Blog
Your Smart Home Is Testifying Against You
A fitness tracker once told me the exact moment its wearer stopped moving. Not slowed down. Stopped. The device wasn't built to establish a time of death. It was builtto count steps and nag its owner about standing up more often. But it kept a continuous record, and...
The Future of Expert Testimony in a Digital World
Twenty years ago, a forensic report about a hard drive was mostly an argument about whether a file existed and when it was last touched. And of course, trying to recover deleted material. Today the same report might need to address whether a video is real, whether a...
The Metadata Your Client Is Accidentally Sending to Opposing Counsel
Your client didn't leak anything on purpose. That's usually how it goes. The confidential settlement number, the internal complaint about a coworker, the photo that was supposed to prove they were out of town — all of it can arrive at opposing counsel's desk wrapped...
Text Messages as Evidence: Harder Than You Think
Copyright 2026, Steve Burgess Somewhere along the way, text messages became some of the most important evidence in litigation that nobody quite knows how to handle properly. A few years ago, that would have been an email thread, such as in the Case of the Computer...
Digital Evidence 101: What Every Attorney Should Know Before Discovery
Digital Evidence 101: What Every Attorney Should Know Before Discovery Copyright 2026, Steve Burgess I've sat across the table - or more recently, the Zoom - from a great many attorneys over the past forty years, and I've noticed a pattern. Litigators who can...
Digital Privacy vs. Discovery: Where the Line Is Drawn
Copyright 2026, Steve Burgess Every so often I’ll sit across the Zoom from an attorney—or from a pro se litigant—who wants everything. Every text message the opposing party has ever sent. Every photo on their phone. Every search query. Every deleted file. Every app....
The 3 Phone Mistakes That Destroy Digital Evidence Before Trial
Copyright 2026, Steve Burgess Smartphones are the single richest source of digital evidence in most litigation today. Text messages, call logs, photos, location history, app data, deleted files — it's all there, sitting in a device that fits in a shirt pocket. Or in...
Your Preservation Letter Is Missing These 6 Data Sources
I’m sure that you have reviewed a lot of preservation letters. Some of them are excellent — thorough, specific, and sent at exactly the right moment. Others read like they were written in 1997 and then never updated, which, in fairness, some of them were. Still others...
Deleted Does Not Always Mean Gone (But It Doesn’t Mean Recoverable Either)
(copyright Steve Burgess 2026) One of my favorite client conversations goes something like this: Client: “I deleted it.” Attorney: “Can you get it back?” Forensic examiner: “…define ‘it.’” Television has taught us two completely opposite and equally wrong ideas:...
Digital Evidence Is Bigger Than Most Cases Realize
Digital Evidence Is Bigger Than Most Cases Realize copyright Steve Burgess 2026 There’s a scene in television forensics that appears in approximately 94.27% of all episodes. Someone in a dark room says, “Pull up the computer.” Then ten seconds later, another person...