I've been primarily using end to end encrypted self destructing chats for maybe 20 years at this point, especially for work stuff. Why should other people's poor data hygiene put my data at risk?
Are all written records supposed to be preserved when you're in litigation, or just relevant records?
Disclosure issues, and destruction of records, are prominent issues in two UK scandals just now: the Contaminated Blookd Scandal, and the Post Office Horizon scandal.
So you've been destroying recorded information as a policy; that's fine, but the rule is essentially that if you know you are being sued and your chats are relevant, you need to take steps to stop the destruction.