Everlaw for Journalists

Uploading Documents

If you have an administrator uploading data for you, you can skip this step. The first step in uploading data is determining what type of data you’re working with: processed data or native data.

• PDF Documents: You may have one or more large PDF file that contains many individual documents. This is considered processed data. You’ll first want to review this video on uploading your PDFs. Once uploaded, we recommend watching this second video on how to unitize your PDFs. Unitization is the process of identifying which parts of that large PDF are actually individual documents, and breaking those up so that they can more easily be reviewed one by one.

• Non-PDF Documents: If you have data in other formats, such as spreadsheets or emails in their original file format, this is considered native data. Learn how to upload native data here.

• Multiple Data Folders: You may receive processed data that is more complicated than PDF documents alone. You can identify this by looking for a structure similar to the image below: it is likely it will have folders titled data, text, images, and natives. If you have data matching this description, please reach out to either our support team (support@everlaw.com) or your Everlaw point person for support uploading this data to the platform.

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Searching and Filtering

Once your documents are uploaded, you can use several tools to search, analyse, and understand them.

Search Term Reports

A Search Term Report allows you to run multiple searches at once across all your documents, or just a specific subset of them. This is a useful tool for exploring your data in the early phases of an investigation before diving into individual documents. To learn about this tool, watch the video below.

Document Analytics

This collection of tools helps you understand, filter, and review your documents. These tools are most effective when your documents have been separated (unitised), as described in the first lesson of this workflow page.

Two recommended tools to explore are:

• Data Visualiser: This tool creates graphical representations of your documents' characteristics. The Communication Visualiser maps who was communicating with whom, which can reveal key players and hidden connections.

• Clustering: This tool automatically groups documents that discuss similar concepts. This helps you understand main themes in your documents and can help you find related documents more easily.

[Optional] Document Analytics

The graph icon in the top toolbar of your Everlaw homepage represents our Document Analytics tools, which are designed to help you better understand, filter, and review your documents. Note that these tools are most effective when any large PDFs have already been separated (unitized), as described in the first lesson of this workflow page.

We recommend exploring the following two tools:

• The Data Visualizer: Here you’ll find visualizations, or graphs, visually showing many of your documents' characteristics. For example, you can view how many spreadsheets you have vs. emails to review, the time period with the most email communication, and more. The Communication Visualizer (available within this tool) gives an in-depth view of who was communicating with whom, which can reveal key players and hidden connections. Learn more here.
  

• Clustering: Are you unsure where to even start in regards to reviewing your data? This tool automatically groups documents together based on similar concepts within their contents. It can be extremely helpful at the start of a new matter to help you understand themes across your documents, find related documents, and decide which documents to begin reviewing first. Learn more here.

Organisation and Review

When it comes to organising your search results, binders are the tool of choice. A binder in Everlaw is similar to a physical folder you might have at your desk, and is simply a way to group related documents together. A few ideas for leveraging binders may include:

• Grouping documents which come from a similar source, in investigations with multiple sources. This could help provide focus during review.

• Grouping (potentially) relevant/important documents and require further review

• Collecting irrelevant documents for the purpose of filtering during future searches.
  

As you locate/discover documents that feel meaningful or impactful to your story, we recommend adding those documents into our Storybuilder tool where you can:

• Create a condensed list of key documents and view them in chronological/timeline format.

• Use Labels to track people, events, or themes which appear across your most important documents

• Create Profiles for people of interest, complete with their name, pictures, employment history and other helpful details
  

To learn how to work with binders, download the guide below.

To learn how to add documents into Storybuilder, watch the video linked below:

Document Organization

When it comes to organizing documents of interest, you’ll want to leverage binders. A binder in Everlaw is similar to a tangible, 3-ring binder you might have on your desk - it is simply a way to group related documents together. A few ideas for leveraging binders may include:

• Binder documents which come from a similar source when working on investigations with multiple sources. This could help provide focus during review.

• Binder (potentially) relevant and/or important documents that require further review.

• Binder documents you’ve deemed irrelevant for the purpose of filtering them out during future searches and review.

This guide goes over how to work with Binders.

As you discover documents that feel meaningful or impactful to your matter, we recommend also adding those documents into our Storybuilder tool. Within Storybuilder you can:

• Create a fact timeline of key events and facts within your matter. Then, link the documents relevant to those facts and events for easy reference.

• Create a condensed list of key documents (evidence).

• Use Labels to filter by key people, events, or themes.

• Create Profiles for people of interest, complete with their name, pictures, employment history and other helpful details.

Watch the video below to learn more about what Storybuilder is and how to add key documents into your Project Story.

[Optional] Storybuilder for Content Creation

In addition to pulling together key documents and spotlighting details of interest, Storybuilder is an excellent tool for drafting or building your story. Drafts and Depositions are two options for collaborative note-taking environments in Storybuilder where you can:

• Jot down outstanding questions that require additional research

• Write out the story you want to tell

• And even upload transcripts or recordings from interviews you may have held

Never heard of a Deposition? It's another name for an interview. If you need to interview someone, Storybuilder includes features like a timer, transcript storage and citations that you can use in combination with your notes to keep your organised.

Learn all about Depositions and Drafts in this video:

[Optional] Leveraging Everlaw AI

As part of your Everlaw subscription, you may have access to our suite of AI Assistant tools. These tools can be broken up into 2 main categories Writing and Review.

The Writing Assistant can:

• Generate 1 paragraph summaries of your key documents

• Analyze several documents to surface recurring themes, people or entities of interest, or even identify inconsistencies

• AND summarise interview transcripts while cataloging all documents and witnesses that are referenced

The Review Assistant can:

• Also generate summaries while providing section by section breakdowns for longer documents

• Provide bullet-point lists of major talking points, people and sentiments found in a document

• AND Extract customisable fields of information

To learn more about these AI feature via Live training or video recording, check out the Feature Page linked below.

If you have any additional questions and/or do not currently have access to Everlaw AI features, please contact your organisation’s Everlaw administrator!