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Mobile & Digital Evidence, Explained
Practical analysis for attorneys and legal teams on how mobile and digital evidence is acquired, interpreted, authenticated, and challenged — drawn from Law & Forensics' continuing-legal-education and expert-witness practice.
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Articles & analysis
What forensic tools produce is data; what wins or loses a matter is interpretation. These pieces unpack the difference.
When the Metadata Lies: AI Hallucinations as a New Evidence-Reliability Risk
Most AI-hallucination talk focuses on fake citations in document text. The quieter risk lives in the metadata, where invented authors, dates, and hashes can pass as ground truth.
PreservationThe Rule 30(b)(6) Deposition on Digital and Mobile Evidence: Preparing and Defending the Corporate Representative
When a corporate-representative deposition turns on data flows, mobile devices, and preservation, the binding testimony is only as defensible as the methodology behind it.
PreservationBuilding a Defensible Privilege Log for Large ESI and Mobile Data
A privilege log built on the wrong metadata can waive what it was meant to protect. Here is how to make a large-volume log both efficient and defensible.
Mobile EvidenceObtaining and Authenticating Evidence From Modern Messaging Platforms
What is and is not recoverable from SMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and disappearing messages, and how forensic methodology supports authentication and defensibility.
Mobile EvidenceLocal vs. Cloud: Correctly Attributing Mobile and Digital Evidence
Data recovered from a phone is not self-proving evidence that the phone's owner created it there. Sync, backups, and shared accounts demand disciplined attribution.
AuthenticationMetadata: The Forensic Backbone of Digital and Mobile Evidence
Extraction is the easy part. The opinions that survive cross-examination turn on how metadata is interpreted, normalized, and reconciled across systems.
AuthenticationAuthenticating Digital and Mobile Evidence in the Age of AI: Is Rule 901 Ready?
Generative AI is testing the framework that authenticates phone, screenshot, photo, and video evidence. We examine whether Rule 901 holds, and where forensic rigor matters.
AuthenticationAI-Generated Evidence and Deepfakes: Authenticating Mobile Media in Litigation
Synthetic photos, voicemails, and video now reach the courtroom as exhibits. What a forensic examiner can and cannot determine about whether mobile media is authentic.
PreservationPreserving Mobile and Digital Evidence: Avoiding Spoliation and Defending the Chain of Custody
When litigation is reasonably anticipated, the fragile, self-deleting nature of mobile data turns preservation from a clerical task into a defensible forensic discipline.
PreservationBuilding ESI Protocols That Survive Mobile and Cross-Platform Data
Email-era protocol language no longer fits texts, chat apps, and cloud-linked files. Here is how to draft scope, formats, and metadata that hold up.
Neutral ServicesSpecial Masters and Forensic Neutrals in Digital-Evidence Disputes
When mobile and ESI disputes turn technical and contentious, a court-appointed forensic neutral can resolve protocol, access, and spoliation fights.
Family LawDeepfakes and Evidence Integrity in Family Court: Authenticating Phone-Sourced Exhibits
Why custody, divorce, and protective-order matters are uniquely exposed to manipulated phone evidence, and how counsel can preserve, authenticate, and challenge it.
Mobile EvidenceHow to Vet a Mobile Forensics Expert Before You Hire: Five Commandments for Litigators
Before your case turns on what a phone reveals — or conceals — the expert you retain must clear five criteria that survive both Daubert scrutiny and cross-examination.
The Mobile Evidence Briefing
New analysis of mobile-device evidence issues for litigators, delivered as articles publish — roughly twice a month.
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