Practice
Interim security and asset tracing
This practice applies when money has stopped moving and there is a real risk that assets will be moved, spent, or hidden before a claim is decided. It covers locating assets, mapping the structures holding them, and pursuing measures to preserve a fund pending judgment or award. The paid first assessment maps what is known, what is missing, and whether preservation is realistic before any further work is instructed.
When this practice applies
This practice is relevant once a counterparty has stopped paying, redeeming, or delivering, and there is a concrete reason to think the underlying assets will not stay in place. Signs include sudden corporate restructuring, transfers to related entities, or a counterparty facing separate claims from other creditors. It sits alongside the wider set of refusal scenarios the firm works on, but focuses specifically on the assets themselves rather than on the underlying claim.
It is also relevant where a counterparty's insolvency is a live risk rather than a settled fact, a situation examined in what changes when a counterparty becomes insolvent. Tracing and preservation work is most useful before that risk materialises, not after.
What the paid first assessment produces
The first paid assessment is not a sales conversation. It produces a written view of what is currently known about the counterparty's assets, what public and available records show, and what remains unverified. It sets out whether the facts support an application for a preservation measure and what evidence gap would need to be closed first.
Where the claim rests on documents such as side letters or subscription terms, the assessment identifies what those documents do and do not establish, in the manner set out in using a side letter to prove a refusal to redeem. Prices for legal work are not published; the fee for this step is fixed and quoted before it begins.
How the work is scoped
Scope depends on how much is already documented and how dispersed the assets are. A single counterparty with visible accounts is a narrower task than a structure spread across several entities, where set-off or netting may already have reduced what is actually available, a mechanism covered in how set-off is used against a refusal to redeem.
Whether a preservation measure is available at all depends on the facts and the procedural rules of the jurisdiction involved; that question is answered case by case, not in general terms. Scope is set jointly with whichever of the firm's other practices the underlying claim requires.
Where this practice hands over
Asset tracing and preservation work feeds into two other tracks. Once assets are located and a preservation measure is in place, the underlying claim usually needs recognition or enforcement of a judgment or award abroad, which is handled by cross-border recognition and enforcement. Where a domestic judgment already exists and the question is collection, that work moves to the enforcement practice.
This practice does not replace either one. It exists to stop assets moving before those steps become possible.
What we do not take on
We do not take on tracing requests made out of curiosity, without a claim or prospective claim behind them. We do not act where the client cannot name a specific counterparty or transaction, and we stop pursuing preservation once the risk it addresses has already materialised beyond recovery.
There is no fee charged solely on amounts recovered. The firm's registration is checked against the public register, worth doing before instructing any firm, as set out in how to verify a law firm.