Employee Legal-Hold and Records Recovery Leader

The mandate

Current litigation exposed a gap between legal-hold notices and the employee records actually preserved across email, collaboration platforms, research systems, local drives and managed devices. Some departed custodians lost access before collection was confirmed, while broad holds remain active years after matters narrowed. HR knows employment events, legal knows matter scope and technology knows repositories, but no executive owns the chain between them. The information-governance leader left during court-directed discovery, making rapid control recovery necessary.

Within twenty days, the leader must establish a matter-and-custodian census, identify imminent deletion or exit risks and confirm preservation of priority sources through accountable technology owners. By day fifty, every active hold needs matter authority, custodian rationale, repository coverage, acknowledgement, collection status, privacy and works-council dependency, and release condition. The first ninety-day window must remediate high-risk gaps and retire unsupported over-preservation without destroying evidence or taking legal judgements outside counsel.

Decision rights include directing employment-event alerts, assigning preservation owners, stopping scheduled deletion for authorised matters, requiring custodian escalation and accepting operational control evidence. The interim may block device disposition until legal and technology owners confirm status. Litigation scope, privilege, collection legal basis, disclosure, regulator notification, employee discipline and final release authority remain with counsel, privacy officers, courts and designated corporate decision-makers.

The assignment must leave a permanent people-information interface. The leader will appoint or prepare the records-governance owner, create hold triggers for hire, transfer, leave and exit, and observe the successor manage one new hold, one custodian departure and one authorised release. Handover will include unresolved source gaps, former-employee outreach, cross-border restrictions, vendor collections, works-council agreements, deletion exceptions and named legal authorities for each matter.

The remit excludes legal advice, relevance review, privilege determination, forensic collection, covert employee monitoring, evidence production and unilateral hold release. The leader cannot broaden preservation merely for convenience, access employee content without approved necessity or allow routine offboarding to defeat a legal instruction. Counsel, privacy, forensics, technology owners, works councils and courts retain their established roles.

Why this seat is open

The leadership exit occurred while active discovery and employee departures were exposing control gaps that ordinary policy work cannot defer. Legal, HR and technology each operate valid processes, but failure happens at their handoffs. A temporary executive can secure priority evidence, narrow unnecessary retention and install permanent ownership without deciding what litigation requires.

What you will own

• Build the matter-and-custodian census with authority, scope rationale, repositories, status, risks, restrictions and release conditions.
• Prioritise employees and data sources facing deletion, device return, transfer, long leave, vendor expiry or jurisdictional barrier.
• Establish hold triggers and handoffs across hiring, role change, investigation, leave, transfer and termination events.
• Verify preservation through source-specific evidence while separating operational confirmation from forensic or legal conclusions.
• Govern notices, acknowledgements, reminders, escalations, collections, source additions and authorised release documentation.
• Coordinate privacy, works-council, technology, security, counsel and vendor dependencies without widening access unnecessarily.
• Transfer the control calendar, matter register, source map, exception backlog and observed hold lifecycle to permanent ownership.

Candidate qualifications

• Has led employee legal-hold or information-governance recovery during active litigation, investigation or regulatory production.
• Understands custodians, collaboration data, devices, research systems, preservation, collection, release and offboarding failure modes.
• Can operationalise counsel instructions while preserving privilege, privacy, works-council and proportional-access boundaries.
• Has remediated departed-custodian and cross-border source gaps without directing unauthorised forensic activity.
• Brings executive coordination across HR, litigation, privacy, technology, security, records and external discovery providers.
• Has transferred a live legal-hold control environment through new, departure and release events led by a successor.

Non-negotiables

• Can work onsite in Frankfurt and attend monthly custodian plus works-council evidence sessions.
• Brings direct legal-hold operations; general HR records or document-management experience alone is insufficient.
• Will not access unnecessary content, decide legal scope, release holds independently or destroy disputed evidence.
• Has no undisclosed interest in discovery vendors, forensic providers, outside counsel or involved technology suppliers.

1. 49 words maximum. Which employee event creates the highest immediate risk to an active legal hold?
2. 49 words maximum. How would you verify preservation without assuming forensic or legal authority?
3. 49 words maximum. What must a successor demonstrate during an authorised hold release?