Supervising solicitors and search orders

Executing a search order can be challenging and unpredictable. Our team of both female and male independent supervising solicitors has experience that is second to none.

Serving and executing a search order requires a supervising solicitor with the firmness, flexibility and tact to handle the varied and complex legal and practical issues that may arise – both on the day of the search and in the days and weeks that follow. Being able to field female supervising solicitors is becoming increasingly important as safeguarding issues become more prevalent.

We believe few, if any, firms can match our experience in acting as supervising solicitors.

How we help

We have supervised the execution of hundreds of search orders, imaging orders, doorstep delivery up orders and similar injunctions – including during the coronavirus pandemic. We have been involved in search orders in some of the most high-profile and high-value litigation before the English courts in recent years.

Many of the matters in which we are engaged are confidential, however those in the public domain include:

  • JSC BTA Bank v Mukhtar Ablyazov & others
  • Gordon Ramsay Holdings v Chris Hutcheson & others
  • Sheikh Abdulrahman Khalid Bin Mahfouz & others v Muhaned Farid Mahmoud El-Rashid & another
  • Ocado v Jonathan Faiman, Project Today Holdings Limited and another
  • JSC Mezhdunarodniy Promyshlenniy Bank & State Corporation “Deposit Insurance Agency” v Sergei Pugachev and another
  • Commercial Bank of Dubai PSC & others v Al-Sari & others
  • BM-Bank JSC v Andrey Chernyakov & others
  • Suppipat & others v Narongdej, Commercial Bank of Siam & others
  • Young v Young
  • Koldyreva v Motylev
  • AS Latvijas Krajbanks v Vladimir Antonov

We have been engaged by the National Crime Agency as well as many of the leading City and national law firms, including Mishcon de Reya, Hogan Lovells, Jones Day and CMS. We are included in both the LSLA and CFLA lists of supervising solicitors.

We have a large team of experienced supervising solicitors, both female and male, who can be provided often at very short notice. We can also provide assistant supervising solicitors where necessary. We supervise single and multi-site searches throughout England and Wales

We offer secure storage facilities for documents and electronic images obtained during a search.

We can provide IT and other facilities for the inspection of electronic images following the search.  In several large international fraud cases in which we have acted as supervising solicitors, the courts have appointed us to co-ordinate very large review exercises (involving millions of documents in many languages) to make a neutral assessment of those documents for relevance and privilege.

Without compromising our obligations to act impartially, we can provide guidance on technical, practical and logistical matters to help ensure that any search order is executed as smoothly and effectively as possible.

We do all of this at extremely competitive rates – especially for a City firm. If you are advising a client who may need a search order, we are happy to discuss the practicalities with you.

Our experience as supervising solicitors, and our work for clients obtaining and responding to injunctions, means that we are also well-equipped to advise you if you have been served with a search order, or similar order or injunction, including orders for delivery up, preservation of evidence, and asset freezing.

We are always happy to discuss matters on a confidential, no obligation basis, by telephone (to any of the key contacts below) or by emailing [email protected]

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