Chain of custody — Legalnaut glossary  A Markdown version of this page is available at https://legalnaut.com/glossary/chain-of-custody.md for AI and LLM tools. 

  Chain of custody
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 Chain of custody is the documented sequence of hands a piece of evidence has passed through, from collection to court.

A break in the chain is an opening for the other side. If nobody can say who held a document between collection and disclosure, its integrity is arguable.

Software cannot supply a chain of custody on its own, but it can record the part that happens inside it: when a document arrived, by which route, who has opened it, and whether its content has changed since.

 Related: [Provenance](https://legalnaut.com/glossary/provenance), [Checksum](https://legalnaut.com/glossary/checksum), [Audit log](https://legalnaut.com/glossary/audit-log)

 Legalnaut builds this out of your own case file. [See the plans](https://legalnaut.com/pricing).

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