Edits made later can quickly undermine the credibility of the notes.

@A.fm. "Edits made later can quickly undermine the credibility of the notes". What really undermines the credibility of notes is their inaccuracy, ambiguity, or sloppy wording. It is more efficient and professional for an inspector to cure those defects, even if he is no longer at the scene, than waste everybody's time later on because his notes were confusing and/or clearly refutable.

Perhaps. For this reason, I mentioned that the original version should be retained if indeed the inspector determines a change is needed. The goal should always be simultaneous notetaking, though.

@A.fm. Great! Everyone involved must have plenty of time to parse the differences between an original with errors and the corrected version because inspector's mental process in the course of n minutes at the scene outweighs everything else. Sarcasm aside, the true goals in an inspection are accuracy, objectiveness, and clarity.

Disputing unedited version should be retained? That's demonstrating a lack of depth here. Unclear who "everyone involved" is supposed to be & one wonders what level of expertise you have with basic applications like Word and Acrobat. Nobody need spend time "parsing" anything unless, for example, litigation comes out of the investigation. Then, a simple PDF of a redlined doc should suffice & is not difficult to examine. A decision-maker making a finding of fact will prefer the credibility of a person whose evidence is supported by contemporaneous record, where everything else is equal.

@A.fm. "one wonders what level of expertise you have with basic applications like Word and Acrobat". Typical of you, resorting to personal remarks or "questions" about me (this time my expertise with software) that are unrelated to an OP's question. You just answered your own question as to "everyone involved" in parsing an inspector's notes: namely, when "litigation comes out of the investigation". Credibility of notes as to "names, locations, job title" (as mentioned by the OP) is much easier to assess via other evidence than whether or not the notes are edited instead of redlined PDFs.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

Typical of you to misstate as irrelevant something that is totally on point. You mentioned people spending time parsing originals and edited versions. The point about Word and Acrobat is that that is not actually difficult to achieve and, thus, the point made through your sarcasm is moot. Now, it's beyond me why you think your opinion on things you're unfamiliar with carry more weight than the views of people who do those things for a living, but it's notable your answer contains no sources and you've not even attempted to refute that contemporaneous notes will be found more credible.

@A.fm. I created this chat because Stack Exchange clearly asks users to avoid extended discussions in comments. Kindly resume there all your subsequent heckling and your misunderstandings. I will only address the latter, though.

@A.fm. There is no need to refute or come up with resources for something that both my answer and the one you posted later coincide regarding the core of the OP's question: There are no established time limits for an inspector to edit his notes (or, in your words, that "there isn't a specifically delineated time period for these notes"). Therefore, hopefully you are truly "okay with the record remaining as is", as you say. And if that turns out not to be the case, please use henceforth the chat feature that SE provides for extended discussions.

My contention is that while there is no edict stating, for example, "Notes must be completed within 3 hours," the generally agreed principle is that they should be taken at the time, or as close to it as practicable, subsequent edits should be documented/retained to protect potential evidence, and the longer after the event they are recorded, the less weight they may potentially carry in court. You inexplicably take issue with the timing aspect, despite substantiation I provided or that is easily found on your own.

@A.fm. So you weren't "okay with the record remaining as is" after all, huh? Yet you insist to ignore SE's direction to "avoid extended discussions in comments" and impliedly expect me to continue addressing your contentions here.

@A.fm. For many types of data, such as the ones the OP outlined ("names, locations, job title"), an inspector's delay of edits does not diminish whatsoever the evidentiary weight of the edited notes because their accuracy can be corroborated via readily available sources (example: HR & payroll records in the OP's context). The value (if any) of documenting such edits is negligible at best. Accordingly, a litigant's fixation on unedited notes would be vexatious.

@IñakiViggers One is left to wonder why you think you can just make up unsubstantiated statements, pass them off as factual and, when faced with unambiguous evidence to the contrary, believe if you just keep stating your fabrications again and again, they will somehow become factual. If you're confident in your answer, back it up with something - anything - that supports you. Of course, that's impossible.

"Physical notes should betaken in pen, and whiteout or similar should not be used. This protects their integrity. If errors are made during note-taking, the erroneous note(s) should be marked as deleted but not removed, i.e. a single strike-through, and amendments noted and initialled or errata appended (Professional Note Taking, 2007)." sans.org/reading-room/whitepapers/forensics/…

"A decision-maker that needs to make a finding of fact will prefer the credibility of a person whose evidence is supported by contemporaneous record, where everything else is equal." pragma.law/2017/07/10/power-contemporaneous-note

@A.fm. I did not "make up unsubstantiated statements". I am stating, verbatim, the terms of the OP's question: names, locations, job title. Your presumption that such data cannot be corroborated via HR & payroll records indicates you are severely disconnected from common practice. It would be unreasonable to determine credibility of an inspector simply on grounds of whether he edited such data in his notes.

Depending on the application used, your contention that it's totally fine if edits are delayed, doesn't hold up one bit. It doesn't matter that you can go find who the HR Director is. What matters is that if there is evidence the document has been modified, which may allow the other side to cast doubt on the integrity of other parts of the document.

Yes, you did. "An inspector's delay of edits does not diminish whatsoever the evidentiary weight of the edited notes..." (your opinion, perhaps, but not supported in reality). "The value (if any) of documenting such edits is negligible at best." (again, your opinion, but not borne out by experience). "Accordingly, a litigant's fixation on unedited notes would be vexatious." (False - unsubstantiated).

@IñakiViggers Lol! Your presumption that that is my presumption indicates you are severely disconnected from this debate. And no, it wouldn't be unreasonable, as I've demonstrated for you at least three times already.

@A.fm. You can keep taking things out of context and generalizing for the sake of heckling, but in doing so you are being dishonest. If you think that any delay of edits can realistically dismantle the credibility of everything in an inspector's document, your notions of fact-finding and credibility are too volatile and fragile.

Furthermore, you renewedly contradict yourself. Your prior suggestion of redlined PDFs is at odds with your citation that "Physical notes should betaken in pen". Before you heckle others, make sure you are consistent with yourself.

@A.fm. Wait, I take that back (the last comment, "Furthermore, [...]") but no longer can remove it. I recall you mentioned something about scanning the unedited notes, which certainly is consistent with redlining them.

@IñakiViggers Please state what I took out of context. On the other hand, you're simply making up arbitrary principles about the timeliness of the edits. It's not that I think that delayed edits can lead to other parts of the document being called into question (a notably different statement than your characterization of "dismantle the credibility of everything in [the] document"), it's that I know it can based on experience but, because "experience" isn't a citable source of info, I also...

...know it based on the 3 or 4 articles on the topic of contemporaneous notes I cited to on the Stack and in my comments above.

@IñakiViggers Here's a question... You are contending that timing of edits does not matter. But why do you think OP asked the question in the first place? OP knows the timing matters. She doesn't know how long she has to make those edits, but she knows it matters because, if she didn't, she wouldn't have had this question to pose

@A.fm. Is it so important for you that I speculate on what exactly prompted the OP to make the question? would that really make your day, or is this just your latest line of heckling? My answer to the OP's question reflects that accuracy supersedes the timing of edits. So does efficiency. Your heckling is premised on the phrase "where everything else is equal", but that premise departs from the context of my answer. To supersede means that not everything else is equal.

@A.fm. You allege that the timing can cast doubt on the integrity of a document. Dismissing an entire record only because of edits on trivially verifiable data suggests that the fact-finder is unreliable and is doing a mediocre job, especially where he could corroborate with other sources the accuracy of the report or of edited & unedited notes.

LOL @ heckling. When I see factually inaccurate statements and I either know or can discover through some research a more factually accurate answer, I try to do so. Correcting would be a more appropriate word than "heckling." Why would you ask if it's important to me that you speculate on that? That's nonsensical. I asked you that because, by virtue of OP's question even existing on Law.SE, one can deduce that certain time limits apply. In fact, simple word construction should clue one in that..

...timing matters because the notes are called contemporaneous notes for a reason. After a certain point, they are no longer contemporaneous.

I realize you're mistakenly stating that "accuracy supersedes the timing" and as I've noted several times, you're making that up out of nowhere. You won't put forth a source because you can't - it doesn't exist. And your last point about the fact-finder is laughable. It's not about corroborating the name of some HR manager or something. It's about modifying the document and the fact that doing so can cast doubt on the integrity of the rest of the document.

Ex.: You say "But I only changed Mr. Jones' name to Mr. Johnson on page 5 and Ms. Matthews' name to Ms. Mattison on page 7." The party opposing you may then suggest you made other changes to the document. . .. Ex.: if the investigation occurred in 2017, but the metadata in it says "Last modified on June 1, 2020," that's also an opening for the other side to question its integrity.

Please don't respond with some silliness about how HR Directors names are easily corroborated in other ways as I have made clear that's not at issue here.