Source: https://legal-beagle.typepad.com/wrights_legal_beagle/2008/10/index.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 18:24:17+00:00

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The US legal system is giving all enterprises (whether public corporations, private LLCs or otherwise) reasons to be more liberal in their retention of records, especially e-mail. One reason is a change in obstruction of justice law.
The traditional obstruction of justice statute, 18 U.S.C. §1512(b), punishes anyone who corruptly persuades another person to destroy documents to impair their use in an official proceeding. Under that traditional statute, a criminal court convicted Arthur Andersen for destroying Enron-related papers and electronic records. The jury in Andersen’s trial said Andersen’s internal record management practices violated the statute.
But one month after Andersen’s jury trial, Congress adopted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). SOX modified obstruction of justice law by making it easier to convict people who destroy records. SOX included new 18 U.S.C. §1519, which now punishes anyone who destroys, conceals, or covers up any record to impede or influence a federal lawsuit or an investigation by any federal agency, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case.
Notice the differences between the traditional §1512(b) and new §1519. Under traditional §1512(b) a crime was committed only if the defendant "corruptly persuaded another person" to destroy documents. It might be hard for a prosecutor in a criminal trial to show corrupt persuasion of a second person. Further, the exact words of §1512(b) seem not to apply if the defendant directly destroyed documents. In new §1519, Congress omits the traditional “corruptly persuades another person” element. Further, new §1519 employs expansive language -- “in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case” – to stretch the law to cover destruction of records in any way connected to a specifically anticipated lawsuit or investigation.
Enterprises be aware. The effect of §1519 is powerful. To win an obstruction of justice conviction, the prosecutor does not have to work as hard as he or she did in the Andersen case. The prosecutor no longer has to show the defendant acted "corruptly" to "persuade" someone else to destroy documents. Now, it is enough for the prosecutor to simply show that the defendant intended to destroy records with federal litigation in mind.
Think about that statement from a record management perspective at a complex enterprise. The statement seems to imply that the enterprise must implement a litigation hold with respect to future (specifically-anticipated) lawsuits/investigations, even though they are not pending or imminent. For an enterprise, it is tough to know what is and is not anticipated somewhere out there in the future. But the risk is that later, after the lawsuit gets going, the court may judge the enterprise's decisions retrospectively, with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. The court may determine, "Oh, you could have seen this coming (even though it was not imminent), so you should have implemented a legal hold."
Given that it is now easier to be convicted for destroying records, the logical response for an enterprise is to keep more records longer . . . to give itself a wider margin for error.
SOX’s new contribution to obstruction of justice law should be viewed in the context of recent cases punishing premature destruction of electronic records. In that context, one sees a whole legal system that expects more lavish record retention than in the past.
Mr. Wright teaches cyber security and investigations law at the SANS Institute.
Reference: B. Wright, “Shredding Documents Post-Arthur Andersen: Reforming Corporate Record Retention Policies for the Information Age,” a paper published 2002.
Erase Government E-mail in 15 Days?
Many state government archivists publish record retention schedules for state agencies. Often these schedules (or statements related to them) address e-mail records. Many of the 50 official state schedules for e-mail retention are collected at this LINK. If you study all these schedules, you will hear many conflicting ideas.
Let's look at one schedule, picked at random – North Dakota’s General Records Retention Schedule dated 9/3/2008.
the retention period should be covered by an existing record series."
Whoa. That language might easily be interpreted to require really fast destruction as the default. That default would be subject to someone making a decision that an important e-mail is in fact important. If one were to interpret this Schedule to require quick deletion of most e-mail, that interpretation would seem hazardous under present trends in litigation. As I've argued elsewhere, the legal system is giving all enterprises, including state agencies, incentive to be generous in e-mail retention.
As the volume of e-mail, text and other e-messages soars, employees don't have time to "determine the record status" of all those messages. Further, the making of such determinations on a message-by-message basis can be a waste of government resources (employee time).
Thus, many of the e-mails to and from important agency officials could affect contracts or other important matters, even though they are not formally labeled "contracts" or "employment decisions."
Let's turn back to North Dakota’s Retention Schedule. At 300101 it says, "This series contains contracts, leases, agreements, and competitive solicitations entered into by the department. Includes all back-up and closeout materials. RETENTION: Retain in office for the life of the contract plus six years . . ."
Scads of informal-looking e-mails might qualify as contract "back-up materials." The process of judging whether a particular communication does or does not constitute contract "back-up material" is not easy. Reasonable, well-educated people can have different points of view on that topic. Further, many casual-sounding e-mails might be both contract "back-up material" and relevant to other long-term legal matters like employment. Any given e-mail might fit into multiple categories, each with a different retention period.
In addition, some employees go on vacation or sick leave. Should their e-mail still be deleted in 15 days? One might read the literal words of the Retention Schedule as requiring 15-day deletion, but that reading defies common sense.
At bottom, North Dakota's Retention Schedule is filled with conflicts and causes practical dilemmas. How should it be interpreted?
If I were a records professional at a North Dakota agency, I would be loath to delete the e-mails of important people in 15 days. In view of the contradictory guidance in the state’s Retention Schedule, I might reasonably interpret the Schedule as calling for generous retention of e-mail belonging to important administrators. A responsible interpretation might call for a seven-year retention period – subject to special effort to cull (screen) out really important records that must be kept longer.
If concerned about unnecessary storage of personal communications in the e-mails, administrators could take their personal communication to their personal smart phones and keep it out of the agency's computer systems.
Mr. Wright teaches e-discovery and e-records policy law at the SANS Institute.
The Sedona Conference's statements on e-records are indeed influential with judges (whether federal or state, whether Illinois or North Carolina) because they are thoughtfully conceived. In professional practice, the statements are most helpful when litigation is pending.
But how valuable are they to someone crafting an enterprise records policy before litigation? My humble view is The Sedona Guidelines: Best Practice Guidelines & Commentary for Managing Information & Records in the Electronic Age are not very helpful. The Guidelines are correct in everything they say. Still, they are vague, and they don't reflect a grasp of the big picture.
However, the Sedona Guidelines do not say anything as direct and insightful as "legal system is giving enterprises incentive to be more generous in the retention of records like e-mail."
The East Carolina University case study I posted recently provides a more practical road map for e-mail policy making than the Sedona Guidelines.
Mr. Wright teaches the law of electronic records and investigations at the SANS Institute.
Are Layoffs a Reason to Destroy Electronic Mail Records?
Departure (dismissal) of an employee does not justify destruction of his e-mail records stored on employer equipment. Those records are not the property of the employee or (normally in the U.S., with some qualifications) the vessel of his privacy. The records are an asset of the employer, showing what the employee did in his capacity as an employee and agent of the employer and how he was supervised.
In our changing economy, employers are learning how to get the same productivity with fewer people. As they let some employees go, the email records of those employees are part of the employer's valuable institutional memory.
A manager is wasting her time if she paws through a departing employee’s e-mail to decide what to keep and what to destroy (delete). It is better just to keep the e-mail, consistent with the retention and privacy practices generally applicable for all employees.
E-mail records memorialize intellectual property development by employees (such as an inventor or engineer), and they record when and under what conditions trade secrets are shared with business partners. In intellectual property (IP) disputes, proving the time and date that particular events transpired is essential. The beauty of email records is that every message is stamped with time and date.
Today, e-mail records are critical to many investigations and disputes; they are even critical under search warrants, where law enforcement seizes records under court supervision. In Jane Doe v. Norwalk Community College (a sexual harassment case), the court sanctioned a college for destroying electronic records of a suspect teacher after he left the college. The same could happen to any educational institution (public or private . . . higher, secondary, primary, K-12).
E-mail records show what commitments employees did and did not make on behalf of the employer. In Cloud Corp. v. Hasbro, 314 F.3d 289 (7th Cir. 2002), employee e-mail effectively modified a paper-written contract that said it could not be modified except by a “signed writing”. E-mail can be a legally-binding “signed writing” that memorializes the employer’s rights and responsibilities under contracts.
E-mail records showing day-to-day education and supervision of employees are consistent with the expectations of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. The Sentencing Guidelines are the framework within which federal judges select penalties for convicted criminals. If a criminal happens to be an enterprise, the Guidelines call for leniency where the enterprise had taken steps to prevent and mitigate crime by employees. In other words, bad employees might go to jail, but their not-so-bad employer might avoid stiff criminal penalties.
Under the Sentencing Guidelines, the steps the employer must take include establishing and promoting an employee ethics program and then monitoring and disciplining employee conduct. To show that an employer did this, electronic mail records (ESI) can be key evidence. They can document regular education, supervision and discipline of employees.
Update: The Federal Sentencing Guidelines are proposed to be amended so as to place more emphasis on complete record retention.
So precisely how long should employers keep email records? There is no one-size-fits-all answer. I have led in-house workshops to address this question at numerous, diverse enterprises. The outcome of these workshops has varied, depending on many factors, including corporate culture.
In my experience, the best email retention policy is one that is developed by collaboration of the various stakeholder departments in the enterprise (legal, IT, HR, operations et al.). Normally, these different stakeholders start with different positions on what the policy should say. But, in my experience, after the stakeholders have talked through the issues, they tend to compromise their positions and coalesce into a policy that is unique to the enterprise.
Mr. Wright is senior instructor for the SANS Institute, where he delivers professional training on the law of e-discovery, e-records management and internal investigations.
P.S. Employers may believe that by deleting email they are preventing a future eDiscovery adversary from conducting a so-called fishing expedition through the records. However, I argue that the advantages of generous record retention outweigh the risk of a fishing expedition.

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