Well that’s kind of the whole thing with discovery - the court is asking the company to disclose relevant information (some of which will be against the company). Companies here have different disclosure requirements to an ordinary individual.
And if new evidence is being created, that new evidence would be subject to the same data request.
> I don't see how the users of the chat application can be expected to be aware of the implementation or proactively find ways for these private conversations to be recorded.
Most corporate messaging apps have built in functionality to handle litigation holds. This is a requirement for legal compliance, so the company would have to train and brief employees on their legal responsibilities to not destroy evidence during the litigation.
See: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/e... or https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/help/articles/4401830811795-Cre... or https://support.google.com/vault/answer/7657594?hl=en
Which conversations are subject to legal hold would be discussed in court.
Are you literally appointed by the Pope? Part of the process of canonisation?
The company must educate its employees because the company has obligations. A limited-liability corporation is a legal fiction granted extraordinary protections by a society. That corporation had damned well better be a good citizen of that society. If that means erring on the side of caution? Good.
An analogous real-world situation would be a meeting in a room where someone uses the whiteboard to draw some diagrams and erases it at the end. If we apply the same logic, you would be under obligation to take pictures of the whiteboard and send them to the court? Or even that you should record the whole meeting? Something just doesn't feel right with the idea that you can be under obligation to help make a case against yourself in a legal proceeding.