Taming Modern Data Challenges: Enterprise Solutions and Collaboration Apps

In our last post, we discussed the challenges organizations face regarding the possession, custody, and control  of mobile devices and referenced our prior series dedicated to mobile device discovery (all posts of which are referenced in our final post in the series here.

The last decade has not only seen an explosion of the use of mobile devices, but it has also seen an explosion in the adoption of enterprise collaboration platforms such as Microsoft 365, Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), Slack, and Microsoft Teams. Originally designed to improve productivity, facilitate real-time communication, and support remote and hybrid work, these platforms have become the digital nerve center of modern business operations and communications.

While these tools have transformed workplace efficiency and connectivity, they have also introduced significant challenges for legal teams tasked with eDiscovery and compliance. Traditional discovery workflows based on email and static documents are no longer sufficient to support these newer types and forms of critical business data, such as chat messages, collaborative documents, video meetings, and cloud drives. In this post, we will explore how the rise of enterprise collaboration platforms is reshaping the eDiscovery landscape, the core challenges presented by these platforms, and the strategic approaches legal teams must take to adapt.

The New Digital Workplace in the Cloud

On-premises servers and local shared drives are no longer the primary sources of ESI for discovery. Enterprises today operate in a data ecosystem that is increasingly cloud-based and is more complex and dynamic than ever before. Here are some of the most popular examples of enterprise solutions today:

• Microsoft 365: Integrates email (Outlook), cloud storage (OneDrive, SharePoint), chat (Teams), and collaborative editing (Word, Excel, PowerPoint Online), all designed to be tightly interwoven.
• Google Workspace: Provides Gmail, Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Meet — all cloud-native and optimized for real-time collaboration.
• Slack and Microsoft Teams: Serve as central communication hubs, with persistent chat, file sharing, voice/video calls, and third-party integrations.
• Other Collaborations Platforms: Zoom, Asana, Trello, Box, Dropbox, and Jira are other examples of commonly used platforms in enterprise environments, with new platforms being introduced all the time.

These tools don’t just supplement email – in many cases, they replace it. Business decisions, deal terms, and compliance-sensitive discussions now occur across an ever-shifting matrix of chat threads, shared documents, task cards, and video calls. As a result, potentially responsive information is more distributed, ephemeral, and context-dependent than ever before.

Challenges for Legal Teams with Enterprise Solutions

While the move to cloud-based enterprise solutions and collaboration apps may be great for information governance within an organization, it creates several practical and procedural challenges for legal teams trying to manage data from these platforms in discovery:

Data Fragmentation Across Platforms

Each collaboration tool stores data in its own proprietary format and infrastructure, often spread across cloud regions or subject to different retention policies. Email once served as a central repository of record; now, data is decentralized, siloed, and sometimes duplicated or versioned across multiple tools.

This means that legal teams must identify, collect, and preserve not only documents, but also chat logs, reactions, inline comments, whiteboard sessions, meeting transcripts, and shared links – all from different tools and potentially different custodians.

Contextual Complexity

A Slack message on its own may seem insignificant, but in the context of a longer thread, emoji reactions, or a linked document under discussion, it may take on new legal meaning. Similarly, collaborative edits on a Google Doc may show changes in tone or intent over time — but only if version history is preserved and reviewable.

This dynamic data paradigm contrasts sharply with the snapshot of data focus of discovery from traditional sources. Legal professionals must consider the entire collaboration context – not just isolated artifacts. It can sometimes seem like piecing a puzzle back together.

Ephemeral and Short-Lived Data

Modern collaboration platforms support features like disappearing messages, ephemeral chat history, user-deleted content, and transient call metadata. Unless legal holds are applied swiftly and comprehensively, critical data may be lost before collection.

Additionally, many platforms allow users to edit or delete content after it’s been posted. Without robust audit logs or retention strategies, the integrity of the record is at risk.

Collection and Export Limitations

Even when IT or legal teams identify relevant sources, technical challenges persist. Many platforms don’t offer robust native tools for legal hold, targeted search, or export in a format conducive to review. For example:

• Slack exports JSON files that are difficult to render in a user-friendly way.
• Microsoft Teams chats are stored as part of Exchange mailboxes, with messages and metadata scattered across folders.
• Google Workspace documents often need to be converted into PDFs or static Office formats, losing version history or comments.

Third-party collection tools may bridge the gap, but they add cost, complexity, and potential security risks.

Elusiveness of Relevant Data

Communications within collaboration tools are typically short, frequent bursts of communication rather than long-form messaging. This results in more data – but less immediately apparent relevance. A single conversation thread could span hundreds of lines of chat, interspersed with GIFs, emojis, and off-topic banter, hiding a single relevant statement.

This organization of data makes review more challenging, increases cost, and requires more sophisticated filtering and analysis techniques.

Taming the Challenges of Enterprise Solutions and Collaboration Apps

To tame these challenges, legal teams must evolve their eDiscovery strategy – not just react to the technology but proactively align with it. Here are some best practices:

Establish Partnerships Early

Build close relationships with IT, security, and information governance teams to understand what collaboration platforms are in use, how data is stored, what integrations exist, and what default retention and logging settings apply. Additionally, identify and retain one or more outside partners experienced in discovery from these newer data sources to shorten the learning curve. Waiting until you have a case involving these data sources to develop your discovery “game plan” for them is too late.

Establish and Enforce Retention Policies

Work with compliance and records management teams to ensure that collaboration data is subject to documented retention schedules – and that legal hold protocols cover platforms beyond email. It’s also important to consider leveraging native tools like Microsoft Purview, Google Vault, or Slack Enterprise Grid for compliance-grade archiving and preservation. The additional costs for platforms are often offset by reduced discovery costs downstream – not to mention peace of mind in knowing your data is safe!

Invest in Modern Discovery Tools

Legacy review platforms may not handle JSON chat exports, Slack threads, or nested Teams messages well. Look for review solutions that provide capabilities like:

• Rendering chat conversations in a near-native format
• Preserving conversation threading, metadata, and reactions
• Providing visual context for collaborative edits or shared links

eDiscovery platforms with APIs that integrate directly with these collaboration platforms are a “must have” today. Again, partnering with outside experts can help you cut through all the “sales speak” and identify the platform that’s best for your organization.

Train Review Teams for Contextual Review

Educate legal reviewers and contract attorneys on interpreting non-traditional data sources. Reviewing chat messages requires different skills than reviewing emails – including understanding shorthand, emojis, and cultural cues. You can also consider using AI-powered analytics to cluster communications, detect anomalies, and surface likely privileged or sensitive content.

Document Your Process

Given the volatility and complexity of these platforms, documenting your preservation, collection and review process is essential. Courts expect defensible workflows, especially when data is lost due to spoliation. Accidents can always happen, but the consequences are often less when you can demonstrate due diligence to manage the data in discovery.

Be prepared to explain what data was preserved and collected, how it was rendered, and how completeness and accuracy were ensured. Failure to do so in this case resulted in an adverse inference instruction sanction against the defendant for failing to preserve documents from Basecamp – a collaboration app that they used for maintaining job site safety information.

Conclusion

Enterprise collaboration platforms are here to stay – and so are the legal and technical challenges they bring to eDiscovery. Legal teams that proactively engage with their organization’s collaboration stack, modernize their discovery tools, and prepare to interpret fragmented, dynamic communications will be better equipped to manage risk, control costs, and respond quickly when litigation or investigations arise.

In our next post in the series, we will discuss defining a conversation in modern message formats, such as text and chat messages!

For more regarding Cimplifi eDiscovery, litigation, and investigations services, click here.