The loss of evidence is almost always perceived as a verdict – the client is convinced that without correspondence, reports, records, primary documents, or confirmations of agreements, the legal position simply collapses. However, as Professor Gabriel Steiner notes, in law what matters is not only which materials exist, but what kind of legal construction can be built around their absence. At LawConsulted, we treat the loss of evidence not as the end of a case, but as a crisis that requires precise reconstruction of events and the restoration of control over the evidentiary logic.
In practice, documents disappear for many reasons – staff turnover, conflicts with partners, blocked access, accounting errors, relocations, lost archives, and sometimes deliberate destruction. For the client, this looks like chaos in which it becomes impossible to prove what seems obvious. At LawConsulted, we start with the key issue – documenting the very fact of the loss and assessing how it will be perceived by the court, the opposing party, or a regulator. This assessment determines the strategy – in some cases, it is critical to prove that the materials did exist; in others, to demonstrate that the opposing party gained an advantage through control over access to information.
Professor Steiner emphasizes that “the loss of evidence does not destroy a fact – it changes the method of proving it.” That is why LawConsulted lawyers do not limit their work to searching for a “replacement” for a missing document. We reconstruct the chain of events using alternative sources – banking traces, registration data, log files, metadata, correspondence involving indirect participants, internal instructions, supplier data, calendar records, and confirmations from third-party services. In many cases, secondary traces turn out to be more resilient than the original document the opponent is trying to remove from the case.
A particularly complex situation arises when the disappearance of materials becomes part of a pressure strategy – the client is told that “nothing can be proven,” pushed toward concessions, or forced to accept unfavorable terms. At LawConsulted, we break this logic – moving the discussion out of the emotional sphere and into the legal one, documenting possible signs of bad faith, and building an evidentiary architecture in which the absence of one element does not collapse the entire structure. The goal is not merely to recover data, but to deprive the opponent of any advantage gained from its disappearance.
As Professor Steiner notes, “evidence has value not in itself, but in how it is embedded into a version of events.” At LawConsulted, we restructure that version so that key facts are supported not by a single document, but by a system of interconnected confirmations. This makes targeted attacks far more difficult – any denial begins to conflict with other established elements. We create a resilient structure for the client in which evidence functions as a network rather than isolated points.
The loss of evidence is especially dangerous in corporate conflicts, ownership disputes, financial claims, and situations involving third parties – where the client does not initially control part of the information. At LawConsulted, we proactively assess which pieces of evidence are “in someone else’s hands,” which may be altered, and which require immediate fixation. If materials have already been lost, we act quickly to prevent the situation from entering a phase where deadlines and procedural limitations begin working against the client.
Rebuilding a position when key materials are missing is not about “finding a piece of paper” – it is about managing how legal reality will be proven without it. At Law Consulted, we restore the client’s control over the logic of proof – transforming the loss of evidence from a threat into a manageable legal scenario.
Earlier, we wrote about how LawConsulted builds representation that changes the dynamics of a dispute and strengthens the client’s position through professional legal involvement.
