While working at a pharmaceutical co I was backing up a drive onto the os drive of our local pc for general it support / utilities when I got a call from the user. She forgot to tell me she was on legal hold. I stopped the backup, went through the e-discovery process on her drive, rebuilt the pc and did e-discovery on our pc as well, because it was now also covered by her legal hold. You don't want to involve yourself in a case by ignoring those discovery laws, they are very serious about enforcement in court.

Still the policy makes it <date of litigation hold> minus X months, rather than everything since the creation of the company.

Correct. And "litigation hold" is the term that I knew existed, but didn't come up with.