Add Evidence to your Story

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 Evidence page, reference evidence in your collaborative writing with Drafts & Depositions, and link evidence to Facts within a Fact timeline.

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 Evidence page displays the information you want

Requirements

To add evidence to a Story, you must have Admin permission for Storybuilder or Edit permissions for the Story.
Any user in a group with Receive or Create permission for Storybuilder can have the Story shared with them with Edit permission.

Access the Storybuilder tab in document review

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 button.
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.

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. 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  Added next to the title in the dropdown menu, the document has already been added to the Story/Draft.
    Once a Story or standalone Draft has been selected from the dropdown menu, it appears as the default selection.             
2. Select + Add this document to Project Story.
   
   [Optional] To associate the document with a Fact when you add it to your Story, select the arrow and then Add to Story and link to Facts. 
    
   This opens a dialog to select Facts or create a new Fact. For detailed instructions on how to do so, see our Fact Timelines article.
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).  

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.
   [Optional] To associate the highlight with a Fact when you add it to your Story, select the arrow and then Add to Story and link to Facts. 
   

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. 
   [Optional] To link the Testimony a Fact at the same time that you add it to the Story, select the arrow and then Add to Story and link to Facts 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. 
  
  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.  
     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.

• Facts: Link the evidence to one or more existing Facts or create a new Fact. To do so, select the under Facts. See for detailed instructions on how to link evidence to Facts.
• 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.

If you add a People label and select that label, it opens the profile of that person.

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

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. 
   [Optional] To link the evidence to existing Facts, or create a new one to link to, select Select Facts. 
   
   See for detailed instructions on how to do so.
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. 

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 on the Evidence page's settings under Document names and dates.

See Configure your Story for detailed instructions on how to adjust the priority list.