Complex electronic evidence can be crucial in court and ignorance can be costly, says Greg Wildisen
The basic concept of e-disclosure has become familiar to many lawyers, but in the absence of the deluge of electronic evidence promised to break over these shores a few years ago, many have yet to really consider its full implications. This is changing. General disclosure rules mean that the UK has so far been spared some of the worst problems suffered by litigators in the US (not least the tactic of swamping the other side with terabytes of data in the hope of concealing the “smoking gun”). Recent sanction decisions in the are not only penalising parties to a matter, but extend to hold attorneys professionally liable in certain circumstances. Consequently handling electronic evidence correctly and understanding the techniques available is becoming increasingly important for all parties.
E-EVIDENCE IS DIFFERENT
Much of the value of electronic evidence is often contained in its “metadata”, the record of who has read or amended a document. Metadata can be destroyed or irrevocably amended by copying files from
