Work on Everlaw begins by creating and naming a database, which is the umbrella source for one or more projects. A project is the user-facing environment where review work takes place.
Each project includes "clean" versions of your documents that do not contain any of the review or work product accumulated in any other projects within them. You can create unlimited projects within a database at no additional cost.
Projects make it easy to create a separate environment for an outside expert reviewer, without redoing a bunch of work in your database. A reviewer can go into their project and perform review on some or all documents in your database, without ever seeing the review product on documents in the other projects.
You can use this article to understand projects on Everlaw and learn how to create new projects within a database.
Complete and partial projects
Each new database automatically includes one accompanying complete project. Complete projects contain all documents in a database. Partial projects can contain all or a subset of the documents in your database.
You can create more than one project per database, and each one is treated as a separate matter.
- Any user with Database Administration permissions can create new partial projects (some or all documents in the database).
- Organization Administrators can create complete projects (all documents in the database).
Create a new project
Required permissions: Database Admin or Organization Admin
All databases are created with a default, complete project that automatically contains every document loaded into the database, but you are able to create additional projects within the database.
When you create a project, you can choose to create one entirely from scratch, or by using an existing project as a template.
To create a new project:
- Go to Project Management > Database Settings.
- Navigate to the Overview tab.
- Select + Add new project. You are prompted to enter a name for your new project.
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[Optional] You can choose to copy settings and users from a template project.
Tip
Pre-configured project templates can save time when you are setting up a new project.
- Select Create.
Use a template to create a new project
Required permissions: You must have Project Admin and Database Admin permissions on the existing project, or be an Organization Admin. Organization Administrators who use a template are added to the new database and project as administrators for both the project and database.
When you create a new project, you have the option to use an existing project as a template.
The table below shows the settings that can be copied over from a template project. Deselecting any checkbox will prevent those settings from transferring to your new project. The below section lists the objects that are not copied in a template.
Template sections | Settings copied over |
Permissions and Users |
|
Homepage folders |
|
Codes |
|
Metadata settings |
|
Upload settings |
|
Assignment Groups |
|
Review |
|
Production settings |
|
Predictive Coding models | |
Search Term Reports | |
Project defaults |
|
Note
Anything that depends on a deselected or excluded setting will not be copied to your project. For example, if you choose to transfer production settings without codes and you have a production protocol that includes an endorsement by code, that protocol will not transfer.
Note
If you create an ECA database, you will create both an ECA project and a review project. In this case, you can select two different projects to use as templates. Due to the limited functionality in ECA projects, ECA projects can only be used as templates for ECA projects, and review projects can only be used as templates for review projects. Learn more about ECA projects.
Objects that are not carried over from a templated project
These objects are not included in your project template:
- Binders, Stories, Drafts, Depositions, user assignments, or batch tasks
- Anything that depends on an excluded object or setting (e.g. if your protocol includes a privilege rule defined by a binder, the protocol will not be copied over)
- Project messages
- Analytics
- Productions and uploads
- Custom redaction stamps
- Views that are not public (Views that are shared with "All users" on a project are considered public views)
- Full screen review layouts that are not shared
-
Searches that include any of the following terms will not copy over with a template. This is because these terms are dependent on information in the existing project that is not copied into the new project:
- Bates/control
- Attachment group size
- Billable size
- File path
- Languages
- Has access
- Highlights
- Notes
- Predicted
- Prior search
- Redactions
- Storybuilder
Once created, you can modify settings, users and their permissions, and objects to your liking in the new project.
Add documents to or remove documents from your partial project
Required permissions: Project Administrator or Partial Project Document Management permission.
To assign Partial Project Document Management permission, go to the Permissions tab in Project Settings. The permission will be added, by default, for project administrators.
By default, projects contain no documents. You can create a partial project at any time and add documents to it.
- Adding a document to a partial project creates a clean copy of that document; no review work is transferred on that document between projects.
- Removing a document from a partial project does not delete it from the database, but it does delete the associated work product on the document in that project. You can add the document back into the partial project but it does not recover the work product
- Adding documents from within your database to a partial project does not increase the billable size.
To add a document to or remove from a partial project:
- Go to any results table. By default, all of the documents in a results table are selected. You can select only a subset of the documents by utilizing the checkboxes in the far left column.
- Click Batch > Add to or remove from project.
- Choose the project you want to add/remove the documents to/from. Only partial projects are shown in the dropdown menu.
- Select Add if you want to add the documents to a project or Remove if you want to remove them from the project.
- [Remove only] If you are removing documents, confirm this action by selecting Confirm remove of documents
- When ready, select Add/Remove documents .
You can navigate between projects by select the project name or the caret next to it on the top left corner of the screen and typing in the desired project name.
Once in the project, you can administer it (add users and user groups, set up categories and codes, etc.) via Project Settings. You should also see the documents from your first project in your second project homepage. Remember that no review work is transferred, so even though the documents are copied from the first project, they are blank slates and will not include ratings, codes, notes, highlights, redactions, etc.
[Organization Admin only] Convert a partial project to a complete project
You can have multiple complete projects per database. Organization administrators can convert a partial project into a complete one, if, for example, they want to add all documents in the database to the complete project and ensure all new documents get added to the project as they get uploaded.
To convert a partial project to complete:
- Select Project Management > Database Settings and navigate to the Overview tab.
- Locate the partial project you wish to make complete, and click the three-dot menu
- Select Convert to complete.
- Confirm your decision by typing CONVERT in the resulting input box, followed by the project name.
- A task will start in the Batches & Exports column in the project being converted. Once your partial project is converted to a complete one, all documents in your database will be added to your complete project.