Email as court evidence

This guide is based on UK law. It was last updated in April 2005.

Email content is treated in the same way as verbal and written expressions and statements and is admissible in a court of law. It is a common misconception that email messages carry less weight than letters on headed notepaper.

The problems are only likely to arise if your opponent disputes the authenticity of what you produce. The same applies to traditional letters – i.e. it is only when their authenticity is questioned that proof becomes a problem.

If the authenticity of an email produced in court is questioned, be prepared to provide evidence of the audit trail showing where the email originated and the route by which it was sent to your computer. The audit trail would show if there had been any opportunity for someone to interfere with the email as they are usually sent between several servers before they reach their destination.

Email have raised problems for the courts. In the past, evidence would invariably take the form of an original signed document and if that was not available then a copy of that signed document could be substituted. The signature would be the key to proving the authenticity of the document (of course, the argument can still be made that the signature is a fake). The difference with email is that there is no such thing as an 'original' since the print-out is the end result of a technological process. It is the audit trail showing that process which can be used to persuade the court of the print-out's authenticity if this is challenged by your opponent.

Forensic computing services can help if it becomes necessary to prove that a hard copy of an email produced in court is genuine.