Knowledge Base
Guides
Concrete answers to legal questions that come up repeatedly in document review work. Filter by practice area or read all of them.
Proportionality in Child Removal Cases
The proportionality standard in a child protection matter requires the agency to document that it weighed the risk to the child against the intrusiveness of the proposed removal, and that less restrictive alternatives were both tried and explained as insufficient in the specific case.
Read the guide →Child ProtectionEvaluating Voluntary Services
Voluntary services are considered insufficient when the record can show, concretely, that services were offered to the extent needed, that the parent or child did not consent to or participate in them, and that the gap cannot be closed with a reasonable alternative measure.
Read the guide →Child ProtectionHow to Review a Child Protection Investigation
Review a child protection investigation report by first separating the caseworker's conclusions from the underlying statements, then testing whether the conclusions are actually supported by the record, and finally identifying the language that is central to the agency's argument.
Read the guide →Child ProtectionSource Checking in a Child Protection Investigation
The reliability of a source in a child protection investigation is evaluated by identifying who the original source of a statement was, how the statement was documented, how close in time the documentation is to the event, and whether the statement is independently corroborated by other information in the record.
Read the guide →Criminal DefenseHow to Review a Police Investigation
Review a police investigation by systematically going through witness statements and physical evidence one at a time, testing whether the charging document is actually supported by the record, and identifying alternative explanations the investigation did not address.
Read the guide →Criminal DefenseEvaluating Evidence in Criminal Cases
The evaluation of evidence in a criminal case is structured by weighing each item of evidence on its own, then against the charging document, and finally against reasonable alternative explanations, before the evidence as a whole is measured against the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
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