Litigation Chronology and Evidence
Information about Facts, People, and Evidence, the evidence dashboard, and the chronology tab inside the litigation suite.
- Litigation Chronology Tab
- Evidence Dashboard
- Facts, Issues, and People
- Litigation Visual Timeline Builder
The Litigation Chronology tab allows users to sort and filter their facts, issues, and people and export a CSV list of their case chronology. Here's how it works:
- Click on the "CHRONOLOGY" tab.
- Click on the tab to view your Facts, Key Documents, Issues, or People. This will pull up a grid view of set that you select.
- Inside that grid view, you can create a new fact/issue/person. You can also do this directly inside of a document you are reviewing (see the Facts, Issues, and People support article).
- To view all of the documents associated with a specific fact, issue, or person, click on the number hot link on the right side of that row.
Quick Tip
One of the greatest values of the Chronology Tab is that it can let you know, at a glance, which facts, people, or issues have a lot of document evidence, and which ones are lacking. Aside from being a link to each set, the number in the document column can serve as a guidepost for your team to determine where additional research may be required.
- You can also edit an existing Fact, Issue, or Person by clicking on the name of the one you want to change. This will generate a pop-out window.
When editing (or adding) a Fact, you can update its name, description, date, and color. The fact name should succinctly state the fact. The description can be longer, often using text evidence excerpts from the documents themselves. The date is important to add if possible as it will allow you to sort things in order by date. If you do not have an exact date and time associated with the fact, you can also flag it as "Approximate." Start and/or end dates are not required to create or save a fact. Changing a fact's color will change the color of the flag seen to the left of the fact name and can be used to organize and group facts.
When editing (or adding) an Issue, you can update its name, abbreviation, description, and color. The abbreviation will appear in grid view and make the issues identifiable at a glance. While the name of an issue is typically just a few words, the description can explain it and include context specific to the case. Just as with facts, the color of an issue will appear to the left of it's name in the grid view.
When editing (or adding) a Person, you can update their name, abbreviated name, role, type, email and color. The role and type fields allow you to repeat selections through the dropdown or "Add new" values for these fields. Like with facts and issues, the color of a person will appear to the left of it's name in the grid view. - Above the grid view in the Chronology Tab, you can sort or filter your Facts, Key Docs, Issues, and People by each of the fields that appear on the grid view. You can isolate date ranges or even filter Facts by key word.
- When you have a list of Facts, Issues, or People you want to view or report on outside of Nextpoint, you can select the rows you want to include with the checkboxes to the right and click the "Export as CSV" button at the bottom of the grid view to download a chart containing the information from the grid view.
- Case Connections (Coming October 3, 2023) - In the Facts, Issues, and People tabs, you can see your other case connections. For example, you can view which people and issues are associated with each fact and filter your fact list to view only specific issues or people.
Next Up - Evidence Dashboard
Litigation Chronology Tab
Your evidence dashboard allows you to visualize the various case elements to build out your case story. Like the Analytics Tab in a Discovery database, the Evidence Dashboard provides users a high level view of the components in their Litigation database and contains clickable links to those components. Additionally, the Evidence Dashboard is designed to allow you to see where your case is strong in terms of supporting document evidence and where the gaps may be that need to be filled by more research and analysis.
- Access the Evidence Dashboard by clicking on the "Evidence" tab.
- You can view the counts of the important components of your Litigation database across the top row of data. This links are clickable and will take you to the component described.
- The Fact Overview card shows you how many facts are supported by evidence (connected to specific documents) to help you find the strengths and gaps in your case. Both the supported and unsupported sections of the donut chart are clickable and will bring up those sets of facts.
- The Document Issues Card allows you to see the document counts related to each of your issues and can show which issues are associated with a lot of document evidence and which ones are lacking.
- The Top Tagged People Card allows you to view which people have been tagged with the most document evidence.
- The Document Overview timeline will allow you to see a histogram of all documents and/or key documents in your database. This will allow you to see the time periods for which you do have evidence and which time periods you do not yet have documents related.
- Case Notes allow you to maintain additional information about the case including scheduling information, links to court documents, and other information that could be useful to all users in the database.
- Your Favorite Folders are specific to each individual user - it allows a person to directly continue into a specific folder they regularly work in. You can add the "favorite" tag to a folder by clicking on the star icon next to it in the "Documents" tab. This list is individual to the specific folders added as favorites by the user.
- The Most Viewed Documents list shows the individual documents viewed the most by all users in a database. This is NOT an individual metric and will be the same across users in a database.
- The Deponents and Linked Exhibits card gives an overview of each deponent with a count of the number of exhibits linked to those depositions.
- The Search Bar allows you to run searches in your Litigation database.
Note
Using the search bar in the Evidence dashboard will take you directly to the search results in a grid view in "Documents" tab.
Next Up - FAQ - Litigation Chronology and Evidence Dashboard
Evidence Dashboard
The Nextpoint Litigation Suite offers you the ability to build your case story by linking the Facts, People and Issues to the various pieces of document evidence in your case directly in the app. When you assign dates to the facts, you can also view your case story in chronology format. This allows users to quickly and easily filter aspects of the story by a date range, the specific individuals, or the issues involved in the case for deposition and trial prep.
- Facts can be used to underscore the anatomy of a dispute, including important events, legal claims and defenses of each party.
- Issues are those vital questions of law on which the court must rule.
- People are important individuals or organizations in a matter.
Tagging Exhibits in the Document View
- While viewing a document, expand the “Case Connections” tab on the right.
- Select the “Facts”, “Issues”, or “People” section to add or create a new item for this document. You can also remove a fact, issue, or person by clicking on the red circle
next to an item. Clicking on a selected item at the document level will also allow you to edit that Fact/Issue/Person.
- Expand the drop down and select the item you would like to add to this document, or advanced users can select “Create New” to add a new item to this list directly from the Document View.
You can add any additional facts, issues, or people to each document as you review.
Key Documents
Nextpoint's "Key Documents" field appears at the top of each database's "Hot Fields" section by default and is a way for users to flag and identify important documents for later use. Simply click on the checkbox to tag a document and be sure to save your update.
To code multiple documents as "Key Documents" at once, select them from your grid view, and bulk code them under the "Fields" section.
Searching on Facts, Issues, and People
To search for facts, issues, or people in your database, type in the name of the field, a colon, and the value in quotation marks. The following examples would work as searches in your litigation database:
fact:"Enron admits to overstating 600M in profits since 1997"
issue:"Fraud"
people:"John Smith"
person:"John Smith"
You may also run searches for specific terms within each set (e.g. facts:"Enron") to identify facts, issues, or people that contain specific terms. Additionally, to search for "people" you can search on either "person:" or "people:" as seen in the examples above.
If you want to search for different case connection items within the same document with an "AND" search:
issue:"Fraud" AND person:"John Smith"
Facts, Issues, and People are also available in the "More Tools" section of the advanced search tool.
Note
Facts and People are currently not available in the Document Filters at this time. But you can search on the fields directly or through the advanced search tab, or you can click on the document count in the Chronology tab for both Facts and People. For more information, view the support article on the Litigation Chronology Tab. Issues (formerly Document issues) have always been available in the Advanced Search tab and in Filters and will continue to be available there.
Overlaying Facts, Issues, and People
You can overlay Facts, Issues, or People onto specific documents in your database, just like you can overlay other fields. Add a key field like Nextpoint or Bates Start, and then columns for your facts, issues, or people. You can apply existing facts, issues, or people or you can create new ones directly from the overlay. When mapping your fields during your overlay, select the field title "Facts", "Issues", or "People" and run the overlay.
Currently, you cannot add dates, descriptions, or other facts, issues, or people properties while running an overlay. To edit these properties, click into the fact, issue, or person you created (see #5 in this article) and manually apply the additional information.
Next up - The Litigation Chronology Tab
Facts, Issues, and People
The Visual Timeline Builder feature in Nextpoint's Litigation suite allows users to create visual timelines from the lists of facts that they have added to their database. These visuals can be used for organization, trial and witness prep, or even as demonstratives in a trial.
Creating a Visual Timeline
From your list of facts, select those you want to add to the timeline. If it is helpful, you can filter your facts by issue or person.
After selecting your facts, click on the "+ Add to Visual Timeline" link at the bottom of the grid view.
You can export your timeline as a PDF or PNG file, by clicking on the "Export" link in the upper right corner of your screen. Additional options for export and viewing the timeline in "full screen" are available by right-clicking on the timeline.
Adding or Removing Events
You can add or remove events from your timeline without returning to the Fact Chronology section of your database.
When viewing your timeline, click on the "Fact Selection" tab to change which facts you want to include in your timeline. Once you select all of the facts you want to include, click back to the "Visual Timeline Builder tab to view your results.
To exit the Timeline Builder and return to your Chronology tab, click on the "Exit Timeline Builder" button.
Note
Click "Save" on the toolbar to store your Timeline and come back to edit at any time.
Adjusting Timeline Format
You can name your timeline so that it appears on your timeline export(s) by clicking on the pencil icon at the top of the screen.
You can also edit how each individual fact appears on your timeline by clicking on the box, and then turning on or off the Fact Name, Fact Description, Start/End Date, or changing the color of the Fact in the resulting tab.
You can also reset to default settings by clicking on the "Reset to Default" link on the upper right corner of your screen.
Additional Info
The Visual Timeline Builder will be available to all Nextpoint users until December 31, 2023. If you would like to continue to utilize the power of visual timelines in your Nextpoint account after December 31, please contact your Client Success Director.