The right to examine a phone or computer is not a right to examine everything on it. Where a lawyer is involved, Article 8 requires specific safeguards from the outset, and the complaint must first reach the Monegasque courts.
Picture handing your phone to the police yourself, so that they can check that a single recording on it is authentic. The analysis does not stop at that recording: an expert goes through the whole device and reconstructs thousands of messages you had deleted, stretching back years. And you happen to be a lawyer. This is not a hypothetical: it is what happened in a recent case against Monaco, in which the European Court of Human Rights found a violation of Article 8.
A search today rarely concerns only physical documents. A mobile telephone, computer, or digital account can hold years of private correspondence, professional communications, photographs, financial information, and confidential material. Extracting an entire digital device can give investigating authorities access to information extending far beyond the specific subject of an investigation. Under the Convention, such measures require adequate safeguards — and where lawyers and professional secrecy are involved, those safeguards become particularly important.
The European Court addressed these issues directly in Bersheda and Rybolovlev v. Monaco, nos. 36559/19 and 36570/19, 6 June 2024. The only complaint examined was under Article 8: the expert examination of the mobile telephone of Ms Bersheda, a lawyer, and the use made of the data taken from it. Ms Bersheda had handed the phone to the police herself, having offered to have it analysed to show that a recording on it was authentic. In the Court's assessment, that consent did not extend to an exploration of the phone's entire contents, including data she had erased. The expert nonetheless recovered some 25,000 messages — SMS, MMS and iMessages, together with e-mails recovered without their content — most of them previously erased.
The Court found that the investigative measures had extended beyond the proper scope of the investigation, and that insufficient safeguards had been provided in view of Ms Bersheda's status as a lawyer and the confidential material potentially on the device. It did not find that client communications had actually been read: what it found missing were the safeguards that her status as a lawyer required from the outset. It found a violation of Article 8 in respect of Ms Bersheda. Mr Rybolovlev's position was different: his application was declared inadmissible on victim-status grounds, so the finding of a violation concerned Ms Bersheda alone.
The judgment illustrates a broader principle: being entitled to examine a device does not mean being entitled to examine everything on it without limitation. Digital searches can be exceptionally intrusive — a telephone may hold thousands of messages and documents wholly unrelated to the investigation, along with communications involving third parties, privileged material, or highly personal information.
The Convention analysis may therefore require examining the scope of the search, the categories of data accessed, the safeguards against indiscriminate examination, and the effectiveness of judicial supervision. The question is not merely whether the device could lawfully be seized — it is how the data on it were searched, selected, retained, and used. (The same logic applies to confiscation and asset-freezing measures, discussed in our companion article, where Article 8 can be engaged alongside other Convention guarantees.)
The confidentiality of communications between lawyers and their clients occupies a special position under the Convention. Professional secrecy is not simply an internal rule of the legal profession — it is closely connected to the administration of justice and to the ability of individuals to communicate freely and confidentially with their lawyers. Investigative measures touching a lawyer's office, telephone, computer, or professional correspondence therefore require particular care.
In Bersheda, the Court attached weight to the fact that the authorities knew the telephone belonged to a lawyer and was used for both professional and personal purposes. The presence of potentially privileged information should influence both the scope of the investigative measure and the safeguards surrounding it.
A possible Convention problem should not first surface after the domestic proceedings have ended. Where a search or digital seizure raises questions of privacy, professional secrecy, the scope of the warrant, the examination of unrelated material, or the effectiveness of judicial control, those issues should be sufficiently raised before the competent Monegasque courts — the same exhaustion principle discussed in our article on why Monaco cases can fail in Strasbourg.
In Bersheda, Monaco argued before the European Court that the application was premature: the criminal proceedings were still pending, and a plea of nullity could still be raised before the trial court. As regards Ms Bersheda, the Court rejected that objection: she had challenged the measures before the chambre du conseil of the Cour d'appel and then before the Cour de révision, and those courts had ruled on her complaints at final instance, with reference in particular to the Convention. A Strasbourg complaint is considerably more vulnerable where the European issue was never sufficiently presented during the domestic proceedings.
The subject has come before the Court again. In Michel v. Monaco (dec.), no. 39511/22, 26 March 2026, the applicant complained under Article 8 of a search and seizures carried out at his law office on 12 December 2017 and of the subsequent use of data from a seized computer. The case was communicated to the Monegasque Government on 4 September 2025. It did not end in a judgment: after friendly-settlement negotiations failed, the Government made a unilateral declaration, and a committee of the Court struck the application out of its list under Article 37 § 1 (c) of the Convention, even though the applicant had rejected the terms of that declaration.
In the declaration, Monaco acknowledged that the seizure of all the applicant's computer and telephone equipment, professional and personal, without that equipment first being examined in the presence of the applicant and the bâtonnier (the head of the Bar), had been massive and indiscriminate and may have covered documents protected by lawyer-client privilege, in breach of Article 8. It also acknowledged that the expert work later carried out on the seized equipment may have exceeded an insufficiently defined mandate, in breach of Article 6 § 1 and Article 8. It offered the applicant EUR 15,000. The application may be restored to the list if the Government does not honour its declaration (Article 37 § 2).
The Court did not rule on the merits, and it would be wrong to suggest that it found a violation: the breaches were acknowledged by the Government, not established by a judgment. The significance of Michel is different: alongside Bersheda, it confirms that searches of lawyers' premises, digital data, and professional secrecy remain live Convention issues in relation to Monaco.
Not every search or digital seizure violates Article 8. The relevant questions may include:
Digital investigations make these questions increasingly important, because the volume of information on a single device can be enormous.
Procedural safeguards around searches, digital data and professional secrecy are one of the areas Just Rights Europe returns to most often, precisely because the stakes for lawyers and their clients are so high. Following a final decision of the Cour de révision or, where applicable, the Tribunal Suprême, each case is assessed on its own facts to determine whether the domestic proceedings disclose an arguable Article 8 violation — and whether the admissibility conditions for Strasbourg are met.
These notes are general information on Convention law; they do not constitute legal advice and do not create a lawyer-client relationship.
After the final decision of the highest national court, a case may be submitted to us directly, by the client or by national counsel.