Family and civil litigation · digital evidence, Plymouth
A quarrel over who altered a document, and when. A director shut out of the company's own records. Contested finances in a divorce, or a probate fight. A partnership row where the file everyone leans on has been deleted. A neighbour's camera that ends up the only witness anyone has. None of this is criminal work, so the statutory Code written by the Forensic Science Regulator has no purchase on it. What governs it is CPR Part 35, and that is what the report is built to.
A quiet word first?
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| Which provision | What it requires | How that is met here |
|---|---|---|
| CPR 35.3 — where the duty lies | An expert is present to assist the court, and the rule puts that duty above any obligation owed to whoever gave the instructions or settles the bill | It heads the report, and every conclusion in it follows from that |
| CPR 35.4 — the court's permission is needed | The application sets out the field, the issues and an estimate of cost | A written scope and one fixed figure reach you in time to go into that application |
| PD35 3.2 and 3.3 | Nine requirements of content, the range of opinion if there is a range, and a statement of truth in the wording the direction lays down | All nine answered, the examiner named among them |
| 35.7 — joint experts | A court may order the evidence to come from one expert for both parties | Joint instructions are accepted, and each side gets the same report |
| CPR 35.6 — questions | One round of written questions, inside 28 days, to clarify | Answered in writing, and those answers then count as part of the report |
Ring us and say as much or as little as you like; the call itself is not charged for. What it has to settle is the shape of the matter — what took place, which machines and accounts it reaches, and the question the evidence must answer. That is the scope. One written figure follows from it, and you have that before anything is opened.
Nothing gets opened until a full copy exists. That is not ceremony. Browsing folders moves the very dates a case may turn on, and it leaves the other side an obvious question to ask: who decided what was worth a look? Nothing is filtered here.
The original goes into storage and stays there. Work happens inside the copy: the documents in issue, what the file system holds about each of them, deleted material still capable of being carved out, and whatever the machine logged about drives, accounts and syncing. Where two dates conflict, we say which and why.
It is written for the court rather than for you. Qualifications; the material it rests on; the substance of our instructions; who carried out the work; the range of opinion, where a range exists; and the statement of truth PD35 calls for. Accreditation is dealt with on page one.
Anything the other side cannot check is worth arguing about. So the bundle is built to be checked: the exhibit references, the images each finding was read from, every handover with a date on it, the hashes, and the notes written while the work was going on. Their own examiner can repeat the work and land in the same place.
What solicitors ask about most: CPR 35.10 requires the report to set out the substance of every material instruction it was written on, spoken or written down — and none of that is privileged. The documents behind those instructions will not be disclosed, and there will be no cross-examination on them, unless a court is satisfied that what the report states about them is wrong or has gaps. Worth knowing while the instruction letter is still being drafted. PD35 3.3 then sets the statement of truth in fixed wording, warning that making one falsely, without honest belief, is a contempt of court.
A Tavistock partnership came apart over its accounts. One side produced a document it said dated from before the split. That file had been created on a computer bought after it, and the document's own internal record agreed with what the disk showed. We reported the date, the route we took to it, and the plain fact that no part of the drive established who had typed it. The claim settled soon after.
No. Criminal proceedings in England and Wales are what the Forensic Science Regulator's statutory Code reaches, and ISO/IEC 17025 is the standard it sets there. A boundary claim, a financial remedy application, a row between directors — not one of those is a criminal proceeding. No accreditation is held here in any case, and page one of every report says so.
Only if someone with the right to authorise it has done so. Getting into a computer without permission is a criminal offence — the Computer Misuse Act 1990, section 1 — and it binds this bench just as firmly as it binds you. A machine you share, one the two of you bought, and one plainly theirs give three different answers. Put it to your solicitor first.
That the file arrived on that volume at that instant. Not that the words were written then, and not who wrote them. A copy resets it. Somebody can wind the clock back by hand. Modified and accessed move for reasons nobody meant. A date is worth something only where everything else on the machine agrees with it.
That turns on where they lived. Computers and storage media are what this bench handles, not handsets. Where the machine we hold carries a desktop mail client, a browser profile or a backup taken off a phone, deleted entries can hang on in the database's free pages until something reuses them. Once that space is overwritten, they have gone.
In a family or civil matter the device is often the one thing both sides will accept, so it is worth imaging cleanly before anyone leans on it. Start it here. The first look is free, and what you tell us goes no further.