What to expect when you instruct a disclosure lawyer

By Yair Cohen, Solicitor specialising in internet law

If you are thinking about instructing a solicitor to find out who is behind an anonymous post, an anonymous account, an anonymous review or a payment that has gone to an account you do not recognise, this page is for you. It sets out what to expect from us, in plain English, from the first call through to the disclosure coming back.

Most of our clients arrive at the same point. Something has been written, sent or done online that you need to deal with, and you do not know who is behind it. You have probably tried to handle it informally first. The platform did not move, the reporting channel did not move, and the matter has reached the stage where it needs a lawyer. This page tells you what happens next.

For the wider picture of the toolkit we use, see our note on how to unmask someone behind anonymous online posts. The substantive disclosure mechanisms sit on our pages on Norwich Pharmacal orders, getting disclosure from Facebook, how to get a disclosure request through to Google and disclosure orders in financial crimes. This page sits in front of all of those and answers the question you probably actually have, which is what it will be like to instruct us.

The initial assessment

The first thing we do is talk to you. We offer a fixed-fee initial consultation so you know what you are committing to before the conversation starts. The call usually runs to about an hour. We ask what has happened, what you have already tried and what you want the outcome to be. You do not need to have everything organised before the call. We will help you sort what matters from what does not.

By the end of that first call, you will have a view on three things. Whether your situation has a realistic identification route. Which of the routes (cooperative platform channel, court order against the platform, court order against a bank or processor, or US-side disclosure) is the right starting point for your matter. And a costs estimate that is honest about the range, not a single figure pretending to be precise.

If we think your matter is not a good fit for us, we say so on that call, and we point you at someone who will be better placed to help. That is part of why the initial conversation is fixed-fee. We would rather lose an hour of fee than take on a matter we cannot do well for you.

Putting your evidence together

Once we have agreed to take the matter on, the next stage is the evidence pack. Disclosure work lives or dies on the quality of the evidence that goes in with the application. The court is not going to grant an order against a platform on a thin or partial record.

What we are looking for from you is the screenshots, the URLs, the email headers where you have them, the dates and times, the account names, the payment records and the correspondence trail. Where you have already complained to the platform and been refused, we want the correspondence. Where there are witnesses to the surrounding events, we want their statements. Where there are documents on the corporate side (in a business matter), we want the relevant pages.

You do not need to present any of this in legal language. We do that part. What we need is the raw material in its original form, dated, with as little interpretation laid over it as possible.

The cooperative channel: when the platform will work with us

On many matters, the first move is not a court application. It is a properly framed approach to the platform. The big platforms, including Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Google (Blogger, YouTube, Maps, Gmail) and the major UK banks, all have legal-process teams that respond to a well-drafted request. Where the legal grounds are clearly made out and the data sought is proportionate, the platform will sometimes agree not to oppose a court application, or will indicate the right next step.

This is not the platform handing over data without a court order. Under the US Stored Communications Act and the UK and EU data-protection rules, that cannot happen. What it is, is the platform agreeing to a sensible procedural path that gets you to disclosure faster and at lower cost than a contested application. Where this approach is open to your matter, we use it. For the platform-specific detail, see our notes on getting disclosure from Facebook and how to get a disclosure request through to Google.

Open-source intelligence: the layer we run alongside

While the platform channel is running, we run an open-source intelligence layer alongside it (the full method is set out on our note on how we identify anonymous internet users using open-source intelligence). OSINT is the analysis we do on what is already public: profiles, posts, registration footprints, image metadata, Companies House records, social-media cross-references, and the breadcrumbs that anonymous users very often leave without realising. OSINT does not require any cooperation from the platform; we are working with what is already out there.

OSINT serves two purposes. The first is that it sometimes resolves the identification on its own, without a court application at all. The second is that, where a court application is needed, the OSINT findings strengthen the application and narrow the schedule of disclosure to what we actually need. The two streams run in parallel from the moment we have the evidence pack.

The court-order route

Where the cooperative channel and the OSINT layer do not get you all the way, the court-order route does. The main civil tool is a Norwich Pharmacal order, which the court grants against the platform, bank or processor that holds the information needed to identify the wrongdoer. The principle comes from Norwich Pharmacal Co Ltd v Customs and Excise Commissioners [1974] AC 133 and has been developed by the courts in many cases since.

We have run a lot of these applications. We draft them ourselves rather than instructing counsel for the standard work, which keeps your cost down. Where the platform or institution does not oppose, the application can be dealt with on paper rather than at a contested hearing, which keeps cost down further and shortens the timetable. Where there is a cross-border element and some of the information sits with a US-headquartered platform or US bank, we add a US follow-on through our colleagues in California under 28 U.S.C. § 1782(a) or a direct US subpoena.

For a worked example of the court-order route in action against a UK bank for an international invoice fraud, see our case study on how we combined a Norwich Pharmacal order against HSBC with OSINT to identify the people behind an international email fraud. The Phipps v Britton matter, where we ran the cross-border UK-and-US disclosure route end-to-end, sits on our Paul Britton and Origin Design case study page.

When we say yes, and when we say no

We are honest with you on the initial call about whether the matter is right for us. We say yes when the harm is real, the evidence supports a properly grounded application, and the disclosure target is one we know how to engage. That covers the bulk of the matters that reach us: anonymous defamation, anonymous harassment, anonymous reviews from people the client believes are competitors or former staff, anonymous blackmail, online fraud routed through a UK bank or processor, and cross-border matters that combine an English application with a US follow-on.

We say no, or signpost you elsewhere, when the matter does not fit. Where the conduct is genuinely free speech rather than wrongful, the application is unlikely to succeed and we will tell you that rather than file. Where the disclosure target is an institution we cannot realistically reach (some smaller foreign platforms, some jurisdictions with no equivalent of Norwich Pharmacal), we will tell you that too. Where the substantive claim that would follow disclosure is weak (a defamation matter that would not clear the serious-harm threshold under section 1 of the Defamation Act 2013, for instance), we will tell you that the disclosure is not worth the cost. We would rather have that conversation on the first call than after you have spent on an application that will not get you where you want to go.

You should expect a straight answer on whether your matter is a good fit, not a sales pitch. That is the conversation we have with you on the first call.

Lawyers' thoughts on instructing a disclosure lawyer

The reason this page is shorter on procedural detail than the rest of the cluster is that the procedure varies with the platform and the route. What does not vary is how the engagement runs. The single most useful thing you can do is to come to us early, with the material in something close to original form, and ready to have a frank conversation about whether the matter is a good fit. The route works for you when the evidence is good and the goals are realistic. It goes poorly when there is a gap between what you want and what the legal route can do.

The other thing worth saying is that disclosure is rarely the end of the matter. Once you know who is behind the content, the question becomes what to do with that knowledge: a defamation claim, a harassment injunction, a blackmail-and-extortion route, a regulatory complaint, a criminal report, or, sometimes, a careful letter that leads to the content coming down without any further proceedings. We talk about that as part of the initial assessment so you know where the disclosure is meant to take you, not just how to get it.

For the wider context on choosing the right disclosure instrument across platforms and routes, see our note on how to unmask someone behind anonymous online posts and the follow-the-money page on disclosure orders in financial crimes.