09 — Practice
Modern prosecutions increasingly depend on technical evidence that few lawyers — and fewer judges — fully understand. Encrypted communications, cell site analysis, device forensics, blockchain analysis, DNA interpretation software, and mass spectrometry are presented as objective science. Often, they are anything but.
We are one of very few legal practices worldwide where genuine technical expertise in cryptography and digital evidence sits within the founding team — not outsourced to external consultants. This means we identify weaknesses in technical evidence at the point of analysis, not after a consultant has been briefed weeks later.
We have led the cases that define this area. The leading authority on the admissibility of evidence obtained from a compromised encrypted communications network was heard before the Court of Appeal — we were lead counsel. The leading challenge to the lawfulness of a Targeted Equipment Interference warrant was heard before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, presided over by a Lord Justice of Appeal. When the prosecution relied on low-copy DNA evidence and statistical interpretation software to link a defendant to a firearms cache, we cross-examined the author of the software and a professor of statistical genetics — and exposed the methodology's limitations. When forensic science evidence of drug-contaminated cash was presented as conclusive, three days of legal argument and cross-examination of scientific witnesses led to its exclusion.
Our approach is to translate complex technical data into legal strategy. If the prosecution's technical case is flawed, we expose the flaw. If it is sound, we build around it. Either way, the technical dimension informs the legal strategy from the outset, not as an afterthought.
Technical evidence requires technical understanding. Speak with us.
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