Settings ▸ Matters ▸ Document Hold

This page documents Settings ▸ Matters ▸ Document Hold in the Athenty admin portal.

A document hold prevents a matter from ever being purged while the hold is active — it overrides both the retention policy and the manual two-admin purge workflow. A held matter does not become purge-eligible no matter how long ago it closed.

Renamed from “Litigation Hold”

This control was previously labelled Litigation Hold. Only the wording changed — the same hold applies to any reason a matter’s records must be preserved (litigation, an audit, a regulatory inquiry), which is why the label no longer names one of them. Route paths, API fields and database columns are unchanged.

Tabs

The page has two tabs.

Default tab

• Apply hold to new matters by default — when on, every newly created matter is automatically placed on hold at creation.
• Pending release requests — the inbox of hold-release requests raised by users outside the approver band, for an in-band approver to review.

Hold Releasers

Sets which role band may release a hold:

Band	Who may release
Owner only	Owners
Owner or Admin	Owners and Admins
Owner, Admin, or Manager	Owners, Admins, and the Matter Responsible

Users outside the selected band do not release directly — they submit a release request, which appears in the pending queue on the default tab for an in-band approver to action.

How a hold interacts with retention

Releasing a hold restores normal retention behaviour. A record whose retention window elapsed while the matter was held is not purged retroactively on release — it enters the purge-eligibility queue from that point, and still requires the two-admin request-and-approve workflow like any other eligible record.

See Retention Policy for the full interaction table.

Related pages

• Settings ▸ Retention Policy — the window a hold overrides
• Settings ▸ Audit Log — matter.hold_applied / matter.hold_released events
• Matters — per-matter hold controls

Stub. Full documentation for this settings area is in progress.