In addition to criminal litigation, there are more and more areas of law where legal problems related to digital evidence arise.
Starting with regulatory offences, in recent decades we have seen the creation of increasingly robust sectoral legal regimes, in which independent administrative authorities are given progressively more intrusive competences and powers. These comprise searches, including house searches, and, of course, computer searches and seizures of computer systems and data, often using more sophisticated technological tools than those available in criminal proceedings. In these procedures, where the guarantees of defense are, by definition, lower, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the specificities of digital evidence and to adopt the appropriate legal and technical mechanisms to syndicate its collection and analyze it, in order to prepare a better defense.
The same is true of non-sanctioning branches of law, such as civil and labor law, where digital evidence issues are less developed, but where they occur frequently, albeit with the specificity that, in these areas, there is no specific legal framework to regulate them. The experience accumulated in specific digital evidence issues allows the Digital Defense Team, together with other Morais Leitão lawyers specialized in the various relevant areas of law, to provide transversal legal advice on all issues that require knowledge in these areas.
Finally, and on a non-contentious side, there have been more and more frequent cases in which, following a computer crime or a civil or labor offense, it has become necessary to carry out internal investigations in a digital environment, which implies not only specialized technical and legal knowledge, but also the adoption of mechanisms to ensure the reliability and chain of custody of the evidence, for future use in legal proceedings.
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