Weekly legal hold notices and acknowledgment tracking

Every Monday at 8am, check that every person whose data is under legal hold in Google Vault has actually received a preservation notice and acknowledged it. The point of this workflow is the paper trail that proves notice was given, so dated, accurate records matter more than speed.

Start in Google Vault. Use List Matters and keep only matters in an open state, skipping anything closed or deleted. For each open matter, use List Holds to get its holds, then List Hold Accounts on each hold to collect the accounts whose data is being preserved. Combine these into a current custodian list per matter, de-duplicating anyone who appears in more than one hold on the same matter.

Read my acknowledgment tracking sheet in Google Sheets with Get Values. This sheet is the acknowledgment ledger. It holds one row per custodian per matter, with columns for custodian email, matter name, notice date and acknowledgment date. If the sheet is empty apart from its header row, treat every custodian as not yet notified.

For any custodian on an open matter with no notice on record, send a legal hold notice with Gmail Send a Message. Name the matter, explain in plain language that they have a duty to preserve their email, their Drive files and their chat messages relating to it, tell them not to delete or edit anything, and ask them to reply to the message to confirm they have read and understood it. Keep the subject line consistent and include the matter name in it, so replies can be found reliably later.

For anyone notified more than seven days ago with no acknowledgment logged, first use Gmail List Messages with a search query scoped to that custodian and the notice subject line to look for a reply. If a reply exists, treat them as acknowledged and record the date of that reply. If there is no reply, send an escalating reminder that restates the duty to preserve and notes the date of the original notice.

Log every notice sent and every acknowledgment detected back to the sheet with Append Values, capturing custodian, matter name, notice date and acknowledgment date, so there is a defensible paper trail an auditor or opposing counsel can inspect.

Apply these rules strictly. Never send a repeat notice to someone whose acknowledgment is already logged. Skip closed matters entirely. Reply detection is best effort, so if you are unsure whether a message is a genuine confirmation rather than an out of office or an unrelated thread, leave the person unacknowledged instead of recording a confirmation that did not happen.

Finally, email a short summary to the legal owner with Gmail Send a Message, listing anyone still unacknowledged 14 days after their first notice, grouped by matter, along with how many notices and acknowledgments were recorded this run. Frame this summary as a prompt for a human to chase the outstanding people, not as legal advice.