Litigation has fundamentally changed in the past decade. Email is no longer the primary mode of business communication—it's been eclipsed by Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, and similar platforms. Yet many litigation teams still treat chat data as an afterthought in eDiscovery, missing critical evidence while creating compliance risks. Corporate chat platforms contain the most spontaneous, unfiltered business communications: strategy decisions, real-time problem-solving, off-hand comments that reveal intent, and informal discussions that never make it to email. A single Slack channel discussing a critical business decision can contain more relevant evidence than months of formal email chains. This shift has massive implications for eDiscovery strategy. Slack alone hosts over 800 million daily active messages, and Microsoft Teams has 280+ million monthly active users. For most litigation matters filed after 2018, corporate chat is now a primary ESI source—arguably more important than email. The challenge: extracting, processing, and reviewing chat data is dramatically more complex than email. Chat platforms use different data architectures, encryption protocols, retention policies, and export mechanisms. A single Slack workspace may have thousands of channels, with overlapping memberships and complex threading. Export quality varies wildly depending on the platform and method used. Courts increasingly recognize chat data relevance, and failure to properly preserve and produce chat is a growing source of sanctions. In Zito v. Allstate (N.D. Ill 2021), the defendant faced adverse inference sanctions for failing to preserve Slack messages. The lesson is clear: chat data requires dedicated strategy, proper preservation procedures, and specialized technical knowledge. This pillar provides everything litigation teams need to handle corporate chat in eDiscovery—from legal hold procedures through final production.
Related Articles
