Software, Systems & Source Code

Failed and delayed software projects

The most common software disputes we are instructed on involve projects that overran, went live in an unusable state, or were abandoned altogether. Enterprise platforms, ERP and finance systems, bespoke builds and large integration programmes all fail in recognisable ways, and untangling why one failed calls for someone who has seen the anatomy of these projects from the inside.

Our experts examine what actually happened against what was promised: the requirements and specification, the delivery methodology, the testing and acceptance regime, and the project governance on both sides. That lets us set out, impartially, whether the technology was fit for purpose, where responsibility for the failure genuinely lies, and which of the competing accounts the contemporaneous evidence supports.

Source code review and code ownership

When ownership, copying or licensing of code is contested, the source itself is the primary evidence. Our experts carry out structured source-code review and comparison to address allegations of copying, to establish authorship and ownership of bespoke work, and to assess open-source licence compliance and the obligations that flow from it.

This work is methodical and reproducible: we document how code was examined, what was compared against what, and what the similarities or differences actually mean once boilerplate, generated code and third-party libraries are accounted for. The result is evidence a court can rely on rather than an impression.

System architecture, performance and fitness for purpose

Many disputes turn not on a single defect but on whether a system, taken as a whole, did what it was supposed to. Our experts analyse system architecture, scalability and real-world performance, and assess defects against the contractual specification and the standards a competent supplier should have met.

We are equally at home with legacy estates, modern SaaS and cloud-native systems, and we explain clearly how design decisions, integration choices and operational conditions combined to produce the behaviour in dispute.

How we present software evidence

Whatever the underlying question, the output is evidence built to withstand scrutiny: CPR Part 35 compliant reports, joint statements with opposing experts, and clear oral evidence under cross-examination. Our experts translate architecture diagrams, code and technical logs into plain English a judge can follow, without losing the rigour a technical audience would expect.