AI Vocabulary
Logging: what will you be able to produce to a third party?
Logging is the automatic recording of a system's operations: who did what, when, on which item. Every system produces some. The useful question is not whether it logs, but what you will be able to extract, in what form, and for how long.
Two kinds of logging that get confused
The provider's records technical operations: calls, errors, response times, volumes. It serves to run the service and diagnose incidents. It is rarely designed to be read by a third party.
The one you need records professional decisions: which deliverable was produced, from what, under which verification regime, and who approved it. That belongs to your organisation, and no provider will produce it for you.
Confusing the two is common and costly: one believes traceability exists because the system logs, when what is recorded answers none of the questions you will be asked.
The questions to ask a provider
What exactly does a record contain — timestamp and identity only, or also the content processed?
How long is it kept? 12 months is common and does not cover the period after which a matter returns, which is counted in years.
In what form can you obtain it? A usable export, or a view in an interface you cannot reproduce elsewhere?
And what happens if you cease to be a client? A log you can no longer reach is not traceability.
One nuance is worth knowing about log contents. Many providers state that they do not record processed content, which is true in normal operation. Error messages are the exception: when processing fails, the log often includes the extract that caused the failure, precisely because diagnosis requires it.
What it does not solve
Logging abundantly produces volume, not traceability. A file of several million lines whose exploitation format nobody has defined answers no question within a useful timeframe.
And technical logging says nothing about the quality of the work. It establishes that an operation took place, never that it was well done nor that anyone verified it.
What to put in place on your side
A minimal record suffices in most cases, and it is immediate to institute: for each outgoing deliverable, the verification regime applied and the identity of whoever approved it.
Two pieces of information, kept with the matter, for the life of the matter. That is what a client, a bar or a court will ask for, and it is what no technical log contains.
This minimal record has a property that makes it sustainable: it is produced when the deliverable goes out, not afterwards. Every attempt to reconstruct retrospectively which regime applied to past deliverables fails, as several organisations have found.
Why it matters to a lawyer
Because the question will not arise when you equip the firm, but three years later, when a piece of work has to be justified. At that point the only thing that counts is what you can produce.
The test is therefore simple: imagine being asked tomorrow to establish how a deliverable from last year was produced. What do you produce, and how long does it take?