LexChain: A Blockchain-based Solution to Safeguard Electronic Evidence in Legal Systems

The adoption of digitization has revolutionized data storage technology, resulting in improved accessibility, efficiency, collaboration, and reduced storage costs. A significant impact of this can be seen in legal systems such as case management tools and e-evidence in litigation. However, ensuring the integrity and authenticity of digital evidence poses major challenges. Forensic evidence is the most sensitive and tangible part of legal investigations and traditional methods for storing physical records and standard digital practices for document storage and forensic evidence preservation are at risk of manipulation and unauthorized access. Such issues raise concerns about the integrity of evidence in legal cases. Beyond the security concerns, manual processes such as storage, management and authentication of evidence are expensive and suffer from delays. The proposed system addresses these challenges using blockchain technology to build a robust system that securely stores all legal documents and forensic evidence. Utilizing a blockchain framework such as Ethereum can boost the security of the legal system while also automating the legal process and ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations through smart contracts, thus improving efficiency, reducing costs, and ensuring reliability and transparency.