About Robert

I am a Case Cartographer and the founder of VdVLaw, where I provide attorney-directed legal support focused on criminal discovery review, records analysis, digital evidence organization, source verification and attorney-ready case preparation. My work centers on a practical question: does the source actually support the conclusion? A Case Cartographer turns a matter's fragmented discovery, records, evidence and research into a structured, source-grounded picture of the case for counsel. The cartographer draws the map. Counsel chooses the route.

​

Experience

​

- Years of attorney-directed criminal discovery review: receiving productions, reconciling manifests to delivered folders, indexing and cross-referencing records, flagging material not located or produced late, and documenting what was reviewed.

 

- Digital discovery, body-worn camera footage, recorded calls, screenshots and large-volume case records, including assembling and returning client files under counsel's direction and protective-order restrictions.

 

- Documenting physical and digital evidence received from clients and third parties under counsel's direction, including receipt and handling records and chain-of-custody documentation where applicable.

 

- Identifying retention windows and preservation problems in agency records, and drafting preservation correspondence for counsel's review and signature.

 

- Support in serious criminal matters, including special-circumstance homicide and juvenile cases, and a wrongful-conviction matter that ended in a finding of factual innocence, where I digitized and organized legacy cassette-tape interviews for source review.

 

- I established and administered the MCLE program for Sacramento County Conflict Criminal Defenders, handling presenters, course materials, attendance, certificates, evaluations and State Bar approval requests. VdVLaw holds State Bar of California Single Activity Provider approval, Provider No. 21034.

 

Through VdVLaw I also support reentry program planning, legislative analysis, AI setup and compliance for legal organizations, and attorney web presence. I am not an attorney. VdVLaw is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice.

 

What is a Case Cartographer? →

​

AI, with adult supervision

​

I use AI tools every day, and I teach attorneys to use them without becoming a cautionary tale in someone else's CLE. I have developed MCLE training on AI-generated evidence and the legal work of verification, and I write regularly about how AI is showing up in California's courtrooms, case files, and patrol cars.

​

My working position: AI is a gifted assistant with boundless confidence and no fixed relationship with the truth. It will summarize a thousand-page record in seconds, and every so often it will invent a paragraph, delivered in the same warm, assured tone as the accurate parts. So nothing it produces gets repeated until it has been checked against the source. The machine drafts. The human verifies. The attorney decides. In that order, every time.

​

I also build websites (with the State Bar rules in mind)

​

Including this one. I build and manage web presence for attorneys, from design and content to local search and the structured data that tells Google what you actually do. If your firm's online footprint is a directory listing from 2011 and a phone number that rings at an office you left, that is fixable, and fixing it does not require a single meeting about your "brand journey."

​

How I work with attorneys

 

Scope in writing, then quiet, steady work inside it. I ask the questions that keep the map honest, print the line that cuts the other way, and tell you when a question belongs to a licensed investigator or an expert rather than to me. Requests and preservation letters go out under your signature. No drama, no surprises, and no decision made on your behalf.

​

A bit more

​

I came to this work through curiosity more than a straight line. I read widely, I am at home with science and the way technical material is built, and I would rather understand a problem fully than handle it at the surface. That range is the point. The cases and questions attorneys bring me rarely fit neatly in one box, and neither do I.

​

Let's talk

​

If you need someone you can trust with sensitive material and complex files, or a web presence that finally works as hard as you do, let's talk.

VdVLaw provides legal support services under attorney direction and does not provide legal advice.