As a practicing lawyer, my clients were all well aware of the infamous “Pitt’s Postulate”: Whenever you think you’ve destroyed the last copy of any document, there’s always one more that exists, and it will surface at exactly the most inopportune time. The only exception, of course, is if you really need the document, at which point you’ll discover that you actually did destroy the very last copy.
As we’ve moved from hard-copy to digital documentation, the complexities of record keeping have increased exponentially. And prosecutors as well as judges have made it clear that the failure to maintain or produce ...