[travisb]

My vague understanding of the related laws is that as long as the company has a consistent retention policy and is under neither a court order to increase retention nor retaining records for specific incidents as part of policy, that a short retention period is fine.

I expect legal would actually be happy about shorter retention periods since it makes their job easier. HR of course wants infinite retention periods because it gives them a bigger stick, but universally longer retention is not the only way to address those desires.