Compose, review, and send preservation notices from the Notices subtab. A notice tells a custodian what to preserve, who to ask if they have questions, and how to acknowledge. Before anything goes out, you see the exact email custodians will receive. Hintyr sends it, reports who it reached, tracks delivery and engagement, and routes acknowledgments back into the case audit record.
What a preservation notice is
A preservation notice is a written instruction to a custodian that they must preserve potentially relevant materials. It names the matter, the categories of records to preserve, and a contact at the firm. Hintyr renders the notice for the custodian, captures their clickwrap acknowledgment, and stamps the audit record with the time and method.
The notice editor sends three notice types: an Initial notice when the hold first goes out, a Reminder when a custodian has not acknowledged, and a Scope amendment when the categories or date range change. Release notices go out from the Release sub-tab when you release the hold, as described in Releasing a hold and exporting evidence.
How to issue a notice
- Open the case, then open Case Settings and select the Legal hold tab.
- Select the Notices subtab and click Issue notice.
- Choose the notice type, fill in the matter description, pick the categories to preserve, and check the suspend auto-delete instruction.
- Pick the preservation contact from the case's members. It starts as you.
- Review the subject and body, then pick recipients. Every active custodian starts checked; clear the boxes you want to leave out.
- Click Review and send. Check the email preview, the subject, the contact, and the recipient list.
- Click Send, or Back to edit to change something first.
Form fields
Each control in the notice editor. Fields marked required must be filled before Review and send turns on. Notices are written and sent in English (US).
- Notice type (required) with values Initial, Reminder, and Scope amendment. Default is Initial. Switching types swaps in a typed template for the subject and body, but only when you have not edited them.
- Matter description (required) is a short paragraph the custodian reads near the top of the email. Keep it factual and plain. Avoid sharing privileged work product or your trigger basis narrative.
- Categories to preserve(at least one) is a chip list pre-filled from the hold's scope categories. Type a category and press Enter or click Add; click a chip's delete icon to remove it. Changes apply to this notice only, not to the hold.
- Suspend auto-delete instruction (required) is pre-filled with boilerplate that asks the custodian to stop auto-delete and auto-archive on their accounts. Edit it for firm voice or to add system-specific guidance.
- Preservation contact(required) picks the firm person custodians can ask about the hold. The list shows the case's members by name, with each email address underneath, and starts with you selected. The notice prints the contact as name and email. While the member list loads you stay selected, so you can keep working. If it fails to load, the helper text reads “Couldn't load case members. You can still send with yourself as the contact.”
- Subject(required) is pre-filled from the notice type's template.
- Body (required) is pre-filled from the template and fully editable. It appears under the greeting at the top of the email. The rest of the email (matter, categories, suspend instruction, acknowledgment button, and contact) is built from the fields above. Switching notice type after an edit keeps your text.
- Recipientsis a checkbox list of the hold's active custodians, shown as name and email. Every one starts checked; at least one must stay checked. A count next to the heading, such as “4 of 5 selected”, updates as you check and clear boxes. Released custodians do not appear and are not counted. If the hold has no active custodians, a warning reads “There are no active custodians on this hold.” and the notice can't be sent.
- Cancelcloses the editor. If you have made changes, Hintyr first asks “Discard unsent notice?” with Keep editing and Discard.
- Review and send opens the review step. Nothing is sent yet.
Review and send
The review step shows the email exactly as Hintyr will send it, rendered from what you entered. The preview is addressed to a sample custodian with a placeholder link; each custodian's copy carries their own name and their own acknowledgment link. Everything else in the preview is what they receive.
What the review step shows
- Email preview: the rendered notice. On a phone the review step fills the screen and the preview scrolls on its own.
- Subject: the subject line custodians see.
- Preservation contact: the contact you picked, as name and email.
- Recipient count, such as “4 recipients”, with Show list and Hide list to see each recipient's name and email.
- Back to edit returns to the editor with every field as you left it. Pressing Esc does the same.
- Sendsends the notice you just reviewed. It stays off until the preview has finished rendering (“Rendering preview”). While the notice goes out, the button reads “Sending” and every button is off.
After you send
When the notice goes out to every recipient, the dialog closes and the Notices list refreshes with the new notice at the top.
When some recipients were not reached, the dialog stays open and reports the outcome instead:
- “Sent to N of M.” How many recipients the notice reached, out of those you selected.
- “Not delivered”, followed by the name and email of each custodian the email could not be sent to, with “Send them a reminder after a minute, or fix their email in Custodians.” These custodians also show the Not deliveredstate in the notice's acknowledgment table.
- “Not sent yet: K” on a very large hold, where a send can stop before every custodian is reached. Click Send to remainingto send the same notice, unchanged, to only those custodians. You can send one notice per hold per minute, so the button first shows “Send to remaining available in N s” and turns on when the minute is up. The follow-up appears as its own entry in the Notices list.
- Done closes the dialog and refreshes the Notices list. Custodians still listed as not sent yet do not get this notice; issue a new notice with only them checked if you close before sending to the rest.
If a send fails
Errors appear in a banner at the top of the review step. The dialog stays open and every field is kept, so you can fix the problem and send again or go back to edit. The wording tells you whether anything went out: every message below except the last one means no email went out.
- Another notice went out in the last minute: “Another notice for this hold went out in the last minute. Nothing was sent. Try again in 42 seconds.” The number counts the seconds left before you can send.
- The hold is no longer active:“This hold is no longer issued, so notices can't be sent.”
- You are not a case admin:“Only case admins can send notices.”
- The contact can't be found:“The preservation contact could not be found. Pick another contact. Nothing was sent.”
- A field is not valid:“Check the subject field. Nothing was sent.” names the field to fix.
- Your session expired:“Your session has expired. Refresh the page to sign in again. Nothing was sent.”
- Any other refusal:“Couldn't send the notice. Nothing was sent. Try again.”
- The preview failed:“Couldn't load the preview. Nothing was sent. Try again.” Send stays off until a preview renders; go back to edit and open the review again.
- The outcome is unknown:“We couldn't confirm whether the notice went out. Check Notices before sending again.” The connection dropped or the send was interrupted, so some custodians may already have the notice. The Notices list refreshes on its own; expand the newest notice and check its recipients before sending again.
Not delivered in the acknowledgment table
Expand a notice in the Notices list to see one row per recipient. When the notice did not reach a custodian, the row shows a red Not delivered state instead of the usual states such as Sent, Engaged, or Acknowledged. Not delivered means one of these happened:
- the custodian's mail server rejected the address;
- the custodian reported the notice as spam;
- the email service blocked the address, for example because earlier email to it bounced or was reported as spam;
- the send failed.
A bounce or spam report can come back after the custodian's mail server first accepted the email. The row then changes from Delivered to Not delivered, and a later delivery confirmation never changes it back. If the custodian already opened the notice or acknowledged it, for example after you reached them another way, the row keeps showing how far they got: Engaged, Recognized, or Acknowledged. The hold's audit log records why each notice was not delivered.
To fix a Not delivered row, correct the email address in the Custodians subtab, then send a Reminder with only that custodian checked. If the address is right, for example because the custodian reported the notice as spam, reach them another way and record their acknowledgment offline. See Tracking acknowledgments for every state and how to record an offline acknowledgment.
Automatic reminders
Hintyr sends Reminder notices automatically to custodians who have not acknowledged. Each custodian gets one reminder at a time per hold, even after several notices (for example an Initial notice and a Scope amendment). A custodian who has not opened any of their notices gets a Reminder every 14 days. A custodian who opened one but has not acknowledged gets one on the hold's reminder cadence: 90 days by default, set on the hold and adjustable per custodian. Each interval counts from the most recent notice or reminder the custodian was sent, including a Reminder you send yourself. Reminders go only to custodians whose notice was sent, so a custodian marked Not delivered gets none until you fix their address and send them a notice; automatic reminders then continue from that notice. The same goes for a reminder that is not delivered, for example because it bounced: when the newest notice or reminder a custodian was sent on the hold was not delivered, automatic reminders to them stop until a newer notice or reminder to them goes out. Reminders also stop once the custodian acknowledges any notice on the hold, is released, or the hold is released.
Notice send rate
You can send one notice per hold per minute, so a double click or two admins working at once can't send the same notice twice. If another notice for the hold went out in the last minute, Send is turned down with a message that says how many seconds to wait, and nothing goes out. The same gap applies to Send to remaining, which is why that button shows a countdown.
Notice templates
Each notice type starts from its own subject and body. If your firm uses standard wording across matters, keep it in a shared place outside Hintyr and paste it into the Body field, then edit the matter description and categories for the current case.
Native template versioning is on the roadmap. Today, the template you see at compose time is whatever ships in the current notice type. The case record keeps the notice text that went out, without each custodian's name and personal acknowledgment link, so a future template change does not rewrite history.
Edge cases and limits
- Notices can only be issued while the hold is in the Active (Issued) state. On draft and released holds the Issue notice button is off and the subtab explains why.
- You can send a Reminder to a single custodian rather than the whole roster. Open the editor, pick the Reminder type, and check only the recipient who needs the nudge.
- On a phone, the editor and the review step fill the screen and the action buttons stay pinned to the bottom.
- A custodian who acknowledges from their phone gets the same clickwrap experience as on desktop. The notice page is mobile-friendly.
- Replies to the notice email are not added to the case record. Custodians reach the preservation contact through the name and email address printed in the notice.