Privilege protects documents. It does not protect sound.

The disputes environment

High-value litigation and arbitration create the exact conditions in which technical surveillance is deployed: adversaries with strong incentives, defined timelines, and enormous asymmetric value in knowing the other side's strategy, evidence and settlement floor. In contested matrimonial, shareholder and cross-border commercial matters across Asia, we have repeatedly found that one party's unusual foresight had a technical explanation.

Law firms themselves are attractive targets, not for their own secrets, but as the aggregation point for their clients'. War rooms, client meeting suites and arbitration preparation rooms concentrate the most sensitive material of multiple matters behind a single access-controlled door that cleaners, AV contractors and visiting experts pass through routinely.

How we support counsel

• War room and meeting suite assurance, inspection of the rooms where strategy is discussed, at matter commencement and before critical sessions.
• Hearing and mediation venue inspection, arbitration hearing rooms, mediation suites, breakout rooms and hotel meeting spaces inspected before your client speaks candidly in them.
• Client-side engagements under direction of counsel, TSCM and investigation work structured so that findings sit within privilege and integrate into your evidential strategy from the outset.
• Discovered-device handling, forensic preservation, chain of custody and analysis when a device is found, by us or by anyone else, so its evidential value survives.
• Digital forensics and eDiscovery support, defensible collection and analysis when a matter turns on what was taken, when and by whom.
• Expert evidence, written reports and testimony on technical surveillance matters from consultants with court and arbitration experience.

A note on the other side of the problem

We are regularly asked whether a client's opponent could lawfully have known something. Sometimes the answer is yes, and establishing that is as valuable as finding a device. Our reporting distinguishes rigorously between evidence of surveillance, evidence of leakage through lawful channels, and absence of evidence. Courts respect findings that respect those distinctions; so do judges of credibility more generally.