The sources and characteristics of electronic evidence and artificial intelligence

1.1 Given the ubiquity of electronic devices and the evidence that they produce, lawyers are required to offer appropriate advice to clients in relation to data in electronic form. Trying to persuade lawyers that they need to keep up to date with technology is far from new.1 In 1904, judges and lawyers were urged to make themselves aware of photography because ‘they might otherwise accept what appears to be pure untouched work as reliable which was all the time outrageously worked on’.2 And in 1959, an academic noted that ‘hundreds of important cases involving disputed typewriting have been tried but there are still lawyers here and there who apparently have never heard of them and courthouses where a disputed typewriting has never been considered’.3 Although written more than 60 years ago, the statement is undoubtedly still true today in many jurisdictions.