Protect Your Evidence
the preservation centerin your browser — nothing you type is stored or sentThe moment a dispute is real, BOTH sides must keep everything related to it — and courts punish deletion harder than almost any bad fact. Attorneys put clients under a written litigation hold on day one; this is the same protection, in plain language, plus the letter that asks third parties (a building, a business, a neighbor with a camera) to preserve what they hold before it overwrites.
Pro se? You stand in an attorney's shoes — the preservation duty binds you identically, and the same duty binds the other side. Legal information, not legal advice; deleting evidence after a dispute arises can cost you the case regardless of anything on this page.
1. Where does your evidence live?
2. Is anything about to disappear?
3. What happens when evidence is lost — both directions
The same rule that threatens you protects you: if THEY lose evidence they should have kept, these are the remedies attorneys seek — and the standard they must meet.
When loss caused unfair harm
Information that should have been preserved is lost because reasonable steps were not taken, and it cannot be restored or replaced.
Measures no greater than necessary to CURE the prejudice: additional discovery at the loser's cost, evidence about the loss, argument to the factfinder, cost/fee shifting.
When it was deliberate
The party acted with INTENT to deprive another party of the information's use in the litigation.
Presumption that the lost information was unfavorable · Adverse-inference jury instruction · Striking pleadings / dismissal / default (the last rungs, never the first ask)
FRCP 1.380 (ESI loss remedies) · FRCP 1.280 (preservation scope/proportionality) — verbatim in /rules
TrialVector is software, not a law firm; nothing here is legal advice and nothing you type leaves your browser. Building your discovery plan next? The Discovery Plan Builder sequences the whole campaign — preservation is its Wave 0.