Build the custodian roster on a hold by adding people one at a time or importing a CSV. Each custodian record captures identity, role, employment status, the attorney's key-player rationale, and any tags or per-custodian overrides. When a custodian leaves the firm, switching their employment status opens a departing-employee checklist for the preservation handoff.
Who belongs on the roster
Zubulake v. UBS Warburg V and Sedona Conference Guideline 6 use the same idea: the firm identifies the people whose documents are most likely to be relevant to a matter (the key players) and documents why. Hintyr enforces this by making the Key player rationalefield required on every custodian record. Write it the same way you'd write it in an internal memo; it's the firm's record, not the custodian's.
Custodians can be active employees, employees on leave, departing employees, or former employees you still need preservation commitments from. Each case is on its own roster; adding a person to one case doesn't add them to another. Cross-hold matches surface as informational notes during CSV import so the firm sees when one person sits on multiple holds.
How to add a custodian
- Open the Custodians subtab. From the Legal Hold panel, click Custodians. Click Add custodian.
- Fill the identity fields. Name and email are required. Alternate email is useful for departing custodians who may not have access to their work mailbox by the time the notice goes out.
- Set role, department, manager. Manager name is used by the escalation ladder when a custodian misses the acknowledgment window. None of these are required, but they make escalation less manual.
- Pick employment status and write the rationale. Active, On leave, or Departed. The key-player rationale is required and goes into the audit log verbatim. Click Add custodian.
Importing custodians from CSV
For larger rosters, use CSV import. The expected columns are full_name, email, role_title, department, employment_status, and key_player_rationale. A header row is required. The import has three steps: upload (or paste the CSV body), review (a first-three-rows preview, per-row errors, dedupe matches, and any cross-hold matches as informational), and commit.
The Dedupe by emailtoggle is on by default. With it on, rows whose email already exists on this hold are skipped and listed under "Skipped (already on this hold)" in the review step. Turn it off only when you need to insert a duplicate intentionally (rare; usually only when the same email is being re-added after a release).
Departing custodian protocol
When you change a custodian's employment status from Active to On leave or Departed, Hintyr opens the departing-employee checklist automatically. The four items track the preservation handoff steps you'd otherwise track in a spreadsheet:
- Forward mailbox to manager and confirm forwarding is live.
- Transfer shared file and workspace access to the successor.
- Complete the preservation questionnaire (channels, devices, cloud accounts).
- Return company-issued devices and record serial numbers.
Check what's done. Add notes in the free-text field. The checklist state is saved to the custodian record so it shows up in the audit log. Changing employment status does not release the custodian from the hold; the custodian stays on the roster and on the notice list. Use the row action menu's Release custodianwhen the firm has confirmed there are no relevant materials in custody or the person is genuinely outside the matter's scope.
Options and fields
Identity
- Full name (required).
- Email (required) - Primary work address. Used as the dedupe key inside a single hold.
- Alternate email (optional) - Useful for departing custodians who may lose access to the work mailbox.
- Role / title (optional).
- Department (optional).
- Manager name (optional) - Used by the escalation ladder when a custodian misses the acknowledgment window.
Employment status
- Active (default) - Standard case; normal reminder cadence applies.
- On leave - The custodian is temporarily unavailable. Hintyr keeps sending notices but flags the status on the roster.
- Departed - The custodian is no longer with the firm. Switching to this status opens the departing-employee checklist.
Key-player rationale
Required. The attorney-authored sentence that explains why this person's records are likely to be relevant. Sample: "Robin was the project lead on the Smith account during the relevant period; primary owner of contract negotiations and the main point of contact with the customer." Treat this as the firm's record under Sedona Guideline 6. It goes into the audit log verbatim.
Tags and per-custodian overrides
- Custodian tags (optional) - Free-text tag chips. Useful for grouping by function (operations, engineering) or workflow state (departed, escalated). Tags appear in the roster and can be used to filter the notice recipient list when composing.
- Override hold scope for this custodian (optional, off by default) - When off, the custodian inherits the hold's scope summary and categories. Turn it on only when this custodian's materials sit in a different category space than the rest of the roster (e.g. one source-code engineer on a hold otherwise scoped to email).
- Reminder cadence override (days) (optional, blank inherits) - Per-custodian reminder cadence. Most rosters run on the hold-level default. Override only when one custodian needs a different rhythm (e.g. 30 days for an escalated non-responder).
CSV format
Header row required. Columns: full_name, email, role_title, department, employment_status, key_player_rationale. Use active, leave, or terminated as the value for employment_status (the import label maps to the display label On leave / Departed). Optional columns: alternate_email, manager_name, custodian_tags (pipe-separated: operations|contract-lead).