[ArnoVW]

In a lot of big coporat-ey places, there is a very restrictive retention policy due to legal reasons.

If your stated IT policy is that "all mail is automatically deleted after 3 months" then that reduces your risk to discovery procedures. And since it is a published, global policy, you cannot be held in contempt of court of prosecuted for destruction of evidence.

[freejazz]

I actually have a very hard time believing that a court is going to find that a company that only retains emails for three months isn't doing something like engaging in spoliation.