Explainer · Litigation Due Diligence

Litigation Due Diligence Report: What Good Looks Like (2026)

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

People search for a litigation due diligence report sample to answer a simple question: what should a good one actually contain. The honest answer is that a good report is not judged by length or by the number of cases it lists. It is judged by two things: can the reader make a decision from it, and can the work be stood behind later if the decision is challenged. This explainer sets out what good looks like, the scope and method a report should state, how findings and the assessment are laid out, the recommendations a reader needs, and an illustrative structure to measure any report against. It is a guide to structure, not a real report on any company. Last verified October 2026.

01What makes a litigation due diligence report good

A weak report is a long list of cases with no sense of which ones matter. A good report does the reader's thinking with them, not for them: it separates the material matters from the routine, explains why, and ties everything back to a clear record of what was searched. Two tests decide whether a report is good.

• Can the reader decide? A lender, investor or buyer should be able to read the summary and know whether to proceed, price differently, ask for protections, or walk away.
• Can the work be stood behind? If the deal goes wrong and the report is questioned, the scope, method and coverage should show that the check was done properly on the date it was done.

For the exercise behind the report, see how to do litigation due diligence and the litigation due diligence checklist.

02Scope and method come first

A good report states, up front, what it covered and how, because every finding and every absence of a finding only means something against that scope. It should set out:

• The parties searched: the target and its former names, directors, promoters, guarantors and group entities, under their correct legal names and identification numbers.
• The forums covered: district and civil courts, High Courts, the Supreme Court, the NCLT, the DRT, tax forums and consumer commissions, as relevant.
• The date of the search, because a report is a snapshot and a matter filed the next day will not appear.
• The method and limits: how identity was confirmed, and what nothing-on-record does and does not mean.

A report that gives findings without scope cannot be trusted or defended, because the reader cannot tell what a clean result actually rules out.

03How findings should be laid out

Findings should be ordered by severity, not by the order they were found. The material matters, insolvency, enforcement, serious crime, large recovery or tax, come first, in detail; the routine matters follow, summarised. Each material finding should carry enough to be verified and acted on:

For the money side of this, how exposure is quantified, see what a litigation exposure report should contain, and for the plain list form, what a litigation search report is.

04The assessment and recommendations

This is what lifts a report above a data dump. After the findings, a good report gives the reader an assessment and a recommendation:

• An assessment of which matters are serious and why, the realistic exposure, and any mismatch between what the target disclosed and what the search found, which is itself a governance red flag.
• Recommendations grounded in the findings: indemnities, a price adjustment, conditions to closing, a carve-out, further enquiry, or walking away.

A good litigation due diligence report does not end at what was found. It tells the reader what it means and what to do about it, and it says honestly where the picture is uncertain.

05An illustrative structure

Put together, a good report tends to follow this shape, which you can measure any report against:

• 1. Executive summary: the overall risk picture, ideally a band, and the few matters that drive the decision.
• 2. Scope and method: parties, forums, date, and the limits of the search.
• 3. Material findings: the serious matters in detail, ranked by severity, each with the fields above.
• 4. Related parties: directors, promoters and guarantors, and their own matters.
• 5. Routine matters: the long tail, summarised rather than detailed.
• 6. Assessment and recommendations: what it means and what to do.
• 7. Caveats: nothing-on-record, match confidence, and not legal advice.

The caveats are not boilerplate to skip. A report that claims more certainty than the public record allows is a liability, not an asset.

06Where Claw fits

Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.

ClawScore (at clawscore.clawlaw.in) is Claw's litigation and criminal-risk intelligence service, and it produces the search-and-scoring layer a report like this is built on, as one Excel workbook. You name a target and its connected parties, and ClawScore searches across 9,102 courts, benches and forums and returns a Summary carrying a ClawScore risk band of Clean, Low, Moderate or High, a Matters sheet listing each case by forum, stage and party, a Related parties sheet covering directors, promoters and guarantors, and a Coverage sheet recording the names and forums searched and the date, which is exactly the scope-and-method record a defensible report needs. Every finding carries a match confidence, so a hit on a common name is flagged rather than written up as the target's own, and the band weights severe matters such as insolvency, SARFAESI enforcement and serious crime above routine disputes. Constant Monitoring can then watch the names and report New, Changed and Closed matters on a daily, weekly or monthly scan, so the report does not go stale between the search and the deal. Results come back in under 5 seconds, judgment search spans 30 crore+ judgments with Supreme Court decisions from 1950 and High Court decisions from 1990, and Claw does not use your case documents or searched names to train its AI models, which matters for confidential diligence. "Nothing on record" means nothing was found in these registries on the date searched under the names searched, and the workbook supports the report and the decision, it is not itself legal advice.

To gather the findings a report is built from, run a case search across Indian courts by party name across every forum in one place.

07Sources and further reading

• eCourts (district and High Court case status): ecourts.gov.in
• Ministry of Corporate Affairs (company and director records): mca.gov.in
• Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India: ibbi.gov.in
• Claw: clawlaw.in

This is a general explainer for an Indian B2B audience and an illustrative structure, not a real report and not legal advice. A due diligence report supports a decision; it does not replace counsel on any specific target or matter.

08Frequently asked questions