Engagement Process

Conflict check first

Nothing substantive is exchanged before a conflict check is run. What is needed for it is short: the domain names at issue, the parties and any related entities, and the forum if one is already known.

That information is enough to check, and deliberately not enough to convey the substance of a matter. If a conflict exists, it is identified before either side has spent anything and before any material has moved. If none exists, the engagement moves to scope.

Whether a particular set of facts creates a conflict, and whether a consulting role could later become a testifying role in the same matter, are questions governed by the rules of the forum and are for counsel to determine.

Scope, in writing

The second step is agreeing what question is being answered, for which forum, and where the boundary of the opinion sits.

That gets written down, because scope drift is what produces a technical report nobody can defend. A defined scope also determines what does not get examined, and a report that states which names, which dates and which questions were outside scope — and at whose instruction — is considerably more robust than one where the omissions are simply not mentioned.

Scope also fixes the boundary that holds for the rest of the engagement: the work addresses what the records show, and does not address the legal characterization of the record. Bad faith, likelihood of confusion, fame of a mark and the quantum of damages are for the panel, the court or the trier of fact. Counsel directs the matter throughout.

Materials

What is useful at the start:

• The domain names at issue, and the date ranges that matter.
• The forum, or the candidate forums, since the same captures are organized very differently for an administrative proceeding and for court.
• The filings or the draft claim, and any decision already issued.
• Anything the client has already captured — screenshots, exports, correspondence — with whatever is known about when and how it was captured.
• Any productions already received, and the transmittals that came with them.
• For a domain holder: acquisition records. The registry creation date survives transfers and says nothing about when the current holder acquired the name; invoices, marketplace or broker confirmations and registrar account history are frequently the only proof of that date, and only the holder has them.

Incomplete material is not a reason to delay the start. The first task is usually preservation, and it does not wait on the rest.

Preservation timing

Preservation runs first because the record does not wait for the engagement to be fully scoped.

Live state — DNS answers, site content, redirect configuration — can change in minutes, and a party that has received notice is the party most likely to change it. Provider access and authentication logs run on retention windows each provider sets, commonly measured in weeks. Registrar records for the registration itself are bounded by published retention floors. None of those clocks is affected by the litigation calendar.

So the sequence is: capture what is publicly available immediately, hash it at capture, log the collection contemporaneously, and produce a written list of the custodians identified and their retention windows. That list is what lets counsel decide what to demand and in what order, against real deadlines rather than assumed ones.

What is served, on whom, and under what authority, is entirely counsel's decision.

Analysis and report

Analysis follows the shape of the question. A contested-dates matter produces a timeline with a source column for every row and event time separated from observation time. A test with enumerated elements produces a matrix with an explicit entry where no records were found. An attribution question produces a linkage matrix with each link's strength and its alternative explanation stated.

The report states the question asked, the sources used, the method with tools and versions, the capture times and hashes, the findings, and the limits of each source. The limits section is written before the conclusion, and it names specific gaps rather than offering general caution.

Form is dictated by the forum: an indexed schedule of annexes and a self-contained declaration for an administrative proceeding, where word limits fall on the filing rather than the annexes; a report written to the applicable procedural rule and reliability standard in court. Draft review with counsel happens before anything is final.

Deposition and testimony

Where a matter reaches that stage, availability for deposition and for testimony is arranged with counsel.

Two practical points. Everything relied on becomes discoverable in a testifying role, which is one reason the collection log, the manifest and the exception log are kept as working documents from day one rather than assembled later. And the parts of an analysis that were left implicit are the parts that get tested — which is why stating the limits in the report, in specific technical terms, is a working decision rather than a stylistic one.

Scheduling, sequencing and any question about the scope of examination are matters for counsel.

What is not published here

Fees, rates, retainer arrangements and turnaround commitments are settled directly with counsel and are not published on this site. Neither are engagement lists; hartzer.com is the actively maintained record of credentials and engagements.

Nothing on this page is legal advice, and nothing on this site creates an expert-client or attorney-client relationship.