An examination request and a litigation document request look similar and are not. One is answered from an archive that was supposed to be compliant all along, and the gap between supposed and actual is where the findings come from.

Broker-dealers and investment advisers live under records requirements that are continuous rather than event-driven. When an examination request or an enforcement subpoena arrives, the production is drawn from systems that were meant to be retaining correctly for years.

Whether they were is the first thing anybody finds out.

Why these productions behave differently

• The records are in purpose-built archives — communications surveillance, order management, CRM, trade reporting — not in mailboxes and file shares. Export is a project per system.
• Completeness is the exposure. A litigation production that misses documents is supplemented. An examination production that reveals a retention gap generates a separate finding about the gap.
• Off-channel communications are now routinely in scope, and they sit on personal devices and consumer messaging apps that no archive captured.
• The requests are enumerated and granular — specific record categories, specific periods, specific registered persons — so response tracking has to be at that granularity too.
• Everything has to reconcile across systems. The same trade appears in three places and the three have to agree.

Off-channel is the live problem

Communications that happened on personal phones, consumer messaging apps or ephemeral platforms were not captured by the firm’s archive. Producing them means collecting from individuals rather than from systems, and that is a forensic exercise with privacy, consent and employment dimensions on top of the technical ones.

It is also the area where a production is most likely to be incomplete in a way that is later discoverable. The documents exist on devices whether or not the firm collected them.

What we do with it

• Export and normalize from each archive and system of record, documenting what each system does and does not hold for the period
• Reconcile across systems so the same record agrees wherever it appears, and document every discrepancy
• Collect off-channel communications from devices forensically, with chain of custody and hash verification, under counsel’s direction on scope and consent
• Track responses against the request at the granularity the request uses — per category, per period, per registered person
• Produce to the regulator’s specification, including the SEC’s own data delivery standards where the Commission is the recipient
• Document retention gaps factually as they are found, so counsel decides how to characterize them rather than discovering them in a findings letter

Where we stop

We do not opine on whether a firm’s retention arrangements satisfied its obligations, and we do not advise on remediation of a compliance program. Those are counsel’s and the firm’s compliance function’s. We establish, defensibly, what the systems actually hold and produce it.

That division matters here more than usual, because the factual record about retention is itself contested territory.

What we do

Pro-Legal Services, Inc. supports broker-dealer records production from Arlington, Virginia — export and normalization from archives and systems of record, cross-system reconciliation, forensic collection of off-channel communications, response tracking at the request’s own granularity, and production to the regulator’s specification.

Small business, minority-owned, SAM registered. Minutes from the District.

Pro-Legal Services, Inc. supports registered firms and their counsel from Arlington, Virginia, minutes from the District of Columbia, and nationwide.

Examination request covering several years and several systems? Start with what each system actually holds for the period. Send us the request and the system list. Pro-Legal Services, Inc. · 1550 Wilson Blvd, Suite 250, Arlington, VA 22209 · 202-955-9400 · info@pro-legal.com