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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...

(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 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...

Metadata as a Silent Witness: What It Can Reveal About Your Case Copyright 2026, Steve Burgess Every digital file has two stories to tell. The first is the one you can read — the contract, the email, the photograph. The second story is invisible, buried in the file...

Email, Texts, & Cloud Data: Where Critical Evidence Hides, Part II        Copyright 2026, Steve Burgess In over four decades of digital forensics work, I've examined more than 20,000 devices and pieces of digital evidence. And in that time I've developed a...

Can You Trust What You See? The Rise of Deepfakes and What It Means for Justice Copyright 2026, Steve Burgess I've been working with digital evidence since 1985, and I've seen a lot of changes. Back then, the biggest challenge was recovering data from a 10 MB hard...

Deepfakes, AI, and the New Frontier of Digital Evidence Copyright 2026, Steve Burgess It was true forty years ago and it's truer today: "Just because it's digital doesn't mean it's true." We're now facing a challenge that would have seemed like science fiction when I...

Top 5 Mistakes Lawyers Make With Digital Evidence  -      Copyright 2026, Steve Burgess After forty years working with attorneys on digital evidence, I've seen the same mistakes cost cases time and again. Here are five of the most common – and how to avoid them....

20 Digital Forensics Facts for Attorneys copyright 2025 Steve Burgess Deleted ≠ gone: Most deleted files remain recoverable until overwritten. Every case is a data case: Even “non-digital” disputes usually contain text messages, emails, or documents. Forensic imaging:...

Screenshots Are Barely Evidence: How to Authenticate Digital Data in Court By Steve Burgess, Copyright 2025 Screenshots are convenient. They’re quick, visual, and easy for clients to share — but in the courtroom, convenience can be a trap. Screenshots alone rarely...