Most Montana business owners never think about their phone records until they receive a subpoena or discovery request. In litigation, business phone calls and text messages are increasingly treated like emails — they're discoverable evidence. If you can't produce them when required, you face potential sanctions. If you can produce them, they might be the evidence that wins your case.
What's Discoverable?
In civil litigation, call detail records (who called whom, when, and for how long), call recordings (if they exist), voicemail messages, and business text messages can all be subject to discovery requests. Under Montana's Rules of Civil Procedure and federal rules, electronically stored information (ESI) — which includes VoIP call data — must be preserved and produced when relevant to litigation.
The Preservation Obligation
When litigation is reasonably anticipated, businesses have a duty to preserve relevant evidence — including phone records. This is called a "litigation hold." With a traditional phone system, call detail records may be difficult or impossible to retrieve from your carrier. With VoIP, call logs, recordings, and SMS archives are stored digitally and can be preserved with proper retention policies. The key is having a system that creates these records automatically rather than scrambling to find them after a lawsuit is filed.
Call Recording as Protection
Call recording isn't just about compliance — it's about protection. When a customer claims you made a verbal promise that you didn't, the recording proves your case. When an employee claims they were given different instructions, the recording clarifies. When a vendor disputes the terms of a phone agreement, the recording settles it. Montana is a one-party consent state, meaning you can record your own business calls without notifying the other party (though best practice is to include a brief recording disclosure).
SMS Records Matter Too
Business text messages are discoverable just like emails. If your employees use personal cell phones for business texting, those messages may be scattered across personal devices — making preservation and production nearly impossible. VoIP business SMS centralizes all text communication through the business number, creating an automatic archive with timestamps, sender/recipient information, and message content.
Retention Policies
Work with your attorney to establish a retention policy for call recordings and SMS records. Different industries have different requirements — healthcare needs longer retention than retail. Your VoIP provider should offer configurable retention periods and the ability to place litigation holds on specific records. At minimum, most businesses should retain call detail records for 3-5 years and call recordings for 1-3 years.
Big Sky Telecom's Record Management
Our platform provides comprehensive call detail records, configurable call recording retention, SMS archival, and the ability to export records for legal requests. We'll work with your attorney to configure retention policies that meet your industry requirements and litigation risk profile.
Talk to us about record management
Big Sky Telecom provides hosted VoIP, business phone systems, and managed IT services to small and mid-sized businesses across Western Montana. Locally owned and operated in Missoula, MT since 1998.