Contact
Two things happen before anything substantive — a conflict check, and a conversation with no confidential material in it
Run the conflict check first
The first exchange should be a conflict check and nothing else. Send the identifying information and stop: the parties and their affiliates, counsel of record on both sides, the jurisdiction, and the websites or domain names at issue. That is enough to run the check and not enough to create a problem.
Conflicts in this discipline are broader than they look, because the practice is still active. A party, a party's competitor, or a party's agency may be a current or former client, and the website at the center of the dispute may be one this practice has already touched. Better to find that out in the first email than in the second week.
Send nothing privileged or confidential in the first inquiry
Do not send privileged material, work product, protected discovery, or anything covered by a protective order in an initial inquiry. Until the conflict check clears and an engagement is in place, there is no protected channel and no relationship to attach protection to. A description of the dispute in general terms — the type of claim, the period at issue, the kind of data that exists — is enough to determine whether a search expert is needed at all.
Note how the form on this page works, because it is unusual. It composes a message in your own email client and sends nothing to this website. Whatever you type is transmitted by your own email provider, exactly as any other email would be. Treat it accordingly: ordinary email, not a secure channel.
How to make contact
- Bill Hartzer, Hartzer Consulting
- Telephone: 214-236-4378
- Email: [email protected]
- Practice site: hartzer.com
Messages sent through the form on this page reach [email protected]. For anything time-sensitive — a disclosure deadline that is already running, or a rebuttal window — telephone is faster than either.
What contact does not do
Contacting Bill does not create an engagement. It does not create an attorney-client relationship, it does not create an expert relationship, and it does not preserve any deadline. Only an executed written engagement does that, and it follows the conflict check rather than preceding it.
Bill is not an attorney and nothing said in an inquiry or a reply is legal advice. If evidence in your matter is at risk — logs on a retention schedule, analytics tied to a departing employee, a reporting property whose rolling window is quietly discarding the months you need — preservation is a step for counsel to take now, not one that waits on retaining an expert.