Chain of custody is the paper trail showing every person who handled a piece of evidence, when they had it, and what they did with it, from the moment it was collected until it is offered in court. A clean chain supports the argument that the evidence presented at trial is the same evidence collected at the scene or gathered in discovery, unaltered and untampered with.

Gaps or inconsistencies in the chain do not automatically make evidence inadmissible, but they give the opposing party ammunition to argue the evidence is unreliable, and in serious cases can support exclusion or a spoliation argument. The standard is generally reasonable assurance of integrity, not absolute perfection, but the more significant the evidence, the more scrutiny its custody trail receives.

Because Juricratic never mutates observed evidence in place — every ingestion and revision is an event with its own timestamp and actor — a matter's evidence record functions as a running custody log for how digital exhibits entered and moved through the case file, which is useful groundwork for a real custody argument even though it does not substitute for physical evidence handling procedures.

Litigators build and preserve chain-of-custody documentation for physical evidence, forensic samples, and sensitive digital files from the moment litigation is reasonably anticipated, and demand the same documentation from opposing parties during discovery. A broken chain is a common target for cross-examination and can undercut an otherwise strong piece of proof.