Litigation Settings and Database Customization

Annie Johnson

February 14, 2023 20:44

*This functionality is available for Advanced users only.

Whether you are exchanging rolling productions from Discovery to Litigation, have started to carefully curate the most important documents in building your case story, are preparing for upcoming depositions, or getting organized for an arbitration or trial, Nextpoint Litigation enables you to customize your database according to your specific needs.

To customize your database, hover over More in the main Litigation navigation and click on SETTINGS.

This will take you in the main SETTINGS interface where you will find five key categories to customize:

General: Houses the Trash setting, which is a specified number of days in which trashed documents can be restored back to the database with all previously existing coding.
Documents: Create and/or modify all settings related to organizing and managing your documents, including but not limited to, folders, document issues, exhibit stamp formatting, key term highlights, and more.
Transcripts: Create and/or modify all settings related to both your deponent and proceeding transcripts, including designations, objection reasons and transcript issues which can be applied in a page/line format. Additionally, you can can create Transcript Fields made for more powerful transcript management and searching.
Import: Houses all settings related to importing. It is important to ensure your Import Settings are in place before you import as deduplication, deNIST and attachment index all apply during the import process.
Exchange: Create and/or modify all settings related to endorsement templates (Bates stamp patterns), using Nextpoint Exchange, and templates for exporting image, text, natives, and load files or indexes.

Take a closer look at each Litigation Settings Category in the below drop-down:

Note: All (blue) headers for each Setting "type" are hyperlinked to further details covering the creation and application of same.

1. General

Trash

Documents moved to the Trash are recoverable until the specified time-to-deletion has expired. The default time-to-deletion is 90 days. You may change this setting at your discretion by clicking Edit and modifying the set time frame.

Note: Deleting items in the Trash will permanently remove those items from your Nextpoint database immediately.

2. Documents

Folders

Use to organize groups of like documents. (e.g. “Witness A Exhibits”). Folders can be applied to documents individually or with a Bulk Action.

Document Issues

Use to categorize research, communication or work product. (e.g. “Damages”). Document Issues can be applied to documents individually or with a Bulk Action.

Fields

Includes all default metadata fields and can also be used to add more details to documents. (e.g. “Attorney Notes”). All fields in this section can be applied in bulk or to an individual document and are also searchable if a value has been populated.

Hot Fields

Use to denote important fields and ensure they are immediately accessible when coding. You can "Add New" to designate one of your Fields above as a "Hot Field", and once added, you can Reorder the order in which the Hot Fields will appear in your coding panel.

Redaction Reasons

Use to categorize redactions. Reason(s) are placed on each redaction box when applied (e.g. “Client Privilege”).

Grid View Column Templates

Create reusable templates that determine the layout of document lists, including which information is displayed and how columns are arranged. Choose from these custom Grid View Column Templates when viewing search or filtered results.

Exhibit Stamp Template

Create reusable exhibit stamp templates which correlate to Folder names/prefixes and determine how a document will be stamped.

Key Terms

When Key Terms mode is enabled in the Document Viewer, any words or phrases you set up as Key Terms under SETTINGS will be automatically highlighted for reviewers' reference.

Note: Key Term highlights will not appear on imaged documents exported from Nextpoint. To accomplish this, use the Highlight function in the Image Markup tool.

3. Transcripts

Designations

Use to categorize a group of testimony clips. (e.g. “Plaintiff Initial Designations”). Check the “Will be used for objection type” option to denote designations which will be used to apply objections clips. Once created, you can apply to both Deponent and Proceeding transcripts as page/line designations.

Objection Types

Use to categorize objections to designated clips. (e.g. “Hearsay” or “Relevance”).

Note: If you want to create Objection clips on your transcript(s) and subsequently apply an Objection Type, you must check the “Will be used for objection type” when creating your Designation as described above.

Transcript Issues

Use to categorize a group of clips/testimony for work product or tagging (e.g.“Environmental”). Once created, you can apply to both Deponent and Proceeding transcripts as page/line designations.

Transcript Fields

Use to organize transcripts by a set of default fields (Volume, Date, Witness Type, Case, Deposing Attorney, and Defending Attorney), or create your own for more robust organization and searching possibilities. All Transcript fields are searchable.

Click here for more information on working with Transcripts.

4. Import

It is important to ensure your Import Settings are in place before you import as deduplication, deNIST and attachment index all apply during the import process.

Custodians

The custodian is the individual with administrative control of a document or electronic file (e.g. The custodian of an email is the owner of the mailbox which contains the message). Custodians can be set up prior to or during import and are assigned to a data set during the import phase.

Deduplication

Occurs on import. When enabled, Nextpoint processes only one copy of duplicate files. Duplicate occurrences are preserved within the document record.

DeNIST

Occurs on import. File types identified as unlikely to contain relevant information are removed.

Attachment Index on Email Images

Occurs on import. An attachment index will be present in the header of imaged emails when enabled. If you are importing a data set which has been produced to you and images are provided, Nextpoint will not override the images with the Attachment Index.

5. Export/Exchange