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Eighteen Years as a Private Investigator — and Why I’m Now Training the Next Generation

Published: 22 October 2026

I left the RAF in December 1990 after more than ten years’ service. Like a lot of people who come out of the military, I spent time working out what came next. I worked for a while with children with physical special needs, and I also served as a Special Constable. It wasn’t until 2008 that I set up my first private investigation company. I have never looked back.

That was eighteen years ago. Since 2008 I’ve worked almost exclusively on complex criminal cases — false allegations, police and defence failures, and suspected miscarriages of justice. I’ve sat in police stations, read thousands of pages of unused material, analysed ABE interviews, enhanced audio, located witnesses, and prepared reports that have gone before solicitors, the Court of Appeal, and the Criminal Cases Review Commission. It’s demanding work. It’s also the most interesting and rewarding career I’ve had.

A few years ago I started thinking about the people I served with — and the younger men and women coming out of the forces now who are looking for something that uses the skills the military already gave them: discipline, attention to detail, the ability to operate under pressure, and the capacity to make decisions with incomplete information. A lot of them would make excellent investigators. Very few of them know the door is open.

That’s why I built the course.

The Level 3 Professional Private Investigators Course

The programme is a Highfield Accredited Level 3 in Professional Private Investigations. It is deliberately based on the structure of the old EDI Level 3 qualification — the one that used to be the recognised route into the industry — but written from the perspective of someone who has actually done the job for the last eighteen years.

It is not a short “how to follow someone” course. It is twenty-two modules covering the full range of work a professional investigator needs to understand:

• The legal framework (PACE, RIPA, CPIA, data protection, and the realities of working within the law)
• Surveillance — static, mobile, foot and vehicle, planning, and knowing when to withdraw
• Interviewing and statement taking
• Open-source intelligence and digital investigation
• Evidence handling and turning information into something that will stand up
• Client management, professionalism, and dealing with the unpredictable
• How to set up and run your own investigations business if that is the route you want to take

Assessment is by portfolio work plus a 50-question multiple-choice examination. Successful candidates receive a Highfield Accredited Programme certificate that includes 160+ CPD hours. It is not a regulated Ofqual qualification, and I am careful not to present it as one. What it is, is practical, experience-led training written by someone who still does the work.

Why military leavers

I am not saying that every service leaver should become a private investigator. I am saying that the qualities the military develops transfer unusually well. The people who do best in this job are those who can stay calm, plan properly, notice what is out of place, and write clearly. Many of those skills are already there.

The course is suitable for military resettlement. It is also suitable for police leavers, career changers, and existing investigators who want to formalise what they already know. Once trained, people go in different directions: some set up on their own, some join larger investigation firms, and some use the qualification and the skills as a stepping stone toward roles in the wider security sector.

I spent more than a decade in the RAF. I know what it is like to come out and wonder what comes next. If I can help a few people who are in that position find a career that is interesting, lawful, and properly paid, then the last eighteen years will have been put to good use.

If you want to know more

The full course details, the three shorter in-house diplomas, and current prices are on the courses page. If you are a service leaver, a career changer, or simply someone who wants to understand what the work actually involves, get in touch. I’m happy to talk it through.

View the Courses Get in Touch

Mike Naughton
Lewis Legal Ltd

This post reflects my own experience. Nothing here constitutes legal advice or a guarantee of employment.

Why Instruct Linguistic Analysis on Transcripts? Criminal and Civil Cases

Published: 3 September 2026

People remember the story. Investigators and lawyers have to live with the words.

A police interview, an ABE recording, a trial answer, a Part 18 response or a signed civil witness statement is not just “what happened.” It is a sequence of choices: I or we, the car or a vehicle, then or the next thing I knew, a name used ten times and dropped on the eleventh. Advanced statement analysis — linguistic analysis of a transcribed account — is the disciplined reading of those choices against that speaker’s own baseline, not against a cartoon of how “liars talk.”

Lewis Legal Ltd is instructed on miscarriage-of-justice and false-allegation files, ABE interviews and trial transcripts. The point of instructing someone qualified in this work is not a slogan that “science proved they lied.” It is a mapped report: where the language is stable, where it shifts, and which passages a solicitor should test with documents, unused material or further questions.

That is useful in the Crown Court. It is just as useful in a civil dispute when two accounts of the same meeting cannot both be complete.

What linguistic analysis actually is

Linguistic analysis of statements is the structured examination of wording, structure and change in a recorded or transcribed account.

It is not mind-reading. It is not a substitute for DNA, CCTV, phone data or a proper unused schedule. Used properly it is an investigative and case-preparation tool: it tells you where to look harder.

The working principle is simple.

1. Establish a baseline from the opening of the account — how this person normally names people, places, time, themselves and what they did.
2. Follow the narrative through the high-stakes part of the story.
3. Mark departures from that baseline.
4. Ask whether each departure is explained by ordinary memory, interview pressure, a leading question — or whether it needs an evidential check.

The comparison is internal. You are not saying “honest people never say we.” You are saying: this speaker used I for forty lines, then the pronoun changed when the allegation started. That change is a flag, not a verdict.

Work of this kind only has weight on word-for-word material: interview tapes and official transcripts, ABE transcripts, contemporaneous notes that quote speech, and the trial transcript. Newspaper paraphrase and someone else’s summary of “what she said” will not support analysis.

How the baseline works

Give most people a safe subject — how they got to the police station, what they had for lunch, who lives in the house — and their language settles. Pronouns are stable. Time is rough but ordered. People and objects keep the same labels. Extra padding is limited.

That opening stretch is the baseline.

The analyst then reads the rest of the statement as a departure map. Stress, rehearsal, missing pieces and attempts to manage what is admitted often show up as small edits, not as a sudden confession.

Subtle changes the analysis looks for

These are examples of what a qualified reader marks. None of them, on their own, “proves deceit.” Clusters, in the wrong place in the story, earn a paragraph in the report.

Pronoun shifts

I to we, we to you, or the speaker dropping out of their own sentence (“the door was opened”) just as responsibility would attach. Ownership of the act and ownership of the sentence often move together.

Re-labelling the same person or object

“My colleague,” then “the individual concerned.” “My knife,” then “a knife,” then “the weapon.” A change of label at the moment the item becomes awkward is one of the most useful flags in transcript work.

Tense and time

Present tense dropped into a past narrative (“I am walking down the path”) can mark a vivid memory — or a reconstructed scene. Unexplained jumps (“the next thing I knew”) skip the very minutes the case is about.

Missing information where detail was easy a moment before

A speaker who can describe the weather, the bus and the dog, then goes thin on the ten minutes that matter, has produced a density change. Analysis asks why the camera went wide.

Hedging and extra social words

To be honest, as I said, I would never, obviously, I think I remembered. One hedge is speech. A cluster at the point of contradiction is a place to put the original police statement next to the oath.

Passive voice and agency

“The window got broken” versus “I broke the window.” Civil cases live on this distinction as much as criminal ones: who is said to have done the act?

Negation and what was not asked

Unsolicited denials (“I didn’t touch the money”) before the topic is raised. They are not proof. They are a map of what the speaker thinks the danger is.

Order and structure

Truthful recall is often imperfect and a little messy. A narrative that is too smooth, or that only becomes detailed after a leading question, is marked so counsel can see the interviewer’s hand.

Statement versus evidence on oath

A police statement that is firm and a live answer that is “I thought I remembered” is a classic reliability problem. Linguistic analysis puts the two texts side by side and reports the divergence in plain English.

The report should say what changed, where it changed, and what should be checked next. It should not dress a pronoun as a finding of guilt.

Advantages in criminal cases

ABE interviews and first accounts. Achieving Best Evidence interviews are long, structured and often the whole case in a sexual or child allegation. A qualified reader can show where the complainant’s language is stable, where an interviewer supplied the vocabulary, and where a later trial answer has drifted from the first account. That is disclosure and cross-examination work, not theatre.

Suspect interviews under PACE. The significant statement is the one given in the room. Analysis of the tape against the ROTI or transcript highlights topics the suspect avoided, topics they over-explained, and answers that only appear after a proposition was put.

Trial transcripts. Juries hear a performance. A transcript is the words. Comparing a witness’s police statement with what they said on oath tests whether the evidence hardened, softened or was refreshed into something new.

Miscarriage and CCRC-style review. Linguistic analysis does not reopen a verdict by itself. It can show a solicitor which passages justify a fresh look at disclosure, a missing recording, or a witness who was never properly tested.

Knowing what not to chase. An account that stays on baseline through the hard questions saves time and stops a client being told a comforting story the words do not support.

Advantages in civil cases

Civil litigation is built on witness statements, Part 18 replies, disclosure statements and what people said in a meeting that nobody recorded well.

A statement that calls a colleague by name for six pages and then, on the disputed email, switches to “the individual concerned” is worth a request for the contemporaneous documents. Judges notice structure. A short annex that shows the language shift is easier to use than a vague allegation that “they are lying.”

Who agreed what, who was in the room, who authorised the payment: pronoun and agency analysis is built for those questions. Before costs escalate, a language report on both sides’ first letters can show which facts are actually in dispute and which are vocabulary.

Civil clients often want a document that says the other side is dishonest. A proper linguistic report will not do that on adjectives alone. It will say: these passages left the speaker’s baseline; here is the follow-up list.

What you should get when you instruct

• a schedule of the recordings and transcripts actually used (nothing paraphrased)
• the baseline description — how this speaker talks when the topic is safe
• a passage-by-passage note of departures, with line or timestamp references
• a comparison, where both exist, of the first account and the later account
• a short list of questions and documents that would test each flag
• a clear limit: this is analysis of language, not a finding of fact for the court

If the material is not word-for-word, the honest answer is that analysis should not be sold.

Limits worth stating

Language is not a polygraph. People hedge because they are tired, poorly educated, terrified, or speaking English as a second language. Memory is reconstructive. Interviewers contaminate accounts. None of that disappears because an analyst can spell “pronoun.”

Instruct this work as one tool in the file, alongside unused material, phones, forensics and a competent lawyer. Used that way it earns its fee. Used as a magic test of the soul it will let you down in front of a judge.

Instruct Lewis Legal

Lewis Legal Ltd has provided investigation and expert-witness support since 2008, with a particular focus on false allegations and suspected miscarriages of justice. Linguistic analysis of ABE interviews and trial transcripts is part of that casework. Reports are written to be read by solicitors: referenced, limited, and tied to the next practical step.

To discuss a transcript, an interview recording or a civil statement, use the contact page.

This post reflects observations from specialist investigative work at Lewis Legal Ltd. Individual cases vary, and nothing here constitutes legal advice.