Litigation Hold — Preserve emails for legal cases

January 15, 2026• 9 min readlitigation-holdlegal-holdmail-journalingcompliancee-discoveryfreeze-deletions

Learn how litigation hold and freeze-deletions in Creodata's Mail Journaling solution preserve critical email evidence for legal cases and regulatory investigations.

Litigation Hold — Preserve Emails for Legal Cases

Introduction

In today's digital-first business environment, email remains a critical communication channel. However, that same importance means email content often becomes key evidence in investigations, audits or lawsuits. When litigation looms, organizations must shift from ordinary data retention practices to a preservation mindset. This is where the concept of a litigation hold (also called legal hold) and the underlying ability to freeze deletions come into play: ensuring that relevant emails are preserved exactly as they were, untouched and available for retrieval.

Use Case: Litigation Hold — Preserve emails for legal cases

When an organization anticipates litigation, an internal investigation or regulatory scrutiny, it must preserve electronically stored information (ESI) that could be relevant. A litigation hold is placed to suspend normal deletion or modification of that data, so that communications like emails are intact, searchable and defensible.

The "freeze deletions" feature means that once a hold is in place, items cannot be purged either by users or by automatic deletion/archiving processes. According to Microsoft documentation, when you put a mailbox on litigation hold (or in-place hold) you preserve mailbox items "deleted by users or automatic processes such as MRM".

In this scenario:

The retention policy or journaling system must detect relevant email content
The freeze deletions function suspends deletion of those items (even if a user tries to delete)
The archived/stored content remains unaltered (metadata preserved)
The legal team or compliance team gains ability to search, review and export the emails as evidence

By utilizing the journaling service from CreoData, organizations can deploy rapid email capture, archive to Azure for secure storage, apply retention and legal-hold features, and ensure the communications relevant for litigation are retained and searchable. According to their website, the Mail Journaling SaaS offers "Advanced Search and Retrieval", "Flexible Retention Policies", and includes a "Legal Hold" feature.

This use case addresses a critical intersection of retention policies and legal requirements: instead of simply retaining communications for business-continuity, the goal becomes legal defensibility and compliance.

How the freeze-deletions feature supports Litigation Hold

Here are some of the functional mechanisms and benefits of freeze-deletions in the litigation-hold context:

1. Prevents spoliation of evidence

One of the biggest risks in legal proceedings is evidence spoliation — the deletion or alteration of relevant data. By freezing deletions, organizations ensure emails remain intact, preserving the chain of custody and metadata.

2. Maintains original versions of emails

Even if a user deletes or modifies an email, freeze-deletions preserve the original version for forensic review and e-discovery.

3. Transparent to users, minimal disruption

Litigation-hold mechanisms work silently — users continue their normal activities, while deleted or modified content is still captured and preserved. The process supports legal needs without interrupting user behavior.

4. Integrates with retention policies/archiving

Freeze-deletions override deletion only for data under hold; normal retention and deletion cycles continue for other items. CreoData's Mail Journaling platform supports "Flexible Retention Policies" with customizable deletion rules.

5. Searchability and retrieval for legal/case teams

Preserved emails remain accessible for review, investigation, and export. Freeze-deletions ensure data is locked down while CreoData's "Advanced Search and Retrieval" enables efficient access.

In short: Without freeze-deletions, emails could be lost or overwritten; with it, organizations preserve critical evidence in a defensible archive.

How the solution from CreoData fits

Exploring the offering from CreoData (Mail Journaling SaaS) gives insight into how organizations can operationalize this use case:

Seamless capture and archiving: The service "automatically archive emails across their Microsoft 365 environment", hosted entirely on Microsoft Azure
Retention policies & deletion controls: CreoData offers "Flexible Retention Policies" and allows you to "Define your own archival duration and deletion policies for full compliance"
Legal Hold / e-Discovery readiness: The product page lists "Legal Hold" as one of the core features
Security & compliance built-in: Hosted on Azure, SOC 2 & GDPR compliant, encryption in transit and at rest, and Microsoft partner certified
Rapid deployment: Setup via the Azure Marketplace within minutes, minimal configuration required

By using CreoData's platform, organizations can implement the freeze-deletions capability (via journaling and legal hold) as part of a broader archive and retention strategy, thereby aligning email management with litigation readiness.

Advantages

Implementing freeze-deletions within litigation-hold and retention-policy strategy brings several advantages:

1. Legal risk reduction

Holding relevant emails securely reduces the risk of sanctions, adverse inferences or lost evidence in legal or regulatory proceedings. As one source notes, failing to preserve relevant information can lead to "serious legal and financial consequences".

2. Compliance and audit readiness

Many industries are subject to regulatory retention requirements (e.g., financial services, healthcare). The freeze-deletions capability enhances an organization's overall governance posture by ensuring evidence is preserved when needed.

3. Operational continuity + minimal disruption

Users can carry on working, while the journaling and retention/hold systems run in the background. The freeze-deletions layer is largely invisible to end users yet highly impactful for legal/compliance teams.

4. Improved e-discovery efficiency

By capturing and preserving emails at scale (e.g., via CreoData's journaling service) with search and retrieval capabilities, legal teams can respond faster to requests, reducing time and cost of discovery. On the product page, customers cite reduced audit preparation time by 70%.

5. Better retention-rule segregation

With freeze-deletions, the system can differentiate between "normal business retention/deletion" versus "hold required by litigation". This means retention policies remain efficient, and only the items subject to hold are preserved beyond the usual cycle.

6. Immutable and defensible evidence

Freeze-deletions ensure that the preserved items are kept in their original state (content and metadata) and cannot be accidentally or maliciously deleted. This strengthens the organization's defensibility in court.

Target Audience

Which stakeholders or organizational roles should care about freeze-deletions within a litigation-hold scenario? Here are the primary target audiences:

Legal & Compliance Teams

These professionals need assurance that relevant communications are preserved for investigations, lawsuits or regulatory scrutiny. They will value a system that supports legal hold, search, export and audit trails.

Records Management / Information Governance Officers

Responsible for defining retention policies, deletion schedules and archive strategies. Freeze-deletions capability allows them to overlay exceptional holds on top of standard retention cycles.

IT Administrators / Email Infrastructure Teams

Charged with implementing journaling, archive and retention technologies. They need solutions that integrate seamlessly with existing mail systems (e.g., Microsoft 365), are minimally disruptive, and easy to configure. CreoData emphasizes "Deep Microsoft 365 Integration" in its solution.

Risk Managers / Corporate Security

They are interested in reducing exposure from lost or mismanaged communications, preserving evidence chains, and ensuring data integrity and availability.

Organizations subject to regulatory oversight or litigation-prone environments

Industries such as financial services, healthcare, legal services, energy, utilities and public sector often face higher risk of legal/regulatory action and need robust retention + hold strategies.

SMBs through large enterprises moving to cloud or hybrid mail systems

Even smaller firms may face litigation risk and will benefit from cloud-based, rapid-deployment solutions like the one from CreoData ("5-minute setup" per the product page).

Conclusion

The freeze-deletions feature, when embedded within a broader retention-policy and legal-hold framework, is a vital safeguard for organizations facing litigation or regulatory investigation. The use-case titled Litigation Hold — Preserve emails for legal cases underscores the need to stop deletions, preserve original versions of email content, maintain auditability and support e-discovery.

The offering from CreoData's Mail Journaling service aligns strongly with these needs: automatic email capture across Microsoft 365, flexible retention and deletion controls, legal-hold capability, search and retrieval, and enterprise-grade compliance and security built on Azure. For legal, compliance, records-management, IT and risk functions, this presents a practical way to operationalize email preservation.

For any organization that uses email as a business communication channel — especially where litigation risk is real — implementing freeze-deletions (via legal hold) is not just a best practice, but a critical element of information governance.

For more information, visit Creodata.com