Federal subpoenas for phone records: the custodian’s playbook.
For companies and record custodians, a federal subpoena for employee or customer phone records is a compliance trap with three exits - and only one of them is safe. A field guide for the business on the receiving end.
The custodian’s position.
When the demand names your company as records-holder, you are not (yet) the story - but you are now a witness with legal duties in a case you cannot see. The company’s exposure is procedural: late production is contempt, careless production breaches privacy obligations to employees and customers, and any deletion after service converts a bystander into a defendant. The company needs its own counsel - not the employee’s, not the government’s assurances.
The first 48 hours.
Issue a litigation hold that names the systems: call platforms, MDM logs, carrier accounts, messaging tools. Identify one custodian of record and route everything through them. Then have counsel call the AUSA on the caption: confirm scope, dates, and format, and ask the question that matters - is the company a custodian only, or a subject? The answer changes the posture of everything that follows.
Notify affected employees only after counsel checks for a § 2705(b) nondisclosure order. Tipping a target - even your own executive - when a gag order stands is its own federal problem.
Three custodian mistakes.
Producing everything instantly to seem cooperative - waiving privilege and privacy claims that cannot be recalled. Letting the IT department answer agents’ “quick questions” - unsworn statements that bind the company. And treating the subpoena as an IT ticket instead of a legal event with a docket number attached.
Where defense counsel fits.
This firm answers these demands for businesses regularly: scope negotiated in the first call, production built to be defensible, and the company’s status confirmed in writing. If the matter is closer to home than a records request - if the company or its principals are the subject - the white collar defense begins the same hour.
Reading is good. Calling is better.
Answered within 24 hours, guaranteed. Some stories are better told out loud -
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