Court reports · digital evidence in Hull
A report is worth what it survives. The other side pays someone to pull it apart, and one written to please whoever commissioned it will not last. CPR Part 35 settles that in advance: an expert's duty runs to the court — over the client, the solicitor and the invoice. Solicitors and insurers around Hull and the East Riding know it. Ours start there.
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| Type of report | Where it gets used | What it contains |
|---|---|---|
| A findings report only | First advice, HR cases, decisions at board level | What turned up, how we got there, and what it means — put plainly |
| An insurance or loss-claim report | Where cause, scale and liability are argued over | The findings, exhibits, and how the loss arose |
| A CPR Part 35 expert report | Civil litigation in England and Wales | The duty to the court first, your instructions summarised, the method in full, and the signed statements of truth and compliance |
| A CrimPR Part 19 expert report | Cases going before a criminal court | The criminal form: qualifications, the material a court needs to judge reliability, credibility declared |
| The single joint expert | Where both sides instruct the same examiner between them | A single report, identical for both sides, the duty owed above both of them to the court |
It begins with a conversation in confidence, and there is no charge for it. Three answers shape the rest: what happened, how far it reaches — the machines, the accounts — and what the evidence has to prove. Between them they fix the scope. The scope fixes the one written price, and you have that before any device is touched.
Your letter of instruction goes into the report in summary, in our own words. Next to it goes anything that bears on our credibility, beginning with this: an independent lab, not accredited. Far better printed on page one than dragged out of a witness box.
Each step is carried out, and recorded, on the assumption that the other side's examiner is looking over our shoulder for the weak join. That is their job. Nothing in the conclusions tilts towards the party paying.
The venue fixes the format. A civil matter is written to CPR Part 35; a criminal one to CrimPR Part 19. Both give the same working parts: the written method, the exhibits, an unbroken record of who held what and when, and the two declarations. Conclusions at the front, technical detail into an annex.
A report nobody can test is worth little. So the bundle carries the working with it: every exhibit, the images it was read from, a log of each handover, the hash of everything, and what was written down at the time. The other side's expert can repeat it and land where we did.
One question worth putting to any expert you are weighing up: the Criminal Procedure Rules make an expert disclose anything that might reasonably be thought to undermine their credibility, and the CPS's own guidance names a missing accreditation as exactly that. An expert who keeps quiet about it hands the problem to you. Ours is on page one of every report that leaves here.
One shared folder, two companies, and two versions of the accounts that did not agree. Imaging showed that both copies had been edited, and the timeline of those edits left nothing to argue about. The matter closed within the month.
A findings report answers two questions: what turned up, and by what route. A court report carries that, then adds the duty owed to the court, your instructions in summary, the method and exhibit history end to end, the signed truth and compliance statements, and anything the other side could raise about the expert.
The court's. Who settles the bill makes no difference. The duty outranks anything owed to whoever gave the instructions, and that ranking is the whole reason the report is worth having.
Yes. One report, one set of conclusions, sent to both sides together. Nobody sees a draft first and nobody gets to lean on the wording.
The rules say it has to be declared, so it goes at the front and not in a footnote. Courts test method. That is what gives an opinion its weight, and it is where the effort goes. Reports fail because they claim too much, not because a certificate is missing.
More time with the material means more time to set out what it shows and how it was handled, weak points included. Log a job. The first look costs nothing, and what you tell us stays private.