No matter how we slice it (pun intended for fellow e-discovery folks), the ways we communicate both at work and at home have changed drastically over the last decade. What was once a 15-minute phone call after an hour of phone tag, is now a text message sent and received in a matter of seconds. Short message communication and collaboration is evolving rapidly and, although it enables us to be more efficient with our communication, it poses real challenges for e-discovery.

The seismic shift to communicating via chat and instant messaging applications conveniently allows us to communicate and share data or information much more rapidly than before and with even more brevity. Along with this shift comes implications for business use of chat platforms—think Slack, Microsoft Teams, Bloomberg, etc. Chat and direct messaging are integral parts of regular business operations with more and more conversations moving to these types of platforms.