Legal process
How we handle requests for information.
Investigators, regulators, prosecutors and private litigants contact us about published records and about the material behind them. Those are different requests with different answers. This page sets out both, so nobody has to guess what we will and will not do.
- Policy
- LEP-01
- Applies to
- All requests
- Review cycle
- Annual
- Owner
- Editor-in-chief and counsel
Section 01
Start here: almost everything you want is already public.
The overwhelming majority of requests we receive ask for material that is published, free, and linked to its underlying source. Reading the record first saves everyone a formal process.
Published records need no request
Every dossier, report and news item is publicly readable, including the source record behind it. You may cite, quote and rely on published material without contacting us and without permission.
Source documents are named, not held in secret
Where a claim rests on a court filing, a registry extract or an enforcement order, the source record names the issuing body and the retrieval date. In nearly all cases you can obtain the original directly and should.
Republication is already licensed
Non-commercial republication by public bodies, courts and academic institutions is covered by our standing terms. Read the republishing policy rather than writing to ask.
Section 02
What we will and will not disclose.
The distinction is not about who is asking. It is about whether disclosure would expose a source. A request from a national regulator and a request from a private claimant get the same analysis.
| Category | Position | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Published material and citations | Provided | Already public. We will confirm what we published and when, and supply the version history. |
| Version and correction history | Provided | Every revision is timestamped and retained. We will produce the full log for any record. |
| Authentication of our own publication | Provided | Where a court needs confirmation that we published a given text on a given date, we will confirm it. |
| Unpublished research notes and drafts | Resisted | Produced only under a valid, contested order from a court with jurisdiction over us, after we have exhausted challenges. |
| Identity of confidential sources | Never | We do not disclose sources voluntarily, under commercial pressure, or in response to any request. We will litigate. |
| Material that would identify a source indirectly | Never | Document metadata, submission timestamps, routing data and internal correspondence that could narrow a source pool are treated as source identity. |
| Reader and member records | Resisted | Minimised by design and disclosed only under valid legal process. See the privacy policy for what is retained and for how long. |
Section 03
Source protection is not a negotiating position.
It is the condition on which the archive functions. People give us documents because they believe we will not give them up, and that belief has to be true in the hard cases or it is worth nothing in the easy ones.
We do not identify confidential sources. Not to prosecutors, not to regulators, not to opposing counsel, not to a subject threatening proceedings, and not in exchange for access, funding or the withdrawal of a claim against us.
Where we are served with an order seeking source-identifying material, we will notify the affected source wherever it is lawful and safe to do so, challenge the order through available process, and seek to narrow it. We record the existence of such orders in the annual transparency report to the extent we are permitted to.
This extends to material that identifies a source by inference. A document set narrow enough that only four people could have supplied it identifies those four people. We treat that material as we treat a name.
Section 04
Serving legal process
Process must be validly served on the publishing entity. Emailing an editor directly does not constitute service and will delay rather than accelerate a response.
- Step 01
Serve counsel
Direct all process to the address on the legal page, marked for the attention of counsel. Include the specific records at issue by URL.
- Step 02
Scope review
We assess jurisdiction, validity and scope. Requests that sweep in unpublished material or source data are challenged as a matter of course.
- Step 03
Source notification
Where lawful and safe, affected sources are notified before anything is produced, so they can seek their own protection.
- Step 04
Challenge or narrow
We contest orders that reach source-identifying material and seek to confine those we cannot defeat to the narrowest defensible set.
- Step 05
Transparency entry
The request is logged and reported in aggregate in the annual transparency report, unless a gag prevents it. Gags are themselves reported where permitted.
Section 05
What we do not do.
Some of these have been asked for repeatedly. The answer does not change with the seniority of the person asking.
We do not investigate on commission. We do not take taskings from law enforcement, regulators, intelligence services, litigants or private clients. Nobody outside the editorial function selects our subjects, and accepting such a tasking would end our independence and our usefulness in the same moment.
We do not act as an informal channel. Off-the-record briefings to investigators about unpublished material, requests to hold a story while an operation runs, and quiet confirmations of what we hold are all declined. If a matter is worth an official request, make one.
We do not suppress records on request. Published material is not removed because it is inconvenient to a live investigation or to a party in litigation. Where we are shown that something is wrong, we correct it publicly, which is a different remedy and the only one we offer.
We do not provide expert opinion for hire. We will authenticate our own publications for a court. We will not supply analysis, opinion evidence or risk conclusions to a party to a dispute.
If you believe a published record is wrong, the corrections process is faster than legal process.
It is also public, which is usually what a subject actually wants. Send the document that contradicts us and it goes through the same verification as everything else in the archive.