August 18, 2023 Release: Near duplicate document grouping, customizable exhibit linking in depositions, and more!

Expected US Release: Aug 18, 2023

Expected International Release: Aug 25, 2023

Expected Federal Release: Sep 1, 2023

With this release, we’ve added near duplicate document grouping, customizable exhibit linking in depositions, and more — read on for more information about the features coming out this month! If you would like to learn more about the features in this release, join us for a live training session.

User-facing features in this release:

• Near duplicate document grouping 
• Codes admin and editable coding sheets
• Customizable exhibit linking in depositions
• Apply custom metadata values and work product during processed upload
• [Organization Admin] Organization-wide setting to disable OA access on new databases
• Visual improvement: Dropdown Menus

Near duplicate document grouping 

You are now able to group documents by near duplicate groups! Near duplicates are grouped together when they are 95% or more textually similar to another document in the group.

Below is an example highlighting how documents are grouped based on textual similarity relationships:  

• Document A and Document B are 97% similar to each other,
• Document B and Document C are 96% similar to each other, 
• Document A and Document C are 93% similar to each other. 

All three documents would be in the same near duplicate group. While Document A and C are less than 95% similar to each other, they have a greater than 95% similarity to Document B. 

The 95% relationship-based similarity ensures that near duplicate groups are closed groups that do not overlap. This approach to creating near duplicate groups guarantees that a document will only ever be in one near duplicate group. It allows you to easily find all similar documents within the same group. 

To ensure that all highly similar documents are grouped together, near duplicate groups will by default include:

• 95% or more textually similar near duplicates
• Exact duplicates 
• Email duplicates 

You will be able to see updated near duplicates that reflect new near duplicate groups in the context panel. Exact duplicates and email duplicates will often also be considered near duplicates because they are often more than 95% textually similar. In the context panel, any document that is both an exact duplicate and/or an email duplicate will be listed under the “Exact duplicates” and “Email duplicates” sections. Any near duplicates that are not exact or email duplicates will be listed under the “Remaining near duplicate” section.

Near duplicate grouping inclusion criteria can be changed in Project Settings > General. This can be used:

• for databases with documents with inaccurate metadata relating to exact duplicates, such as MD5 and SHA1 hashes
• to exclude email duplicates from near duplicate grouping.

This setting can be configured by project admins, database admins, and organizational admins who have been added as users to the project.

Note that changing this criteria will trigger regrouping and may take several hours to complete. In addition, during the initial rollout of near duplicate groups, it may take a few days for near duplicate grouping to complete. The status of near duplicate grouping can be tracked on the Statuses page on Project Settings. If regrouping is in progress, the status will display as “Regrouping in progress” and will be displayed in the context panel and grouping dialog.

To be notified of the status of near duplicate grouping, you have the option of enabling near duplicate grouping toast notifications in your Account settings.

You can also choose to receive an email once near duplicate grouping is complete through clicking the Notify me upon completion link in the toast notification. 

To learn more about near duplicate document grouping, please refer to this article about duplicates on Everlaw.

Codes admin and editable coding sheets

With this release, we are introducing two new codes related permissions: 

• Codes Admin: Project admins can use this permission to delegate administrative abilities over codes to users. 
• Create: Users with create permission over a coding category will be able to add new codes to that category while reviewing documents. 

Codes Admin

Project admins can now give other users administrative access over codes through the “Codes Admin” permission. Project admins are always codes admins, but codes admins do not need to be project admins. 

Code admins can access the “Project Settings > Codes” page and have full administrative abilities over codes.

Create permission

“Create” will now be the highest permission that can be given for an individual code category. Users with “Create” permission over a code category can add new codes to that category while reviewing documents. The “Create” permission does not, by itself, convey any additional administrative abilities over a particular category of codes. For example, you must either be project or code admin to edit or delete codes and code categories. 

Adding new codes

If you are granted “Create” permissions over a coding category, you will now see the option to create new codes in that category in all areas of the platform where codes can be applied. This includes the batch coding panel,  code filters, and code category section of the review window. In addition, project admins or code admins can quickly access the Codes page under Project Settings from the batch panel or review window.

Default pinning behavior

To ensure that users are aware of new codes, the default pinning behavior will be changed such that all new codes and categories are pinned by default, and you must affirmatively hide them if you do not wish them visible. 

To learn more about permissions on codes, please see Administrating Codes for Review. 

Customizable exhibit linking in depositions

You now have additional flexibility when identifying exhibits and linking them in deposition transcripts. This includes the ability to:

• Create and use additional exhibit prefixes
• Assign aliases to exhibits. Aliases are alternative ways the exhibit could be referred to in the transcript
• Manually link and unlink arbitrary text in the transcript to an exhibit
• Unassign an exhibit

In addition, automatic linking will now support exhibit references with any name and exhibit aliases. Exhibit names are composed of the prefix and the number/identifier, both of which can be any arbitrary alphanumeric text string. 

Prefixes

New prefixes can be created from the prefix manager, accessed from the link icon in the transcript view of a deposition. 

On the “Manage prefixes” modal, you will be able to add, edit, and delete prefixes. Only the default “Exhibit” prefix cannot be modified or removed. 

Both the prefix and the identifier will be taken into account when determining whether an exhibit is unique. In the example below, “Exhibit 1” and “Defendant Exhibit 1” are separate and unique exhibits. 

Aliases

You are also able to create aliases for exhibits. Aliases are used to capture references to an exhibit that may not be the exhibit name. For example, if the phrase “phone logs” is used to refer to an exhibit, you can assign “phone logs” as an alias of that exhibit. Aliases can be created and managed from the alias management modal, accessible from the link icon on the transcript view of depos. 

 

Everlaw will automatically link any instance of an alias with the appropriate exhibit. 

Manual linking and unlinking

After selecting unlinked text in the transcript, you now have the option to link that text to an exhibit, and create an alias based on that text, if desired.

 

You also have the option to unlink an exhibit when you click on linked text. Unlinking only occurs for the given instance of the text; other instances of the text in the transcript will not be affected by an unlinking action. 

Unassigning exhibits

You can unassign an exhibit from a document by deleting the exhibit number. Saving an exhibit with an empty number field will remove the exhibit from the underlying document. 

For more information on exhibit linking, please see this article on marking documents as exhibits, and this article on linking exhibits to documents.

Apply custom metadata values and work product during processed upload

You can now assign custom metadata values and review work (ratings, codes, binders, notes, etc.) while uploading processed data or performing overlays. 

Assigning custom values and work product

A new step called “Additional options” will now appear in the processed upload flow, after the initial metadata configuration steps. On this step, you can assign work product and custom field values that will be applied to all documents contained in the upload. The available work product and the ability to create or assign custom values will be determined by your permissions. 

Upload, database, and organization admins can also set default custom fields; these fields are pre-populated on the custom fields table across all uploads in a database. For more information about setting default custom fields, please see this article. 

Scope of available and applied work product

Even though multiple projects can be targeted by a single upload, the available work product is determined by the project that you are uploading from and will only be applied to the documents within that project. 

This limitation means that:

• If you initiate process uploads from the org admin page, you will not be able to assign work product as part of the upload.
• If you access an in-progress upload with applied work products from the org admin page, you can only see the work product, but cannot modify it. In order to modify the work product, you must instead access the upload from within the appropriate project.

[Organization Admin] Organization-wide setting to disable OA access on new databases

Organizations wishing to limit OA access to databases can now configure an organization-wide setting to disable OA access for newly created databases. The setting for OA access on new databases can be configured in the Security Settings tab under Projects and Users on the Organization Admin page.

The organization-wide setting affects only future databases and does not affect existing databases. Regardless of the organization-wide setting, organization admins with database admin permissions can still manually enable or disable OA access from the three-dot menu in the Projects tab of the Organization Admin page.

By default, this setting will be toggled on in all organizations, meaning that all organization admins will have OA access to new databases unless OA access for a given database is disabled. 

When the organization-wide setting is toggled off and an organization admin creates a new database, they will see a warning that OA access will be disabled.

For more information, please refer to our support articles on Organization administration for Databases and Projects. 

Visual Improvement: Dropdown Menus

With this release, Everlaw will have visual improvements to Dropdowns. Notable changes include:

• Restyled option categories, dividers, and hover highlight color

• Checkmarks as visual indicators for selected options, replacing the orange highlight