Current
UDR revision lineage, UDS exact-state integrity, local verification, BrowserCarrier sharing, and existing Bates/custody utilities.
Legal Bug Light 3 · controlled evaluation
A document should carry the evidence needed to inspect its own history.
Universal Document can preserve revisions while a document is living, seal an exact final state, and let a recipient verify whether that state changed. It can support provenance analysis; it does not decide admissibility or replace external chain-of-custody procedure.
Current capability and boundaries
Extension or commensal
Structured custody events, matter identity and evidence-room workflow can be added without changing the UD core.
Not claimed
No admissibility, court acceptance, law-firm adoption, independent custody fact, or legal outcome is claimed.
Start with your responsibility
Litigation partner
Can the evidence package explain its lineage without replacing evidentiary judgment?
Open one-page brief →Trial counsel
What changed, who handled it, and what can I actually prove?
Open one-page brief →General Counsel
Can final contracts carry their revision and verification evidence?
Open one-page brief →Legal operations
Can provenance travel between systems instead of living in a spreadsheet?
Open one-page brief →eDiscovery and litigation support
Can Bates identity and document identity remain machine-readable?
Open one-page brief →Forensic examiner
Can I independently verify the exact bytes and recorded lineage?
Open one-page brief →Court technology
Can recipients inspect evidence without installing proprietary software?
Open one-page brief →Records manager
Can a final record point back to the revisions that produced it?
Open one-page brief →Compliance and investigations
Can evidence handling events be explicit and reviewable?
Open one-page brief →Expert witness
What does the technical evidence establish—and what does it not establish?
Open one-page brief →Five plain-English questions
Why Doesn't the Evidence File Carry Its Own Chain of Custody?
Most files carry content and basic metadata, while custody history is maintained in surrounding systems and records. UD can carry declared provenance with the document; external custody still requires real people, procedures and evidence.
Read the answer →What Exactly Did the Signer Sign?
A reliable signing record should identify the exact document state covered by the signature. A sealed UDS binds verification to exact bytes so a changed copy fails integrity verification.
Read the answer →Bates Numbers Should Be Data, Not Ink
A visible Bates stamp helps humans, but structured production identity can also be searched, validated and exchanged without reading pixels from every page.
Read the answer →The Problem With final_FINAL_signed_v7.pdf
A filename is a label, not revision lineage. UDR records revisions; UDS identifies a sealed final state and detects later byte changes.
Read the answer →A Signed Contract Should Remember What Came Before It
The signing state matters, but so does the path to it. UD separates living revision history from the sealed final document while preserving an explicit relationship between them.
Read the answer →