Legal Engineering Notebooks

[linuxboy]

Hi all,
In my engineering course we are going to be keeping engineering notebooks and they will be as close to legal standard as we can reasonably come. I tend to type _everything_. Is there a way to keep an engineering notebook digitally to legal (or so) standards?

- Oliver

[DonRotolo]

Not that I am aware of. It is not really possible to verify the integrity of a given digital file to assure that it has not been altered, since the 'fingerprints' for a file can be manipuated. Same for digital photos - they are not admissable in most courts.

With paper it is a lot easier. Not foolproof, but easier.

[Tristan Lall]

Dismissing electronic records out of hand is a bit of a naïve approach to the problem. While it wouldn't be entirely surprising that the legal system might be naïve about things it doesn't encounter very often, the basic evidentiary rules are generic enough to be adapted to the purpose of distinguishing good electronic evidence from bad.

For some light¹ reading on the subject, see for example:

• Admitting Electronic Evidence in Federal Court: I've Got All This Electronic Data—Now What Do I Do With It?
• Can Juries Really Believe What They See? New Foundational Requirements for the Authentication of Digital Images

For an engineering notebook, an adequate solution might be to store it on a server or file system that incorporates robust change-logging capabilities. So much the better if the access control policy for that system prevents the notating engineer from editing the metadata that identifies the changes. Even better (at least in this respect) if the data is stored by an independent third party with no motive to tamper with the records.

One relatively straightforward implementation of this would be a content management system that uniquely identifies the source, time and content of each committed edit. For example, the ChiefDelphi forum incorporates elements of this concept (though perhaps not with the thoroughness that would be desirable in this application), and, in combination with the right corroborating material, might be used as evidence of many things. A platform like Subversion or MediaWiki has even greater value in establishing the provenance of evidence stored within.

Of course, compared to paper, you face an uphill battle in convincing a court to accept it—because it's your responsibility to demonstrate that the system is robust enough to be trusted as a source of evidence. Courts have taken judicial notice of many aspects of paper record-keeping, and as such allow many shortcuts when dealing with familiar record-keeping media.

Incidentally, there's one enormous advantage to electronic records over paper records: they're easy to store redundantly and remotely (at moderate expense, at least in the short-to-medium term). For that reason in particular, it's worth having an electronic copy of your data, whether the originals are on paper or on electronic media.

¹ As compared to other legal texts....

[FrankJ]

We are using a company called Labarchives for our engineering note book. It is web based so it is very portable. "legality" isn't something we are really worried about, but it is geared towards commercial labs would would be concerned with such things. Everything gets date stamp. Combine that with some paper trail such as receipts.

If you ever get to court, the opposing side is always going to argue what ever you are doing is inadequate.

[Carol]

Many corporations - if not most large research corporations - use electronic notebooks in lieu of paper notebooks now. There are systems, and I know nothing about them, that can be used for legal purposes such as proof of work done on a certain date. There may be commerically available software for this. Properly designed systems have been used in courts - at least in patent litigation, which is the only legal area I know about. **

My company has used them for many years now.

Before those systems, there was a method to add a paper copy to the old bound notebooks (such as spectra, photographs, etc.). The paper was taped or pasted on a page of the bound notebook. A line of text was stamped so that half was on the page of the notebook and half on the paper, with a space for the person to sign and date it - again half on the page and half on the paper. this was used long before computers were common. (Yes, I'm dating myself here). You could probably do this if you want to print out what you typed and tape it into the bound notebook.

** if you really want more information, here is an article about their use in patent litigation. http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/126014/