Hi everyone!
I don't yet have a CF job and always figured I'd use PDF reports, but recently I'm starting to like the idea of interactive HTML reports. A good example would be the interactive timelines you can create with Simile, which I learned about on
I'm not sure if giving a client a number of files in an HTML report would be too unwieldy, however. What file type do you use for forensic reports and why? What do your clients prefer?
It depends. My reports are typically supplied to my clients, electronically, via CD or DVD, depending upon the volume and nature of the content, however, if I am preparing documentation to be used in court, I'll typically supply it in a form which can easily be rendered on a printer although it seems that courts are becoming increasingly comfortable with dynamic reports.
Commonly I ask the client or their counsel how they would like to receive the report and what they would like it to contain. Some clients prefer to receive verbal reports, only, for a variety of business and legal reasons.
Finally (as an aside), it should be noted that in some jurisdictions, anything which is created or used by you in the preparation of your final report may be discoverable (whether it was included in the final report or not), including preliminary reports, audit logs, results of experiments and tests, notes, written remarks disparaging your client or adversary, etc.
In other words, be careful what you write down.
I had a civil case working for the plaintiff in a theft of intellectual property case and key to the case was the date and time at which certain events had occurred. The defendant had argued that he could not have used his desktop computer to transfer files to a competitor on a certain weekend because he had been out of town with his family and it wasn't reasonable that he would have taken his desktop with him.
After a subpoena of the defendant's forensic expert's work notes it was discovered that his own expert questioned this assertion because he found artefacts in the registry which made it more likely that defendant had taken the desktop with him on the trip. We had discovered the same and had come to the same conclusion but the fact that his own expert had admitted in his notes that he didn't believe his client's story was pretty damning.
PDF as they can easily be signed and secured while being uneasy to alter. Also viewable on almost any system.
I generate PDF's for client reports. It is secure and cross platform.
I think I'll learn to create dynamic reports just to give clients that option, but it sounds like for now I would mostly be using PDF reports. Thanks for everyone's input!