Import Codes and Other Review Work to Documents in Your Everlaw Project

Introduction

You can import review work onto documents in an Everlaw project. This feature is helpful when you want to migrate review work:

• From one Everlaw project to another
• Into Everlaw from another review platform
• To original documents on one project to their produced counterparts on another project. 

Review work applied in one project is not automatically applied to documents across projects in a database. In other words, if the same document is in two projects, any ratings, codes, notes, etc. applied to it in one project are not reflected in the other. While you can copy work product from one project to another, in some cases you may prefer to import the review work instead—for example, if you have archived the project where the review work was applied.

Requirements

Permissions required: Project Admin

Before you can import work product, the review work must be organized in a CSV file.

If you are importing from another Everlaw project, you can export your work product from that other project as a ZIP file or as a CSV file anywhere you see the export button.

You can import work product from another platform if it has been exported from that platform as a CSV file.

If you already have the work product in CSV form, skip to performing the import, below.

Obtain work product from a ZIP Export

To obtain work product from a ZIP  export:

1. Access a results table of the documents with the work product that you would like to export.
2. Create a ZIP Export that includes the documents you want to transfer data from. You can read the steps for performing a ZIP export in our article on exporting to ZIP.
3. When configuring your ZIP export, select Review work product.
   The resulting ZIP file includes a CSV with all review work product on the selected documents. This includes:
   • Notes
   • Ratings
   • Binders
   • Codes
   • User-editable metadata
   • Storybuilder data
4. You can download the ZIP export from the Batches and Exports column of the homepage after it is ready.

Please reach out to support@everlaw.com for assistance in importing this work product CSV.

Obtain work product from a CSV Export

You can also obtain work product from a CSV export. Note that you cannot export Storybuilder data from a CSV. To export Storybuilder data, you must export your documents in a ZIP export.

To export a CSV of review work:

1. Access a results table of the documents with the work product you would like to export.
2. Create a CSV export that includes the documents you want to transfer data from. You can read instructions for exporting a CSV in our article on exporting documents.
3. In the dialog to configure the CSV export, select to export the information depending on your needs:
   
   • Notes and redactions: select Annotation Data
   • Binders: select Binders 
   • Ratings: select Rating
   • Codes: select Exported Codes. Including this column ensures that codes are exported in the correct format for import.

     • Note

       you will rename this column to Codes before you import (details below)

     • Important

       You must also include specific codes/categories from the Select Categories & Codes section to export information about codes. Including this column alone does not export codes.

   • For notes: select Note Text
     To import note text as review work that you have done offline (on Excel, for example), or on another review platform, you can do that here. The exact text you enter under "Note Text" will be imported as your note. 
   • Under Select Categories & Codes:
     • For codes, select specific codes or categories you plan to transfer. To transfer all codes, select Coded and Coded Under. This ensures that the codes you want are added to the Exported Codes column in the correct format for input.
4. You can download the CSV export from the Batches and Exports column of the homepage after it is ready.

If you export codes, you need to take to the following steps to prepare the exported CSV File for import:

1. Open the file in a program like Microsoft Excel.
2. Change the column header Exported Codes to Codes.
3. Delete the remaining columns of specific codes or categories, including Coded, Coded under, All Codes and All Categories if included.
4. Save this file as a CSV.

Obtain work product from another system

Review work product from other platforms can be imported into Everlaw in the exact same way as importing work product between projects on Everlaw. The import data must be in a CSV file and must follow the same naming and structure as an Everlaw CSV export. Otherwise, the import will fail and an error message will be returned. You can check out our Template to make sure the formatting is aligned.

Specifically, the CSV file must contain columns for Bates/Control # or Begin Bates. It can optionally contain columns for each type of review work, including:

• Codes
  • Each code needs to be paired with a category, separated by a DC1 delimiter, e.g. Responsiveness[DC1]Not Responsive.
  • If there are multiple codes in a document, each category/code pair needs to be separated by a DC3 delimiter.
• Rating
• Note Text

You can also request Everlaw to import your review data as codes for you. This incurs data manipulation charge at $140 per hour. The amount of time required will depend on the size of your dataset and the complexity of your coding sheet. 

Create your own CSV

Some use cases may require you to create your own CSV. For example, if you want to transfer review work from an original document in one project to a document with a different Bates/Control #—such as a produced document—in another project, you  need to do some CSV manipulation to include the identifying fields in the file you'll be importing.

Here's how:

1. Create an export of the review work for the original documents that you want to transfer the work product from. You can follow the steps for the CSV export or ZIP export.

2. Create a second export for the documents that you want to import the review work onto. The export needs to include the Begin Bates/Control #. If the documents in this export are produced versions of the documents from the first set, your export should also include the field Produced From. This column serves as a mapping file in Step 3.

3. Prepare a CSV file for import: Replace the values in the Begin Bates in the first CSV file (from the original documents) with the Begin Bates from the second CSV file (the produced documents/the documents that the review work will be imported to). Use the Produced From column to make sure that you are replacing the Bates numbers appropriately. 
   The end result of this step is a CSV with the review work from the original documents mapped to the Bates numbers of the produced documents that you want to transfer the review work to.

4. Import the data using the CSV file created in Step 3. 

Perform the import

Once you have your work product CSV, you can begin the import. To do so:

1. Navigate to the project that you want to import the data into.
2. Go to Project Management > Project Settings.
3. Go to the Codes tab and select Import codes and more. 
   
   
   This opens a dialog to select your file.
4. Select Browse or drag and drop your work product CSV. There is a 70 MB cap on the CSV size. If your CSV is more than 70MB, split it into multiple files.
5.  Select Continue. The following dialog appears:
   
   • The box displays all the detected Bates prefixes. If you don’t want to import data for documents that fall under a particular Bates prefix, delete the prefix from the list.
     If you are importing codes and the codes you want to import do not yet exist in the project, select Create new codes. This also adds any new codes and coding categories to the coding sheet.
   • The appropriate binders will also be created if binder information is included in the import file.
   • If you import freeform codes that already exist in the project, any existing values will not be overwritten by the import. The import will only write in values for freeform codes with no values.
   • If you are importing metadata fields that do not exist in the project, select Create new metadata fields for them to be created in the project.
6. Select Import. Importing work product runs as a batch update, and you can monitor the progress of the update on the homepage under the Batches and Exports column. If there is an error, the homepage batch action card will provide a link to details of the error.

Importing review work is additive. For example, if a document is already coded as Review Status: For Further Review and you import a code of Review Status: Responsive, then after the import the document will have both the Responsive and For Further Review codes. The exception is if the category is marked as mutually exclusive. In this case, the imported code will be added and any existing codes from the category will be removed.

Template

The dialog to import codes includes an option to download a template. The template is intended as a guide for properly formatting your review work. It can be especially helpful if you are manipulating an export from another review platform, but you should not copy and paste information from an already-completed export into this template.

To download the template, select Download CSV Template to ensure that you're using the proper CSV configuration for import.