at open-web quality with the same gates; the memo says so. Verified source lists cover the UK, Ireland, the EU and the ECHR today.
  • It does not issue the hold notice or apply any setting on a mail system.
  • It does not replace US counsel on the scope of preservation, and it names that as the first instruction to give.

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