01
The problem
A major dispute buries the truth in its own record.
Disputes turn on chronology. The record runs to hundreds of thousands of documents, and the way it is read has barely changed in thirty years.
Fig. 01 — Disclosure, filed by custodian
02
The record
The record is the evidence. It is also the obstacle.
The documents were never written as evidence. Each class tells its part of the story differently.
Sample matter — illustrative figures, not a client engagement.
Correspondence
Instructions, notices, admissions. The date that matters is rarely the date on the message.
Site diaries
What actually happened on site, recorded before anyone knew which day would be disputed.
Minutes
Dated by the meeting, issued weeks later, often the only record of a decision.
Programmes
Each revision has a data date, an issue date and its own logic. Sequence lives here.
03
Where it goes wrong
Three things go wrong, every time.
The failures are structural. They follow from reading a record by hand, under time pressure.
i
It costs a fortune
Senior hourly rates against a record that does not shrink. Most of the budget goes to establishing facts.
ii
It takes forever
Months between instruction and report. Settlement windows close before the analysis arrives.
iii
It is attacked where it is weakest
The other side need not prove an assertion wrong, only that it cannot be traced to a document and a date.
04
What is needed
A defensible analysis has five properties.
None of them is new. What is new is that a record of any size can now satisfy all five.
Properties of a defensible analysis
05
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