If you listen to lawyers talk about it, corporations have every right to establish document retention policies, including the destruction of documents, in the normal course of business. In my interview with Judge John Facciola of the DC Circuit he was clear about this, while pointing out that a document hold over pending litigation changes matters of course. But such policies may be more trouble than they're worth. As David Ferris of Ferris Research argues, the very small, and diminishing cost of storage makes it a tough choice to try to enforce such policies. It's easier and maybe even cheaper to get a policy of retaining everything right than to get your own retention policies right, and to implement them consistently. He actually predicts that most organizations will abandon retention policies. (The blog then inexplicably ends with three bulleted reasons not to abandon them.)