When a trial, product, etc. enters litigation, it may be necessary to preserve or audit any changes made to related documents. Users can apply a “legal hold” to documents by relating them to a Legal Hold object record. Admins can configure the Legal Hold object to define the scope of legal holds. Once Vault matches documents to a Legal Hold object record, Vault creates Legal Hold Item records as children of the Legal Hold, each Legal Hold Item representing a document matched with the Legal Hold.
How to Enable Legal Hold
From Admin > Settings > General Settings > Documents, select the Enable Legal Hold checkbox.
Adding Legal Hold Scope Fields
You can configure the custom Legal Hold object that Veeva provides by adding up to five (5) fields defining the scope of a legal hold. Users can then create Legal Hold object records and provide specific values for the scope fields. For example, adding a Product field enables the Legal User to easily apply a legal hold on all Cholecap documents at once.
Not all fields are valid as matching fields. You must use the following field types:
- Picklist
- Object reference
You can also use an object field that corresponds to a document lookup field. For example, a Legal Hold object could have an Indication field, pointing to the Indication object. A document type could have a lookup field, referencing the Indication field on the Product object. Doing a universal apply on a legal hold with the value Headache in the Indication field will match all documents with the Indication lookup field value of Headache.
The related document fields can be multi-value, but fields on the Legal Hold object must be single-value.
Scope fields affect the Vault’s application of legal holds. Users can still apply a legal hold to single documents outside of the scope or by using a bulk action.
Note: When adding a field to the Legal Hold object, ensure the value in the Name field matches that of a document field. For example, if you add a Product Family field to the Legal Hold object with the Name value product_family__c, the Product Family document field must include the same Name value.
Document Migration Mode
Vault cannot automatically apply legal holds to documents created or updated in Document Migration Mode. This could fill the job with potentially millions of documents. If you add documents matching the scope of an Approved legal hold using Document Migration Mode, Vault will not match those documents to the legal hold.
To match those documents with the Approved legal hold:
- Navigate to the legal hold object record, either through Business Admin > Objects or a custom tab.
- From the Actions menu, click Reevaluate Legal Hold.
- The Apply Action dialog opens. Click Continue.
- Vault performs an asynchronous job to apply the legal hold to any document that matches the legal hold scope and does not already have a legal hold applied.
- When the job completes, a notice will appear in your Notifications page and Vault will send you an email.
Related Permissions
The Legal Actions permission set grants all necessary permissions for legal hold administration.
| Type | Permission Label | Controls |
| Security Profile | Application: Legal User | Ability to read, create, edit, and delete records in the Legal Hold object. |
| Object | Legal Hold: Edit | Ability to edit the Legal Hold object, including adding and removing scoping fields. |