Every year, it feels like corporate data invents a new way to complicate discovery. Legal teams barely finish adapting to one platform before another arrives with a fresh set of quirks. Cloud apps, collaboration tools, modern attachments, AI-generated content, and chat platforms are all different ways we work and communicate, yet traditional legal processes were built for a world of inboxes and shared drives.
The trouble is that these new data sources aren’t just new locations. They behave differently, evolve constantly, and are intertwined in ways that make old assumptions crumble. A simple Teams message might point to a live SharePoint file, which has comments inside the document, which reference a Jira ticket, which contains screenshots from a conversation that happened somewhere else entirely.
If your process was built for a world where most evidence was a .pst file and a printout from a shared drive, you’re already behind.
Build a Modern Map Before the Next Matter Hits
The biggest favor you can do for your team is to understand the full landscape of where work actually happens inside the company. Most organizations have some version of a data map, but many of them are missing half the systems that their teams are using.
Today your map needs to include the full M365 ecosystem, the collaboration tools used by engineering and product teams, the places where AI tools log their activity, and any messaging platforms, official or otherwise, that employees rely on to get work done.
A complete and current map helps you identify custodians, plan collections, and avoid last minute fire drills when someone casually mentions that all the key decisions were discussed in a tool that no one flagged at intake.
And it’s important to note that this doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be real.
Treat Legal Hold and Retention Like Living Processes
Once you know where the data is, the next challenge is preserving these systems that were not designed with litigation in mind. Dynamic platforms behave very differently from old file shares. Data can be edited, deleted, or replaced without warning, and user-controlled retention settings can undermine a legal hold without anyone realizing.
You need to rethink how holds and retention are handled. System level preservation is far more reliable than user-driven instructions. Hold notices should reference specific platforms and make clear what types of data must be protected. When preservation aligns with how the systems actually work, collection becomes more predictable.
Give Modern Attachments the Respect They Demand
Of course, once you start preserving data, you quickly run into the quirks of how that data behaves. Modern attachments are a perfect example. The cloud link disguised as an attachment looks harmless, until you realize the underlying file has changed since the message was sent.
Life can be easier for everyone if we treat modern attachments as their own evidence category. That means considering having point-in-time copies, version history, and permission context collected along with the link. When discovery protocols address these expectations upfront, your project managers can build workflows that capture the correct version the first time instead of chasing it down later.
Bring AI Activity Into the Discovery Conversation
As soon as you get a handle on cloud content, AI activity arrives to make things interesting again. AI tools are slipping into business operations everywhere. Prompts, outputs, and decision trails can matter in disputes, yet many organizations still treat AI activity as ephemeral or outside the scope of traditional processes.
You can get ahead of this by identifying which AI tools are in use, understanding where they store their logs, and treating those logs as potential business records. Clear retention and preservation guidance for AI activity helps project managers avoid recreating content after the fact, which is rarely possible and never ideal.
Preserve the Context or Lose the Story
Once data reaches processing and review, context becomes the piece that makes everything intelligible. Chat messages without threading, reactions, or edit history turn into isolated fragments that can’t be interpreted correctly. Collaboration platforms and cloud files pose similar risks when comments, versioning, or embedded discussions are lost.
You can help by selecting tools that preserve structure and by understanding that pulling a single message is not the same as capturing the entire conversation. When context stays intact, reviewers get a coherent narrative instead of a puzzle missing half of its pieces.
Futureproofing Means Better Partnerships Too
One final consideration to think about is that discovery becomes dramatically smoother when legal, IT, security, and business units collaborate early. New tools are often deployed long before anyone thinks about their discovery implications. By the time litigation hits, the data structures, retention settings, and export capabilities are already locked in.
Collaborating early allows you to evaluate systems while they are being adopted, not after they become evidence. Outside counsel benefits from this too. When they understand the platforms in play, they can scope matters accurately and design strategies that reflect real data complexity instead of assumptions rooted in email-centric workflows.
Designing for Change Starts with Accepting It
The most effective teams are not the ones trying to predict every new technology. They are the ones whose processes assume change is constant. Flexible workflows, modern retention practices, and tools that handle context-rich data allow for collections that make sense and reviews that are actually reviewable.
If modern data feels overwhelming, you’re not alone. The good news is that every step forward makes the next one easier. Start with visibility. Strengthen preservation. Embrace context. Build partnerships. And keep a sense of humor about it, because the data landscape will keep evolving whether you like it or not. The difference is that now you’re more ready for it.
Chris Scherer
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Chris Scherer is a Project Director at TCDI, where he oversees client services and eDiscovery engagements involving complex litigation and regulatory matters. Since joining TCDI in 2019, he has combined his background in law and project management to deliver efficient, defensible outcomes across pharmaceutical, finance, and contract-dispute projects.
Before joining TCDI, Chris practiced trademark and copyright law and later transitioned into eDiscovery, managing large-scale projects for major firms in New York City. He holds a J.D. from St. John’s University and is a certified Relativity RCA.
