Add Evidence to your Story

Storybuilder helps you use key evidence to build a narrative of your case. Use this article to:

• Learn how to add evidence to your Story
• Understand the Story information you can add for each piece of evidence
• Make sure your Story timeline displays the information you want

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Access the Storybuilder Tab
• Add Evidence 
  • Add Documents
  • Add Document Highlights
  • Add Testimony
• Add Story Information
• Batch add documents from the results table
• Document Names and Dates Settings

Introduction

Storybuilder, Everlaw’s narrative building and trial preparation platform, lets you organize your evidence in a Story. This evidence can include:

• Documents
• Specific highlights from a document
• Testimony from a deposition transcript

You can view your Storybuilder evidence in your timeline, reference evidence in your collaborative writing with Drafts & Depositions, and organize your evidence with information like names, dates, descriptions, labels, and people. 

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Access the Storybuilder tab

Required permission: Admin or Create permissions for Storybuilder, or Edit permissions for the Story.

In the full-screen review window, you can add an individual document to a Story or standalone Draft with the Storybuilder tab. 

The Storybuilder tab is included in the Project default layout of the full-screen panel. To add the Storybuilder tab to a custom layout:

1. Select the Storybuilder quill  
2. Select +Add tab to layout from the resulting dialog box.
3. Select Save to save the layout.

You can also add the Storybuilder tab to your layout by selecting the Edit button at the bottom right corner of the full-screen panel and selecting Storybuilder from the Tab Layout menu. Once the Storybuilder tab is added to your layout, click the Storybuilder quill from the toolbar to expand/collapse the tab. In the classic review window, the Storybuilder quill is available in the toolbar at the top of your screen. 

Learn more about managing and customizing panel layouts in the full-screen review window.

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Add Evidence

You can add an entire document, a specific highlight from a document, and/or testimony as evidence to Storybuilder.

Add a document

To add a document to your Project Story within the Storybuilder tab:

1. Select +Add this document to Project Story. You will see a green check on the Storybuilder quill icon if the document has been added to at least one Story or standalone Draft in your project.
2. If you have Edit permissions on multiple Stories or standalone Drafts, select your desired Story or standalone Draft from the dropdown menu within the Storybuilder tab. If a Story or standalone Draft has a blue check and Added next to the title in the dropdown menu, the document has already been added. Once a Story or standalone Draft has been selected from the dropdown menu, it appears as the default selection.                                  
3. [Optional] Add Story information. In the Document details section you can edit the document name and date, and add a description, relevance, and labels, or add it to a Draft or Deposition.

To remove a document from a Story:

1. Select the three-dot menu in the Storybuilder tab.
   
2. Select Remove from Story.

Removing a document from a Story deletes all work product associated with the document from that Story (i.e. Story information).  

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Add Document Highlights

Some documents have multiple relevant sections that you might want to reference as independent pieces of evidence. You can reference multiple relevant parts of a document by highlighting them and adding each highlight as evidence to your Story.

To add a highlight to your Story:

1. Make a new highlight or select a highlight in the review window.
2. In the highlight pop-up, select + Add highlight to Project Story or select your Story from the drop-down if your project has multiple stories.
   

You can add as many highlights as evidence to your Story as you want.

When you add a document highlight as evidence to your Story, the entire document is present in the Story. When you preview the highlight, Storybuilder opens the preview at the cited highlight. 

Add Testimony

To add testimony to your Story:

1. Navigate to a deposition transcript in Storybuilder.
2. Add a highlight to the transcript and choose Add to Story on the highlight’s pop-up dialog. The text in the testimony displays throughout Storybuilder. Opening testimony jumps you to the cited portion of the transcript. Use the clipboard icon to copy the testimony text with a page and line citation. Learn more here about using testimony in Storybuilder.

Add Story Details

Once you add evidence to your Story, add or edit information pertinent to the document directly from the Storybuilder tab.

This information is associated with the document in your Story and displayed in your Story’s Timeline: 

• Name: The name of a document within a Story is pre-populated by its prioritized metadata value. Select the pencil button to input a custom value or choose from a dropdown menu of other available metadata values pulled from the Name priority list. 

• Date: Story date is also pre-populated according to its Date priority list settings. To edit this date, select the pencil button and then choose either an existing metadata date field or enter a custom date from the dropdown. Everlaw populates all possible date metadata values as date options. If you choose to enter a custom date, you can enter date, date and time, month only, or year only.
  
  All dates, custom or metadata, are displayed according to your project’s timezone. Please note that the Story date of a document exists separately from the metadata associated with the document, so any edits to the Story date does not change the document’s underlying metadata. 

• Description and Relevance: To add a description of the document:

  1. Select +Add description or + Add relevance.

  2. Type in the applicable text.

  3. Select Save.

     Tip

     If there are existing notes applied to the document, you can copy the content into the description or relevance fields. To copy an existing note into the description or relevance field, select the Copy note to… button and then select Insert next to the note that you want to copy.

• Labels: Apply new or existing Storybuilder labels (e.g. events, issues, and people) to the document by clicking the + button under the Labels section. To create and apply a new Storybuilder label:

  1. Select the + button.

  2. Type in the new label name.

  3. Select a new or existing category. 

• References: Add the document to any Depositions and Drafts in that Story that you have at least Edit permissions on. 

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Batch add documents from the results table

To batch add documents to your Story:

1. Access a  results table with the documents you want to add. By default, all documents in the results table are selected, but you can choose a smaller set using the checkboxes on the left side of the table.
2. Select Batch > Modify, or press the spacebar on your keyboard to expand the batch coding panel.
3. Select the Story, Depositions, and Drafts you would like to add the document to. Remember, documents added to Depositions and Drafts will automatically be added to the associated Story, but not the other way around. 
4. Select Apply. The documents are automatically named and dated in the Story according to the Name and Date priority list settings.

To batch remove documents from a Story and/or Depositions and Drafts, select the tag a second time. The tag will appear under the Remove section in the batch panel and will be outlined in red. You can both add and remove documents in a single batch action. 

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Document Names and Dates Settings

Documents added to a Story are automatically named and dated according to the highest prioritized metadata value from a pre-populated name and date priority list in the associated Timeline. This can be configured in the Timeline’s settings under Document names and dates.

Anyone with Edit permissions on the Story can set the priority of metadata fields that Everlaw uses to date and name your documents when they are added to the Story. We recommend that a designated person, such as a Project admin, manages this setting so that it stays consistent.

By default, Everlaw titles the documents in the following order of metadata fields: 

1. Title
2.  Subject
3.  Filename
4.  Bates number
5.  Control number 

The default order of date fields is: 

1. Primary Date
2. Family Date
3. Date Sent

To edit this priority order:

1. Access the Story Timeline. You can select the Project Story card from the homepage, or press the Storybuilder button from the navigation bar.
2. Select Settings > Document names and dates.
3. Drag and drop the fields in their preferred order. You can add additional fields by typing them into the bottom of the panel. You can remove a field by pressing the red "X" next to it.
4. Once you have set your priority order, select Save

If a metadata field is included in the Name priority list, it appears as a renaming option if you click to edit the title of any document in the Story. If you choose to edit a document's date value you can select any of the metadata values associated with it, even if they are not on the Date priority list.

Note: For document highlights added as evidence, these settings only impact the Date. For name, document highlights always receive the Bates number and the page number the highlight is on. For example, a highlight on the second page of document ABC001 is named "p.2 of ABC001."