How To Use Text Messages In Court

Organized text message history for court exported and printed using Decipher Text Message.

Attorneys and clients oft find themselves needing to accurately certificate and impress text letters for courtroom, mediation, or legal proceedings. Each year there are millions more legal cases where text messages are existence used as evidence in a trial and also by lawyers for discovery.

Statista estimates estimates that terminal twelvemonth in 2021 approximately three.09 billion users accessed messaging apps to communicate. Projections say that this number will grow to 3.51 billion users by the twelvemonth 2025. That's a tremendous amount of messages sent via mobile devices! This includes iOS, Android, and also popular messaging apps like WhatsApp Messenger, Viber, Line, and WeChat. With text messaging and messaging apps at present solidified as i of the world's most pop forms of daily communication, the need to document and preserve text / sms messages for bear witness in courtroom has increased dramatically.

What is the best way to document and impress out my letters for a court case or legal proceeding?

No matter how you preserve text messages for evidence, you lot'll desire to brand sure that the records have all of the information necessary for them to be admissible in courtroom. Consult a lawyer for the specifics in your region about what information is required. For nearly legal matters the post-obit details should exist visible in your text message documentation:

The date and time of the messages.
The real contact information for the other party or parties in the text bulletin conversation. For SMS this is a phone number. For MMS or iMessages, this is either a telephone number or an email address.

Whether you lot are a lawyer, law enforcement official, or simply someone who has a pending court example or legal affair, there are several solutions for saving and printing text messages so that you can preserve evidence from your mobile phone's sms bulletin history.

iPhone

For iPhone / iPad / iTouch, we recommend using Decipher TextMessage to relieve and print out your text messages for court. Decipher TextMessage is already a trusted and widely used program past lawyers and police force enforcement officials for preserving any messaging data in a format that will hold up in a legal surroundings. Features include:

The software has a free trial so you can endeavour it out without spending whatever money.
Text messages are saved with a fourth dimension / date postage stamp and by contact ensuring that your documentation volition be upheld in a legal setting.
Depending on the formatting your jurisdiction requires for text message transcripts, yous may demand to show the iPhone contact data on every individual message. Decipher TextMessage allows you to impress your text messages with the contact data on each message, or to plough that pick off if you prefer.
Decipher TextMessage presents your iPhone text messages and iMessages in a similar format as seen on the iPhone. (Hither are links to specific instructions about printing iPhone text letters and exporting iPhone text letters to a PDF file.)
The software saves your text letters locally on your figurer. None of your data is attainable by anyone but yourself and cipher is stored in the cloud.
Decipher TextMessage will likewise show you if there are any deleted iPhone text messages or iMessages accessible in a backup.This feature that is useful for attorneys, police officers, or governmental agencies for show. (Click here for our guide most recovering deleted text letters.)
Decipher TextMessage is compatible with any iPhone running iOS 15 all the way back to iOS 4.
The program also supports Windows seven and higher up including Windows 10 and 11. Decipher TextMessage works for macOS Lion and above including Catalina, Big Sur, and Monterey.
You don't ever need the iPhone to save your data with Decipher TextMessage. The software will automatically access and read in information from exisiting iTunes backups on any Windows or Mac computer.
Decipher TextMessage allows for combining text message conversations from more than than i contact/group as well every bit selecting only a certain span of days or period of time depending on your needs.

Save text letters for court

Follow these steps to impress and relieve text messages for court

Backup an iPhone on your computer.
Launch Decipher TextMessage.
Choose a contact whose text messages you lot want to save for court.
Select Export to salve the text messages.
Open the saved PDF and choose Print to print the text messages for court, trial, or your lawyer.

All your text messages for court will be read into the software and displayed in conversation bubble format with the contact and time/date stamp on each message. Hither's an case of what you will see in the programme:

iPhone Screenshots

Another way to impress out your iPhone text messages is by taking screenshots of each text message screen on your device. To take a screenshot you printing the "Home" and "Sleep/Wake" push button to capture what is on your iPhone screen. At that place are various pros and cons of using the screenshot method. Some of these include:

Screenshots are quick and easy (and complimentary!) if you just have a few text messages.
Ane drawback of using the screenshot method is that it is time consuming. If y'all take lots of messages you volition need to screenshot each individual screen and organize the images into a text bulletin transcript manually.
If you're required to show the time on every message, you'll need to slide left on the Letters app screen to reveal each message time. Information technology's hard to do that and printing the screenshot buttons, and cuts off some of the message text.
If you lot don't have the iPhone in your possession, there would exist no way to employ the screenshot method.

Video Instructions - Documenting text messages for trial or legal matters

We have step-past-pace instructions outlined in our helpful YouTube video which will walk any iPhone user through the exact steps and directions so that you can immediately save your text messages for court, trial, or your attorney.

Android

There are several popular programs available for saving text letters from an Android device to your computer Some are costless and some tin exist purchased for a fee in the Google Play Store. I pop app is SMS Backup +. The program stores texts in your Gmail account and lets yous admission them from any spider web browser.

The app is free so you can endeavour information technology out without spending any money.
Press out the text messages from any web browser is user-friendly and easy.
It requires that y'all accept a Gmail account. If you don't, y'all can only annals for one and then be upward and running with the application inside minutes.

Android Screenshots

To take a screenshot of any Android device is fairy simple, however the commands are dissimilar depending on your specific device.

The first affair to try is pressing down the "sleep / wake" button and also the "volume down" button at the same time. If you see your screen "flash" and so yous take successfully taken a screenshot.
For Galaxy devices and other Android phones that accept a "home" push, endeavor holding downwardly the home push and the power button simultaneously until yous see the screen flash.
Later taking a screenshot the epitome will and then announced in the photo gallery app on your device. Simply wait for the screenshot photograph album and locate the image you just captured. You lot can and so ship, save, or share the screenshot depending on what is all-time for your needs.

Whether your device is an iPhone or an Android, nosotros hope these tips for preserving and saving your text messages for courtroom or a legal event have been helpful. Recall to back up your mobile data to your computer on a regular basis so that all your important information is safe and secure.

Feature Phones

Nosotros've seen a few questions in the comments department below about documenting text messages for non-smart phones. Contact us via our support page if y'all're interested in this and nosotros'll be happy follow upward with y'all! Delight be sure to mention the specific kind of feature phone from which you want to document sms/mms letters; the techniques and details vary depending on the telephone manufacturer/operating system.