Best format to provide archived emails to a lawyer - old thread; solved.

stragglebod

Outlook and the built in Windows 10 mail app can open .eml files without any additional plugins. I'm assuming the OP has found their solution, which was probably 'instruct an alternative firm of solicitors who employ competent people'

BooJewels

Kevin5566 said:

I know that I'm disturbing the old topic, but it took me much time to find the solution when I faced a similar issue. So, I hope my experience will be useful for someone. There exists a great tool called Email in Detail. It allows to save email letters as pdf files, convert them from msg to pdf online, archive as pdf, view emails without Outlook and search them by key words. I was very happy when I found it as it did the job just fine. And I still use it now and then. 

Thanks for the tip - it looks like the sort of tools that a law firm themselves should use, so it won't matter what format they get messages, which these days must form an increasing chunk of the evidence handled.  Ours weren't needed to present at tribunal in the end, but the evidence I presented, because I did it meticulously, was enough to show that we had it all at hand and they settled before it got to that state.  For example, they claimed at one point not to have received a particular pertinent email - yet replied to it later in error, showing the quoted text underneath - indicating that they had of course received it.  Being thorough with our saving of messages in date order allowed us to find such detail easily.

stragglebod said:

Outlook and the built in Windows 10 mail app can open .eml files without any additional plugins. I'm assuming the OP has found their solution, which was probably 'instruct an alternative firm of solicitors who employ competent people'

Thankfully they were competent enough to get us the settlement we wanted without going to Tribunal - largely because the case we presented was thorough enough - i.e. a systematically archived email trail - not to leave them any wriggle room.  I think they're such a large firm that they use their own email system on a massive central network, so weren't just using default software on individual machines.