Litigation support for counsel

Not every matter needs a testifying expert. Many need someone who understands how Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, phones and business systems record information, and who can help counsel ask the right questions at the right time. Brought in early, that help usually costs less than fixing a discovery problem later.

The Sedona Canada Principles Addressing Electronic Discovery (Third Edition) say that as soon as litigation is reasonably anticipated, parties must consider their obligation to take reasonable, good-faith steps to preserve potentially relevant electronically stored information (Principle 3), and encourage counsel to cooperate on a joint discovery plan (Principle 4).

We translate those principles into a concrete list for your client's systems: which mailboxes, Teams chats, file shares, phones and business applications to hold, what retention or auto-delete settings to suspend, and what is likely to be lost if nothing is done. We can also help counsel prepare for meet-and-confer discussions, explaining what a proposed search or production format would cost and what it would actually return.

Many disputes come down to sequence: who knew what, and when. Electronic records are well suited to building an objective timeline, provided the sources are understood and their time zones and quirks accounted for.

We combine email metadata, file system timestamps, cloud audit logs, phone records and application data into a single timeline with every entry tied to its source. Where sources conflict, or where a timestamp records something other than what it appears to (for example, a 'modified' date that changed when a file was copied), we flag it rather than smooth it over.

A consulting review gives counsel a confidential, technical read of an opposing report before deciding how to respond. We look at:

• Whether the report contains what the applicable rules require; in Ontario, rule 53.03 lists the required contents, including instructions, assumptions, the documents relied on and a signed Form 53
• Whether the evidence was acquired and preserved in a way that supports its integrity
• Whether the tools and methods are appropriate and described in enough detail to be repeated
• Whether conclusions follow from the data, or go beyond it
• Alternative explanations the report does not address
• Questions for cross-examination, ranked by importance

Technical evidence is only persuasive if the judge, arbitrator or jury understands it. We help counsel prepare examination and cross-examination questions on technical topics, review transcripts for technical errors, and prepare plain-language explanations and demonstratives such as timelines and diagrams of how an email travelled.

Where electronic records are tendered, the Canada Evidence Act (sections 31.1 to 31.8) and section 34.1 of Ontario's Evidence Act place the burden of authentication on the party introducing them and tie the best evidence rule to the integrity of the recording system. We help counsel anticipate the integrity questions and the affidavit evidence needed to meet them.

We are retained by counsel, report to counsel, and follow counsel's direction on communications and drafts. Engagements are scoped in writing with an estimate before work begins, and fees are quoted per engagement so counsel can control cost as the matter develops. If the client also needs operational IT or security work, we keep that separate from the litigation engagement.

Offices in Vaughan, Toronto and Vancouver let us collect on site across Ontario and British Columbia; remote collection is available for cloud sources anywhere.