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- Anton Piller order support
Your counsel gets the order,
we secure the evidence.
When a court grants an Anton Piller order without notice, the digital evidence has to be secured before it can be destroyed. We are the forensic team on the day, working alongside the independent supervising solicitor, inside the precise scope of the order.
We recognise the order; we do not advise on it.
An Anton Piller order, also called a civil search order, is granted without notice and allows evidence to be searched for and preserved at the defendant's premises where there is a real risk it would otherwise be destroyed. Common-law courts grant them, including the DIFC, ADGM and Qatar Financial Centre courts, and courts in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and India. Civil-law courts across the GCC reach a similar result through urgent evidence-preservation and precautionary orders. We support execution wherever a court orders evidence to be seized or preserved. Typical matters are intellectual property theft, NDA breaches, espionage and fraud. Obtaining the order, and advising on it, is the work of your litigation counsel. We are not legal counsel.
Our role is the technical one. Someone has to identify, image and preserve every relevant device and account on the day, defensibly, without straying outside the order. Improper execution can see an order set aside and evidence excluded, so the forensic work has to be disciplined and documented.
We act as objective forensic preservers, not advocates. We stay within the order, defer to the supervising solicitor, and document everything. That neutrality is what makes the evidence, and our testimony about it, credible.
- A technical execution plan prepared with your counsel before the day
- An on-site forensic team working alongside the supervising solicitor
- Write-protected images of computers, servers and removable media
- Mobile acquisition with isolation to prevent remote wiping
- Preservation of cloud mail, file storage and collaboration data where authorised
- A court-ready report on methodology, chain of custody and findings, with testimony available
Before, during and after the day.
Plan with counsel
We review the order's scope and carve-outs, anticipate the devices and accounts on site, prepare equipment, and coordinate timing with counsel, the supervising solicitor and any court-appointed expert.
Execute on site
We identify and catalogue every device, image media with write protection, isolate and acquire phones, preserve authorised cloud accounts, and record everything with photographs and evidence logs.
Secure and transport
Seized items and images are sealed in tamper-evident packaging and moved to our lab under documented chain of custody.
Analyse and report
Targeted analysis within the scope of the order, a court-ready report, and examiners available to testify to the integrity of the evidence.
Not all the evidence is on the premises.
More and more of what an order is after lives in cloud mail, file storage and collaboration platforms. We work with counsel on how cloud data will be preserved, and carry out authorised collections, understanding the difference between snapshot preservation, litigation hold and full export.
Who it is for
Litigation counsel and general counsel pursuing or preparing an Anton Piller order. This is engaged through the legal team, never through IT, and works best when we are brought in while the application is being prepared.
- Bifrost digital forensics, the examination after the seizure
- eDiscovery, turn the preserved data into a disclosure set
- Mobile forensics, phones acquired on the day
- TYR evidence platform, chain of custody from seizure to court
What buyers ask.
Our litigation firm manages that.
They manage the order. Someone still has to image the devices defensibly on the day, and that is us. We work under your counsel's direction and alongside the supervising solicitor.
Can you advise us on whether to seek an order?
No. That is a legal question for your counsel. We can tell counsel what is technically feasible on the day, so the application and the execution plan line up.
What if the defendant's data is in the cloud?
We plan for it with counsel and carry out authorised preservation and collection from the relevant platforms, documented to the same standard as the devices on site.
When should we bring you in?
While the application is being prepared. Early planning means the right equipment, people and scope are ready, and nothing is missed on a day that cannot be repeated.
Preparing an application?
Bring us in early to plan the technical execution with your litigation team. No charge for the scoping call.