For most of us, email is simply a means of communicating work. It's a glorified, bi-directional to-do list with comments. Emails come in, we read, do and delete. Once the work is done, there's usually no need to find the email again. That's all very true except for when something goes wrong and your company gets taken to court. Suddenly then, all those deleted emails are very, very important. How Email Discovery could work under Litigation So, assuming that there's a legal case, such as a lawsuit, that involves your company. You could be asked to produce all the emails within a given period (say, six months) which include certain key phrases -- or perhaps all emails from a now-terminated employee. In the event that email cannot be produced, you could be fined or worse, you could lose the ability to defend your company in court. ...and it doesn't stop there, your company might not even be directly involved in the court case but could be dragged in as ...