Page Vault: Setting The Standard For Admissible Webpage Captures

Page Vault was founded in 2013 with a vision of allowing lawyers to quickly and easily capture webpages in a way that would later be admissible as evidence in court. We sat down with Jeffrey Eschbach and Patrick Schweihs, the CEO and staff attorney of Page Vault, to learn more about how the product works and what it can offer lawyers.

Jeff, what was the impetus for creating Page Vault?

I came up with the idea behind Page Vault in 2012 as a needed tech solution after seeing a huge shift in content to the web, especially in the legal market. Realizing that Internet content can change in a heartbeat, and that something on a webpage today can be gone tomorrow, there seemed to be an obvious need to create a way to capture content on the web in a way that’s extremely easy but also legally defensible, to be able to show how it looked at a certain point in time. I talked to attorneys who confirmed that this was a growing pain point, especially for litigators.

You describe Page Vault as being specifically designed for lawyers. Why is that the case?

Page Vault is extremely easy to use, and it keeps its users out of the chain of custody. There’s not a lot of need for training, which is something lawyers don’t typically have a lot of time for. It’s also intuitive and doesn’t require an IT professional to run it. If you can use a web browser, you can use Page Vault. There’s no way to tamper with the results, meaning that they hold up in court. Page Vault will even provide an affidavit that speaks to the veracity of the content.

In working with law firms, we noticed that web capture is a task that anyone in the firm might be doing, from lawyers to IT folks to paralegals or law clerks. Page Vault’s licensing structure allows a firm unlimited access for all its employees, meaning that everyone in the firm can have the software installed under a single license. This fits with how law firms operate, and makes the product useful for everyone, not just IT professionals or those with a lot of tech savvy.

How does Page Vault actually work? How does it keep users out of the chain of custody?

When you start an active browsing session on your computer, you’re part of the chain of custody. If you take a screen shot on your own system, you lack the trusted third party and secured storage needed to authenticate it. You end up as a potential witness in any case where the evidence is used. If it’s contested, it usually ends up as a “he said, she said” situation.

When you use Page Vault to do a web capture, you’re remote controlling our browser in the cloud. This means that you can’t tamper with the final product. It never goes to your computer and you never enter the chain of custody. It may feel like you’re running a normal browser, but the program is actually not running on your machine. The capture is automated, which means there’s no way to alter it, Photoshop it, or change the way it looks on the browser. That’s why Page Vault is able to provide an affidavit verifying the capture’s authenticity.

How do Page Vault web captures differ from simple screenshots than anyone can take with their own computer?

Unlike traditional screen shots, a Page Vault web capture includes everything from the top of a webpage to the bottom in one PDF, and the final product is available instantly through a secure portal. It automatically scrolls through a webpage to compile multiple screenshots into one PDF, and also provides the metadata and the HTML source code for the webpage.

Tell us a little bit about the affidavits you provide.

The affidavit really goes to the architecture of how the software is designed. It verifies and explains that the Internet traffic is never running to the attorney’s computer, that Page Vault is a trusted third party that handles and stores the web captures, and that no one is able to tamper with or change them. The affidavits are admissible in court under Federal Rule of Evidence 901(b)(9), because Page Vault is a reliable, repeatable software process that captures content without allowing a person to be involved.

Have you seen any challenges to the admissibility of your web captures?

Page Vault web captures have successfully been used in federal court. The precedent for their admissibility was already set before Page Vault was created; web capture through software has been used in court for years. Much like DNA evidence in its infancy, there were a lot of questions when the technology was first used. However, now that it’s been established, there are no concerns. This isn’t a new category of evidence or a new process, we’ve just created a cheaper and easier way to secure this kind of evidence. That’s where the innovation lies. Judges and lawyers are confident that our software takes the risk off their plates, and we haven’t seen any push back.

Are there certain types of websites or certain areas of law where Page Vault is more useful?

Page Vault can be used for anything on the web. If you can surf to it and see it in a browser, we can capture it. The majority of the content we see it used for is social media, but it works for any webpage.

As for areas of law, any litigation has a potential need for Page Vault. In the early years, we saw a lot of focus on intellectual property, family law, personal injury, and insurance defense. But as time goes on, the practice areas where it’s applicable are always growing. Now all practice areas having more and more components coming from Internet sources. Real estate is an up-and-coming area, and we’ve seen an increased need for volume captures from anti-counterfeiting and trademark clients.

Patrick, as the staff attorney, how do you stay on top of developments in evidentiary law regarding admissibility to make sure that Page Vault continues to give clients what they’ll need?

I personally give CLE presentations on proper ways to capture and preserve webpage content, and changes in the law in that area. We’re also always conducting research to see where the courts are heading. And now that we’re recognized as an industry leader in this area, we’ve seen the information start to flow to us and we see developments faster. Clients will reach out if they come across something interesting in this area of the law.

What do you see as the current big legal issues in authentication and web capture?

First and foremost, we’ve seen a huge increase in volume — every case now has some aspect where web capture is applicable. Web captures have become a standard part of due diligence, and there’s now an obligation to capture content from day one, because it could be gone the next day. We’ve also seen a growing trend in the US for lawyers to be tech competent. The ABA now has guidelines requiring attorneys to have some sort of tech understanding, and several states have followed this. It’s no longer acceptable to claim ignorance when it comes to complying with chain of custody.

Does Page Vault provide any services beyond simple web capture?

Yes, we have a number of other services that are useful to lawyers. We’ve recently introduced a new monitoring service, through which a client can identify a certain website that it needs to be monitored, and Page Vault can do that on a regular basis behind the scenes.

We also offer a service called Site Vault. Based on market feedback, we found that clients were struggling with websites that have 50 or 100 pages, where it’s difficult and time-consuming to navigate to all of them. With Site Vault, we can give a quote for a custom job that will go in and capture all of the pages on that site.

There’s also a service we offer called Vault Capture — a client can give us a list of webpages that they want captured, and we’ll capture them all. We’re also working on rolling out some special Facebook-specific features, which make capturing content from that site a lot easier. We’ve seen a lot of demand from clients for captures that include all of the expanded comments on a page. We’ll be introducing an auto-expand feature, which will allow users to expand all comments prior to capture, conveniently formatting the page for ideal capture.

There’s increasing pressure in today’s market to keep costs low. Why is Page Vault worth the investment?

Our law firm plans allow any number of users to access the software for one low price. Many firms will give us their entire roster of employees, enabling more than 100 or more people to access the product with no additional cost.

Manual screenshotting can be extremely slow, and you’ll see paralegals spending lots of billable hours on it. In terms of pricing, moving to Page Vault makes a lot of sense purely from an efficiency standpoint. There’s been a big shift in the legal market toward running firms like businesses. This means efficiency is key. You need to be able to do work quickly without racking up billable hours that will ultimately be written off.

Even more importantly, it comes down to risk. At the end of the day, all law firms want to reduce the risk that clients face and need to employ best practices. Page Vault eliminates the risk of error when it comes to chain of custody. This is a valuable thing that most lawyers are willing to spend a little more for.