Yeah it feels like something is definitely missing here. If it's some kind of legal discovery, it's no shocking that the person cannot delete "personal stuff" before they hand it over, that would basically render pointless whatever they are doing with the phone.
Or just quit the company if they ask you to hand over a personal device.
Usually your employer would prefer that you not hand over your personal device. Because the other party is looking for some sort of "smoking gun" where employees admit that they think some corporate behavior is bad or breaking the law. The penalties for not cooperating here are bad enough, though, that companies will generally cooperate. And the situations where it's a personal device are relatively rare, usually it's just corporate devices.
Quitting the company doesn't change anything. You can still be subpoenaed after you leave the company and the court can force you to turn things over.
Source: I'm not a lawyer but I have had my communications subpoenaed from my time at both Google and Facebook and I have complained to many corporate lawyers about how stupid these rules are while they politely explained to me how the system works
Company should have no right to your family communications.
I never use text.
If you delete something that the court has ordered you to turn over, they can and will charge you with contempt.
Again, this isn’t your employer doing this. Your employer would love if you didn’t turn over anything, but they are legally required to cooperate and will get in a lot of trouble if they don’t do their part.
That way if ordered by the legal system you'll only actually have at most 1 week of personal data and none of it will be text.
You won't be deleting anything after their request, you will just hand over what you have, which is incidentally not much.
Wiretapping laws prevent courts from getting your voice records, at least in CA.
If personal devices were not subject to legal discovery, every company would just have all the executives only use a personal device for all communication, and suddenly they are immune to discovery?
some people use their personal phone for work email, etc. and miss the fact that that makes the phone basically a company property - i.e. the company can wipe it remotely, etc.
Wrt. Apple requiring to not wipe out laptop before returning it i wonder how do they enforce it. In more than 2 decades i have never returned laptop without wiping it and wonder what can change that, if any.