Table of Contents

• Introduction to the search interface and arranging search terms
• Adding search terms to the query builder
• Available search terms
• What do "Anytime" and "Now" mean?
• Negating search terms and flipping logical operators
• Document sampling, grouping, and removal options
• Copying search terms
• Additional search examples
• Searching for numbers and special characters in CSV files

 

To access the search page, click on the magnifying glass icon in the toolbar.

Introduction to the Search Interface and Arranging Search Terms

Everlaw’s search interface features an intuitive, visual drag-and-drop mechanism for building queries. While you are building your query, results are generated in real-time and displayed in the Instant Search Preview. There are three main components to the search interface:

1. The Search Terms List

 2. The Query Builder

3. The Instant Search Preview of the documents that match your query

Document, Review, and Metadata categories include terms within them, some of which are hidden. You can customize which terms are always visible to you by clicking "Show all terms" and then dragging and dropping the terms you'd like to have visible.

The search page also features a series of keyboard shortcuts, that you can access by pressing the "?" key (shift + /, on many American computers). 

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Adding search terms to the query builder

You can add terms to the query builder and construct complex searches through using keyboard shortcuts. To access the full list, press the "?" key (shift + /, on many American computers) on your keyboard. 

To build a search, add the appropriate search term(s) into the query builder. There are two ways to add terms into the query builder:

1. Drag-and-drop the term

2. Click on the term itself

Logical operators (AND/OR) allow you to create more complex queries. To learn more about using logical operators in your queries, check out the logical operator documentation.

3. Find a term

By using the keyboard shortcut "f" or by clicking on "Find a term," you can type in the term name and press enter to include it in the query builder. 

Commonly, users want to search for contents. If you type in a string of text when finding a term, you can opt to convert that search into a Content search. For example, if you wanted to search for the term "Enron" but didn't search for the term Contents, then Everlaw will suggest converting your search into a content search.

 

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Available search terms

Search queries are constructed from one or more search terms. These search terms are listed on the left of the search interface. Search terms allow you to search on different facets or characteristics of documents. The terms are grouped into four sections: Logical (Boolean grouping properties), Documents (properties pertaining to the document itself), Review (properties pertaining to review product and review work), and Metadata. 

A full list of search terms, along with their descriptions, can be found here.

Some search terms allow you to search across multiple parameters. In the example below, for the “Rated” search term, not only can you search on the document’s rating status, but you can also search by who applied the rating, and when the rating was applied.

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What do "At any time" and "Current" mean?

At any time - At any time in the life of the project, the document was the specified status. In the example above, every document that the Blue Team ever rated hot will be retrieved, regardless of whether or not the document is currently rated hot.

Current - At the current moment in the project, the document has the specified status. In the example below, every document that is currently rated hot will be retrieved. As a note, Current cannot be used when also searching by a specific group or user.

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Negating search terms and flipping logical operators

Any individual term added to the query builder can be negated. To negate a search term, simply click on the term name once, or drag and drop a NOT term from the left-hand sidebar over the term. Negating a search term will find documents that do not have that particular property. In the example below, after negating the search terms, you are searching for documents that do not contain the word “energy” and are not emails. To remove the "NOT", simply click the term again.

You can also flip the logic of, or negate, any logical operator that appears in the query builder. To flip a logical operator to the other operator (eg. “and” to “or” and vice versa), double-click on the logical operator. In the example below, after switching the “and” operator to the “or” operator, you are searching for documents that either contain the word “energy” or are emails.

You can drag and drop a NOT term from the left-hand sidebar onto the logical operator to negate its contents. Negating a logical operator has different logical consequences from negating an individual search term. In the first example below, the user is searching for documents that are not sent from Ted Fick and were not sent during the time period 1/1/2007 to 3/14/2013. In the second example, the user is not searching for any documents that were sent from Ted Fick and were sent during the time period 1/1/2007 to 3/14/2013.

The first example will exclude more documents than the second. A document that was not sent during the time period 1/1/2007 to 3/14/2013, but that was sent from Ted Fick, will be excluded from the results of the first example and included in the results of the second example.

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Document Sampling, Grouping, and Removal Options

You can specify additional options for sampling, grouping, and filtering your documents by clicking on the search settings tab in the lower right-hand corner of each logical container.

This tab will allow you to exclude or include duplicates from your search results. This option may or may not appear, depending on your project settings.

You can choose to view a random sampling of your search results by specifying the corresponding percentage in the sampling text box. If you choose to sample 20% of your documents, each document in your search results will have a 20% chance of being included in the sample. 

You can additionally choose to include document family members among your search results. You can group documents by attachment group, email thread, exact duplicates, or versions. Depending on the grouping setting you have chosen, you will be able to further specify removal settings, including removing parent documents or search hits from your family results, among other options. To read more about the search settings tab, please see the corresponding article.

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Copying Search Terms

You can copy a term by dragging it to a new location while holding the Ctrl (command on macs) key. A new term will appear with the same information as the original term. You can copy the logical AND and OR containers in the same way by dragging on their bars; all of their contained terms will be copied as well.

 

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Additional Search Examples

1. Documents with the ABC prefix and Begin Bates from 50 to 10000

2. Documents rated “hot” or “warm” by Byron that are not PDFs

3. Emails that contain the word “energy” or hot documents coded “Responsive”

4. Deduplicate across all documents that meet your search criteria

This option groups your documents with any exact duplicates that exist on the project, then removes any children from the groups, leaving only one copy of each document in your search results. 

5. Pre-production quality assurance

Need to prepare document families for production while making sure that nothing has been skipped over during review? You can run a search for all documents, including attachments, that have been coded responsive, and have NOT been coded privileged.

 

6. Combining Distinct Searches

For those who build complex searches, it might be helpful to combine different searches to avoid having to input all search terms again in one search. In this case, use the "Prior Search" term under the "Review" tab on the left panel to pull up previous searches to build upon.

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Searching for numbers and special characters in CSV files

In Excel spreadsheets uploaded prior to June 18, 2021 (that have not been reprocessed since then) or any CSV file, numbers in cells next to each other are combined in the search index. As a result, you should use the wildcard search (*) for all numeric or special character search queries over CSV files.