Manhattan
Manhattan Digital Forensics
Forensic preservation, examination and expert reporting for matters seated in Manhattan. On-site response across Midtown, the Financial District, Chelsea, SoHo, the Upper East and Upper West sides, Harlem and Washington Heights.
Manhattan coverage
Working in Manhattan
Manhattan concentrates the industries that generate the most complex digital evidence: banks and broker-dealers in the Financial District, the buy side and family offices in Midtown, media and advertising in the Flatiron and SoHo, ad-tech and enterprise SaaS in Chelsea and Hudson Yards, and law firms across Sixth and Third avenues. Almost every matter in these sectors turns on records that were never written to be evidence: Slack and Teams threads, Bloomberg and IB chats, mobile handsets, SaaS audit logs, EDR telemetry and cloud control-plane events.
GDF's Manhattan intake is at (212) 561-5860. Examiners are dispatched into the borough on a 24/7 basis for active incidents. For litigation matters, working meetings are typically held at counsel's offices in Midtown or Downtown, with on-site collections performed at custodian locations or at client premises.
Manhattan venues and custodians
Where Manhattan evidence usually sits
SDNY (500 Pearl and 40 Foley Square)
Manhattan civil and criminal matters in the Southern District: preservation, collection, processing and expert reporting scaled to the schedule set by the assigned judge.
New York County Supreme Court (60 Centre Street)
Commercial Division and general docket support: business records subpoenaed under CPLR 3120, ESI orders and, in the Commercial Division, eDiscovery workflows that track FRCP practice.
Financial regulators (NYDFS, SEC New York, FINRA)
Regulator-facing technical work for financial institutions headquartered in Manhattan: NYDFS 23 NYCRR 500 testing programs, SEC document requests and Wells submissions, and FINRA arbitration technical support.
AAA and JAMS arbitration
Reports and testimony in AAA and JAMS proceedings, with workpapers structured for opposing-expert review under the accelerated schedules typical of commercial arbitration.
Manhattan practice notes
How the work actually goes in Manhattan
Financial District and Wall Street matters
Financial District matters commonly involve broker-dealer and hedge-fund records: order-management systems (OMS), execution-management systems (EMS), trading-platform logs, Bloomberg and Instant Bloomberg messaging, personal devices used for business communication and, in regulated-entity matters, the surveillance records the CCO team keeps under FINRA and SEC recordkeeping rules. Preservation is scoped so the trading-side record lines up in time with the communications record, which is often the decisive alignment in FINRA arbitration and SEC enforcement matters.
Midtown corporate matters
Midtown corporate work is dominated by Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace tenants, Slack and Teams workspaces, and a growing footprint of AI copilots (Microsoft 365 Copilot, Google Gemini for Workspace, ChatGPT Enterprise) whose activity and prompt history is now discoverable. Endpoint telemetry from CrowdStrike, SentinelOne and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint routinely enters the record. Preservation is scheduled to hold the M365 audit log, Purview eDiscovery holds and the EDR retention window before any of them rotate.
Chelsea, Flatiron and SoHo tech companies
The Chelsea, Flatiron and SoHo tech corridor generates a different evidence profile: GitHub Enterprise or GitLab for source, Slack for communication, Notion or Coda for knowledge, Figma for design, PagerDuty and Opsgenie for on-call records, and cloud accounts (AWS, GCP or Azure) with a wide surface of IAM permissions. Trade-secret and departing-employee matters are common here, and the work centers on reconstructing what code, what documents and what customer data the departing custodian actually touched.
Manhattan law firm collaboration
Working-meeting cadence is set with lead counsel. Common pattern: initial scoping call same day as the intake, an in-person working meeting at the firm within a week, and a written preservation protocol before the first collection begins. For matters with tight Rule 26(f) conference dates, the preservation protocol is written first and refined as collections proceed.
Frequently asked
Common questions on Manhattan matters
How fast can an examiner get to Midtown for an incident?
For active incidents at Manhattan addresses, an on-site examiner is typically dispatched within two to three hours of the initial call. Remote preservation of the Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace tenant and endpoint EDR telemetry starts on the call itself.
Can collections be done at a Manhattan law firm's office?
Yes. On-site custodian collections are routine at law firm offices in Midtown, Downtown and the Financial District. Collections are performed with forensic imaging tools and write-blockers, and the chain of custody documentation is completed on site.
Do you handle Wall Street matters with market data?
Yes. Broker-dealer, hedge fund and family office matters regularly involve order-management systems, trading platform logs, Bloomberg and IB messaging, and personal device data. Preservation is scoped so the trading-side records line up in time with the communications record.
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