Before creating your report, I recommend organizing your data (evidence and artifacts). It would be best to organize these into neat, readable pages—recall that you want it easy for the readers to understand and follow along with your findings. 

Once you have your data nicely organized, you should formulate a table that numbers each piece of evidence and provides some details about it. This way, you can reference the evidence by a number and stay organized. 

A report will usually be lengthy as it requires a vast amount of details:

• A cover page with case details, date, and author

• Introduction

• A statement on jurisdiction and court rules

• Your credentials - why can you be an expert witness?

• Background information on the case

• Instructions about what you were asked to perform by the client

  • The report will answer the instructions and provide evidence

  • Ex. "Instruction # asked me to do XYZ, so I did XYZ and found ..."

• Explain the procedures you took

• Glossary of technical terms (this is to help the non-techy readers)

• List the evidence that was found. Provide fine-grain details (make, model, serial number).

• Discuss the evidence—what you found, what it is, what it means, and anything else that supports your findings. Make sure you provide ample details. 

• Comment on facts and add your expert opinion later.

• Get the report proofread -- remember this is an official document.

• Finally, have someone critique your report. This critique will help ensure that it holds up in a court of law and that your findings hold true.

  • This will help when you are an expert witness as when you are cross-examined.