Frequently asked questions

The expert report is the instrument of the court-appointed expert, who officially answers the questions to the expert put in the proceedings. The technical opinion is produced by an expert retained by a party, to support a claim, challenge a report or ground a decision. At VALLIM Perícias the work is delivered at four levels of depth: technical report, short technical opinion, administrative opinion and court expert report, so the client retains exactly what the case requires.

The court-appointed expert is designated by the court to produce the official technical evidence and answers the parties' questions impartially. The party-appointed expert is retained by one of the parties to follow the court expert's work, draft questions in the client's favour, challenge inadequate methodologies and present a dissenting opinion where appropriate.

Pricing depends on the scope, the technical complexity and the deadline. The initial feasibility consultation is free of charge. After a preliminary analysis, a detailed technical proposal is presented.

Typical turnaround of 15 to 45 days, depending on complexity. Urgent cases are prioritised by prior agreement. Advanced examinations of extreme complexity, involving many servers and a large volume of evidence assets, run to as much as 90 days.

Yes. On-site work in the main state capitals and anywhere else through a dedicated trip or assisted remote collection. Portugal and the European Union are covered as well.

Yes, by prior agreement and subject to availability in the schedule.

It is the rigorous record of every person, place and procedure that a piece of digital evidence passes through. The work follows ISO/IEC 27037 and art. 158-A of the CPP (Brazilian Code of Criminal Procedure), with full documentation of each step.

Yes, and in many cases that is the ideal moment. Producing evidence in advance and getting strategic guidance can be decisive for the outcome of the claim.

Yes. The report is valid before any court in Brazil and internationally as well. For use abroad, a sworn translation is usually required; if the client already foresees that need, an international report with sworn translation can be commissioned from the outset.

All of them. Computers, servers, hard drives, SSDs, USB sticks, smartphones (Android and iOS), embedded systems, cameras, IoT, databases, ERP, cloud and corporate networks.

No, and be wary of anyone who promises that. Every forensic discipline has real technical limits. When the material does not support a safe conclusion, the result is declared inconclusive, with the limitations documented in the report. That technical honesty is what makes the evidence withstand challenge.

No. Forensic work here is strictly lawful: no breaking into accounts, no intercepting communications, no cracking other people's passwords and no monitoring of individuals. The work is done on evidence lawfully obtained, with a documented chain of custody, and requests outside those limits are turned down.

A confidentiality agreement (NDA), the LGPD (Brazil's data protection act) applied to the forensic work itself, strict custody protocols, a dedicated laboratory with controlled access, and confidentiality maintained even after the contract ends.

The arrangements are set case by case: a single instalment, payment in stages or billing by technical hour.

Through the assisted remote collection model: the laboratory conducts the procedure at a distance, guiding an authorised person on site step by step, with integrity verified by hash at source and a full record of the session. Anything requiring physical presence is organised as a dedicated mission planned from Brazil. The design respects the data protection laws of each jurisdiction, such as the LGPD and the GDPR.

The method is what crosses borders: reports produced under international standards (the ISO/IEC 27037 family) are understood by courts, arbitrators and auditors in other jurisdictions. For formal use abroad, steps such as sworn translation and any legalisations are assessed case by case, and can be commissioned from the start when the need is already foreseen.

Yes. Work for Portugal and the European Union combines assisted remote analysis with dedicated trips from Brazil. The methodology follows international standards (ISO/IEC 27037 and related standards), recognised in any jurisdiction, and the .eu domain reflects that deliberate transcontinental positioning.

Yes, case by case, particularly for matters involving documents and evidence that circulate between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. Read more on the International Work page.

The court examination takes place within the proceedings, by court appointment or through party-appointed experts. The extrajudicial examination takes place before or outside the proceedings: it produces evidence in advance, grounds negotiations and settlements, and often avoids the dispute altogether, or wins it before it begins.

It is the examination and analysis of all the evidence the client believes to have, carried out before any claim is filed. The preliminary examination establishes what evidence really exists: whether filing is justified, whether an out-of-court settlement is worth attempting, or whether the best course is not to act yet. In short, it is the assurance of taking the next step, be it litigation or negotiation, knowing there is evidence to prove what is claimed.

It is an examination carried out outside court proceedings, usually at a company's initiative, to look into an internal matter: an employee's compliance with duties, a suspicion of fraud, an incident. It is also a form of extrajudicial examination, a term that simply means "outside court proceedings". The result grounds administrative decisions and, should the matter escalate, can support a future claim.

They are the technical questions the court's expert must answer. The parties draft them through their lawyers, ideally with the support of a party-appointed expert. A well-built question steers the examination to where the argument needs it; a generic question produces a generic answer.

Yes, and it is one of the smartest uses of forensic work: an out-of-court opinion demonstrates the facts technically and shifts the balance of a negotiation. If no settlement comes, the work has already prepared the ground for litigation.

In retained work (party-appointed expert, technical opinion, extrajudicial examination), the proposal is presented per case: fixed fees, technical hourly rate or fees contingent on the outcome. In a court appointment, the expert's fees are set by the court in accordance with the procedural rules.

Not all is lost: even outside the ideal moment, a technical opinion can ground submissions on the report, support appeals and assist the lawyer in the following stages. The earlier the technical side comes in, the more options exist.

It depends on the model, the operating system and the state of the device, but the reach usually comes as a surprise: messages (including from apps), location history, photos with metadata, call logs, application data and, in many scenarios, deleted content. The feasibility assessment indicates what your case allows.

Often yes, but not always: recovery depends on the space not having been overwritten and on the system's protections. The examination states frankly what was recovered, what was not and why.

With the full forensic procedure: write blockers, generation of a forensic image (bit-for-bit copy), hash calculation at collection and at verification, and a chain of custody documented from first contact to delivery of the report. The work is always done on copies; the original stays preserved.

Yes, given legitimate access and proper authorisation, with documented collection and a defined scope. The lawfulness of the acquisition is part of the examination: evidence poorly collected is tainted from birth.

Corporate equipment can be examined within the limits of the company's usage policy and the law. The work runs side by side with the legal team so that the evidence produced is usable, and not a liability.

The original is always the ideal scenario: it allows examination of stroke pressure, ink crossings and the characteristics of the medium. Copies and scans may allow a preliminary analysis, with limitations stated in the report. In the feasibility assessment, the answer is frank about what your material allows you to conclude.

The more genuine specimens from the same period, the better: handwriting varies, and it is the consistency of graphic habits that identifies the hand. Documents signed at notary offices, banks and public bodies tend to make good specimens. Collection is guided case by case.

No. Graphology tries to infer personality from handwriting and has no evidentiary value. Forensic handwriting examination is a forensic discipline: it compares measurable graphic habits to demonstrate authenticity or authorship, with a method accepted in court.

Document dating is the most advanced level of the field: it involves analysis of ink, paper and printing, at times with laboratory support. Not every case allows dating; feasibility is assessed before any commitment.

It is far harder than it looks. Edits leave traces in the file's internal structure, in the metadata, in the system dates and in the audit trails of the platforms it passed through. The technical challenge is knowing where to look, and that is exactly what the examination does.

In many formats, yes. A PDF, for instance, can carry earlier edits inside itself (incremental updates). Cloud documents keep a version history. Each case is assessed for feasibility.

A screenshot on its own is fragile: it is an image, editable like any other. What sustains the evidence is the extraction of the conversation from the source device, with metadata and a chain of custody. Where only the screenshot exists, the examination states what can and cannot be concluded.

Yes. What gives evidence its validity is the method: chain of custody, declared methodology and reproducibility. It is the same rigour as a physical examination, applied to the digital medium.

Electronic signature is the genus: any way of expressing agreement by electronic means (a click, a password, biometrics, a platform). Digital signature is the most robust species: it uses a cryptographic certificate (such as ICP-Brasil) that mathematically binds the signatory to the document. The forensic examination treats each one with its own method.

This is one of the most important examinations in the field: a signature can be technically valid and still cover tampered content. The analysis compares the hash of the signed document, the platform's audit trail and the versions of the file.

Yes, according to the level of signature used. What the examination verifies is whether that specific signature is authentic, intact and timely, by examining the technical trail of the transaction.

The voice is not a fingerprint, and be wary of anyone who treats it as one. What forensic phonetics does is compare the questioned sample with specimens from the suspect and express, in probabilistic terms, how far the evidence supports each hypothesis. That is how science works and that is how evidence withstands challenge.

It is, with one essential caveat: forwarding through the app compresses the file and strips metadata. The ideal is direct extraction from the source device, preserving the raw file with a chain of custody. That is a differentiator here: the original is retrieved from the device, combining phonetics with computer forensics.

Both examinations exist. Cuts and insertions leave traces: spectral discontinuities, jumps in background noise, compression mismatches. The absence of those traces, documented with method, also supports the integrity of the recording.

There are real technical limits, and they are stated openly: very short material, excessive noise, disguise and even the effect of the telephone on the voice can lead to an inconclusive result. The feasibility assessment, at no cost, says frankly what your material allows.

Yes, and demand is growing fast. Synthetic speech carries artefacts of its own: anomalous prosody, absence of the physiological micro-variations of the human voice, traces of the generation process. The examination combines acoustic analysis with digital traces in the file.