Independent technical practice
Digital evidence for litigation
Evidence that survives the other side’s expert. Court-qualified examiners preserve it, examine it and explain what it shows.
Exposure
Where cases go wrong
Most disputes now turn on records that were never written to be evidence: chat threads, collaboration histories, mobile backups, cloud audit logs and telemetry from systems that overwrite themselves on a schedule. The window in which those artifacts can be preserved is frequently shorter than the window in which a matter is assessed.
The second exposure is process rather than data. Collections performed by an in-house IT team, a self-collecting custodian or an unqualified vendor invite challenges to authenticity, completeness and chain of custody. Opposing counsel can challenge a weak method far more easily than the substance of the evidence.
The third is the arrival of synthetic media and AI-assisted content in the record. Audio, video, images and documents can now be generated or altered convincingly enough that authenticity must be tested rather than assumed, and the testing has to be documented in a form a court can weigh.
Scoping
Questions the engagement must answer
- What evidence exists, where does it live, and how quickly is it degrading?
- Can the collection be repeated by the other side’s expert and reach the same result?
- Which findings are observed fact, and which are expert interpretation?
- What does the evidence not show, and what would it take to resolve that?
- What form do exhibits need to take for this filing, this court, this deadline?
Services
How we help
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Digital Forensics & Expert Witness
Preservation, forensic imaging, analysis and reports and testimony written to be cross-examined.
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AI & Deepfake Analysis
Authentication of disputed audio, video, images and AI-generated documents entered into the record.
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Biometrics & Identity Sciences
Fingerprint, facial and identity evidence examined and, where required, rebutted by qualified scientists.
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Incident Response & Retainer Programs
A signed engagement and a hotline in place before a client’s breach becomes counsel’s problem.
Context
Regulatory and evidentiary context
- Federal Rule of Evidence 702 / Daubert
- Expert opinion is admitted on the reliability of the method and the qualification of the examiner, so we document method, tooling and limitations in a form that can be examined line by line.
- Authentication
- Digital records have to be shown to be what they are claimed to be, which is a question of acquisition, hashing and chain of custody long before it is a question of content.
- Spoliation and legal hold
- Once litigation is reasonably anticipated, routine deletion becomes a liability; we advise on hold scope and preserve first so the question never has to be argued.
- Privilege and work product
- Engagements can be structured through outside counsel where the analysis is intended to sit inside privilege.
Context only. Counsel determines which standard governs the matter, and we write to the standard the forum applies.
Related case study
Intellectual Property Case
Trade secret matter carried through examination, reporting and testimony.
Expert Witness
Litigation support
What the technical record can answer
The distinctions and deliverables that matter when digital records enter a dispute.
Forensics is not data recovery, and not eDiscovery
Data recovery restores data after a physical failure. eDiscovery produces what was requested from identified custodians. A forensic examination goes further: slack and unallocated space, hidden and system files, artifacts left by the operating system, and file date codes showing when material was created, modified, accessed or deleted. That is where evidence that no one produced tends to sit.
What counsel gets back
Enterprise matters may require extraction from databases and mail servers and reconstruction of events from the resulting artifacts. The deliverable is a concise written report using accepted methodology, scoped to the questions in the matter, and defensible when the method itself is challenged.
Support for investigators
Investigators working a matter can retain examination capability without building a laboratory: email, images, phone logs, transactions, browsing history and social artifacts, including material deleted or hidden, recovered and documented so it survives the same scrutiny as the rest of the file.
Talk with an examiner
Discuss the matter and the next step.
Call to discuss timing, scope and the safest way to share information. Do not send evidence or credentials by email.
24/7 hotline: 1-800-868-8189