The US District Court for the Northern District of CA has just amended it's local rules relating to eDiscovery to include that the evidence preservation obligation includes suspension of "on-going erasures of e-mails, voice mails, and other electronically recorded information."
In my view the rule doesn't make sense because of (i) the inclusion of viocemails, and (ii) the decision to use the undefined phrase "electronically recorded information" rather than "electronically stored information" (ESI) which is clearly defined in the rules.
From a customer perspective, I'm not sure how I'd respond to this, since it is just one court system (no other court is going to do this to my knowledge), but it does appear to create a new requirement for companies sued in N CA to find a way to preserve voice mails.
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