Slack headquarters, 500 Howards Street in San Francisco. Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM

Slack recently introduced a new tool, Slack Connect, that allows as many as 20 different organizations or entities to work together across the same channel. According to the company's website, the channel-based messaging system was "designed to replace email." But are corporate legal departments and their organizations ready for such a shift?

If not properly managed, communications channels that exist outside of the more familiar boundaries of email can bring headaches to a business grappling to comply with various obligations related to privacy, information security and e-discovery. However, legal departments spurred on by pandemic-induced remote working and the increasing prevalence of such tools may already be adequately prepared to handle those challenges.

Susanna McDonald, vice president and chief legal officer of the Association of Corporate Counsel, indicated that companies that have not already established protocols around the use of personal devices or external communications platforms may be taking a closer look post-COVID-19.

"Companies that did not have [Bring Your Own Device] or Technology Use policies for people working from home are definitely adopting them," McDonald said over email. "Those that did have such policies are changing them to respond to the new realities of working from home and the need to collaborate both internally and externally."

To be sure, the prevalence of collaboration platforms inside companies or corporate legal departments is nothing new—especially in places where secure business solutions are not provided. But there may be other practical benefits to those channels that are pushing companies away from email.

Christopher Ballod, a partner at Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, noted that most internal communications are not things that need to be retained forever and that the easiest data to protect is the kind that no longer exists. Email can become a repository where information sits forever and can eventually become a liability to an organization down the road.

"I've seen that in a litigation context for years now, countless times where a simple internal email is taken out of context and framed as a smoking gun when in fact it's just a quick little communication trying to ask somebody a question who has full context and knows exactly what they are asking," Ballod said.

However, companies that don't take an organized or purposeful approach to platforms like Slack also risk information being scattered haphazardly across a variety of unknown or difficult to access sources, which can become a problem in the event of e-discovery. Mary Mack, CEO and chief legal technologist at EDRM, referenced the existence of "shadow IT departments"— segments of an organization that were implementing external communications channels without informing the company at large.

This practices lends itself to a situation where information is inadvertently displaced. But now Mack thinks that businesses could be on the cusp of an evolution. She anticipates companies using platforms like Slack Connect to partner with one another will first hammer out formal agreements that assign responsibility for key tasks like the protection of personal data.

"This is a level of maturity, to have formal agreements with companies to collaborate. To create a formal collaboration space as opposed to individual corporate employees deciding to get an outpost," Mack said.