Knowledgeable attorneys can minimize the impact of a search warrant by ensuring that a client or a company is prepared for the disruption and agitation that the execution of a warrant causes.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Utah v. Strieff curtailed Fourth Amendment protections. The government conceded the initial stop of Edward Strieff was unlawful, but nonetheless said the arrest, search, and seizure were lawful pursuant to the attenuation doctrine (i.e., unlawfully seized evidence can be admitted when the connection between unlawful police conduct and obtaining evidence is either remote in time or has been interrupted by an intervening circumstance). Defense attorneys Bridget Krause and Deja Vishny recommend that defense attorneys focus their litigation strategy on the third prong of the attenuation analysis — showing that the police officer’s conduct was purposeful and flagrant. The authors offer several scenarios in which — notwithstanding Strieff — the defense might prevail in a motion to suppress evidence.

In United States v. Warshak, the Sixth Circuit held that the government's warrantless seizure of an individual's emails, while held in storage by an Internet Service Provider, violated the Fourth Amendment. While the Department of Justice presumably honors the Warshak decision within the Sixth Circuit, its reported use of subpoenas or orders, rather than warrants, in all other jurisdictions raised significant privacy concerns. To date, there is no legislation codifying the Warshak decision, and there has been no change in the DOJ manual. Does the Warshak decision foretell future court rulings? In June 2014 the U.S. Supreme Court, in Riley v. California, determined that warrantless cellphone searches incident to arrest were, absent exigent circumstances, prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. This holding is a hopeful sign that Supreme Court justices are open to protecting the content of emails by requiring a warrant before they are accessed.