Forensic Neutral and Dispute Resolution Services

Forensic Neutral and Dispute Resolution

About Our Forensic Neutral and Dispute Resolution Practice

Law & Forensics, in partnership with JAMS, is a leading provider of Forensic Neutral Services around the world. Law & Forensics neutrals have been appointed by state and federal courts in civil and criminal disputes, arbitration panels, and administrative judges all over the globe.

As forensic neutrals, we not only resolve disputes between parties but we increase litigation efficiency allowing parties to forego independently hiring forensic experts. We have a demonstrated track record of saving parties money and increasing efficiency in resolving disputes both in and out of the courtroom. Our forensic neutrals also ensure that technical analyses are performed independently and without bias.

Our Services

100s of years of collective experience doing forensics. And of course working out of the box and solving problems…

Forensic Protocols Preservation Reports and Affidavits Resolve ESI Disputes Privileged Review

Create, Review, and Execute Forensic Protocols

Work with the parties to draft a forensic protocol that accounts for the technical systems at issue, sets out each step of the forensic work to be performed, and facilitates privilege and confidential review by the parties.
Oversee the execution of the protocol and perform the technical work set out in the protocol.
Resolve disputes in connection with the execution of the protocol.
Draft a report summarizing the analysis and results to provide to the court and parties.

Preservation of Electronic Storage Information, Devices and Accounts

Work with lawyers, judges, and parties and their technical experts to identify and preserve relevant ESI, which includes the following:

Identify the custodians of potentially relevant information;
Interview the custodians and request documentation to identify the repositories that may contain relevant ESI;
Verify that the requisite technical controls, policies, and/or procedures to prevent are in place to prevent the deletion of ESI from systems that may contain relevant ESI;
Create forensic images of repositories, as necessary to ensure that potentially relevant ESI is preserved.

Neutral expert report and affidavits

Appointed to serve as a forensic neutral and/or expert in state and federal court, arbitrations, or administrative proceedings. The work includes the following:

Perform technical analysis related to the devices or ESI at issue and report the results;
Provide reports and recommendations to the court, arbitrator, or administrative executive to adopt or use in drafting their findings, awards, or decisions;
Analyze ESI repositories using forensic tools, including proprietary hardware and software, to identify digital artifacts or evidence relevant to the matter;
Author reports that summarize the results of such analysis and provide context for the key technical concepts relevant to the analysis.

Forensic Neutral ESI Dispute Resolution

Hold hearings and perform computer forensic investigation and analysis as necessary to resolve disputes related to the preservation, collection, analysis, handling, and/or spoliation of ESI.
Conduct hearings, create forensic investigation protocols and perform the technical work as a neutral third party on behalf of a court or arbitration panel.
Issue reports and findings to arbitrators, judges, and administrative judges with the results of the independent and neutral forensic analysis.

Privileged Review

Law & Forensics Forensic Neutral and Discovery Referee offers a unique set of services, including:

Create and review privilege disputes, allowing for privilege log review and objections, and resolve any disputes in connection therewith,
Attend depositions and rules on objections,
Review, approve, modify and/or enforce Protective Orders,
Manage the briefing of discovery motions, hold hearings on those motions, and issuing written rulings,
Perform other tasks, including drafting Orders, periodically reporting to the Court on the status of the case, and otherwise assisting in case management,

Case Studies by Industry

Fashion and Entertainment

Industry/Sector: Fashion

Type of Case: Intellectual Property Ownership

Description: Appointed by the court as a technical special master in a complex civil dispute in federal court in the New York Southern District. Efforts included:

Conducting multiple hearings to design and deliver “co-equal” access to a complex cloud based SaaS solution that was in the Amazon cloud,
Facilitating the implementation of a technical environment of a complex cloud environment that allowed for the parties to service their respective customers,
Resolving all technical issues arising between the parties that related to delivering “co-equal” access.

Construction

Industry/Sector: Construction

Type of Case: Trade Secret Litigation

Description: Appointed by a court to serve as forensic neutral to investigate the social media accounts and devices of four employees accused of stealing files in a trade secret litigation involving companies in the construction industry. Efforts included:

- Creating an in-depth and court-approved protocol to survey the social media accounts and devices,
- Collecting per parties and court approved protocols the collection of social media accounts and devices,
- Conducting interviews and analyzing the data collected and providing a report to the parties and the court that was adopted in full by the court.

Software and Hardware Devices

Industry/Sector: Software/Hardware

Type of Case: Breach of Contract, Trade Secret Theft, and Employment

Description: Appointed by a court to serve as a forensic neutral in a dispute involving two global software and hardware device companies in Los Angeles Superior Court. Efforts included:

- Creating forensic protocols; recovering hundreds of files deleted by a party,
- Identifying several backdoors that the employee that had used to misappropriate trade secrets.
- Submitting multiple reports and recommendations to the court that were adopted in full by the court,
- Resolving dozens of privilege disputes between the parties.

1000’s of devices collected

and analyzed

100’s of cases and

disputes resolved

100’s of cases appointed

as forensic neutral

30+ years of experience

and expertise

100’s of privilege reviews

conducted

100’s of reports and

recommendations authored

Forensic Neutral and Dispute Resolution Practice Edge

Capabilities

Proven capabilities of providing our clients with expert testimony that exceeds expectations. Our team has experience with a range of cases types, including: Antitrust litigation, Medical device litigation, Multi-district litigation, Securities class actions, Consumer class actions, Employee misconduct, Healthcare fraud, Merger and Acquisitions (M&A) litigation, Insurance fraud, Intellectual property theft, National security, Patent litigation, Copyright and trademark litigation RICO, Security law violations and SEC regulatory investigations, Shareholder rights litigation, White Collar Crime investigations, Workplace harassment, Cybersecurity, FinTech litigation, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FTC and FDA regulatory investigations, State Attorney General investigations, Regulatory investigations, NY DFS investigations, Privacy litigation, Breach responses, GDPR compliance, State privacy investigations, CCPA, Civil Rights/Section 1983 litigation, Pension/ERISA violations, Trade and Commerce disputes, Consumer Protection Litigation, Fair Labor Standard Act (FLSA) litigation, Real estate litigation, HUD and related FHA investigations.

Competitive fees

Our fees structure is competitive, and we offer clients success based, hourly and fixed fee arrangements while ensuring that each engagement is spearheaded by a senior member of our team, with significant knowledge and experience.

Expertise

Our Forensic Consulting team of experts has 20+ years of experience and technical training on a wide range of forensic topics and issues. We have a wide range of experience and technical expertise with forensic technologies, and many of our team are both lawyers and technologists, with real world experience in litigating cases. Cloud environments that our team has worked on include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon Athena, Amazon Aurora, Amazon Dynamo DB, Amazon Neptune, Amazon Redshift, AWS Direct Connect, AWS Backup, Amazon S3 Glacier, Amazon EFS, Amazon QLDB, Google Cloud, Google Cloud SQL, Google Cloud Storage, Oracle Cloud, IBM Cloud, IBM Cloud Databases, IBM Db2 on Cloud, IBM Decision Optimizer, IBM Watson Studio, IBM Watson Tone Analyzer, IBM Mobile Foundation, IBM WebSphere, SAP Cloud Solutions.

Quality Control

All reports undergo a quality assurance review so the finished product can withstand all forms of scrutiny by opposing counsel and deliver quality testimony where appropriate.