Projects

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:

1. Go to Project Management > Database Settings.
2. Navigate to the Overview tab.
3. Select + Add new project. You are prompted to enter a name for your new project.
4. [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.

5. 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	Permissions groups (project and database) Users Notification settings IP/Location whitelist
Homepage folders	Homepage folders shared with at least Edit permissions to a user group that will copy over to the new project, including: Searches Nested folders Assignment Groups Search Term Reports Not all searches in a folder will copy. See below for a list of search terms that will not copy to a new project, regardless of their inclusion in a homepage folder. Searches that reference freeform codes copy over, if Codes is selected for use in the template. Since the values of the codes do not template, the search will default to (Any value).
Codes	Codes/categories Conditional rules Review criteria Coding presets Auto-code rules Freeform code categories (but not the individual codes) "Code as Previous" settings
Metadata settings	Metadata visibility Aliases System fields Promoted raw fields Customization to the primary date hierarchy
Upload settings	Custom metadata fields
Assignment Groups	Inclusion criteria Review criteria Allocate by pages/documents Static/dynamic Default review window layout
Review	Inclusion criteria Review criteria Allocate by pages/documents Static/dynamic Default review window layout
Production settings	Redaction stamp settings Production protocols Production tools on/off
Predictive Coding models
Search Term Reports
Project defaults	Homepage view default Full-screen default Timezone Date Format Time Format Unitization on/off Email notifications for new messages Default binder sharing settings Multifactor authentication Machine translation on/off and provider List of languages Default page size Default search grouping

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 in a homepage folder 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 add a document to or remove from a partial project:

1. 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 using the checkboxes in the far left column.
2. Click Batch > Add to or remove from project. A dialog appears.
3. At this point, Everlaw checks whether or not adding or removing the selected documents will break an attachment group. If no attachment groups will be broken, Everlaw will skip this warning step (move to the next step now).
   However, if an attachment group will be broken, the dialog displays a warning identifying the affected documents and family members. From here:
   
   1. [Optional] To prevent this from happening, select include any missing attachment family members in this document set.
      

      Important

      Attachment groups can break when a user adds or removes incomplete attachment families to or from projects in the same database. We do not recommend breaking attachment groups, as their sizes are indexed on the database level, and broken families can lead to confusing search results in partial projects.

   2. Select Continue.
4. In the Select project field, choose the project you want to add/remove the documents to/from. Only partial projects are shown in the dropdown menu. 
5. In the Add or remove documents field, choose Add if you want to add the documents to a project or Remove if you want to remove them from the project.
6. [Remove only] If you are removing documents, confirm this action by selecting Confirm remove of documents 
7. 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:

1. Select Project Management > Database Settings and navigate to the Overview tab.
2. Locate the partial project you wish to make complete, and click the three-dot menu
3. Select Convert to complete.
4. Confirm your decision by typing CONVERT in the resulting input box, followed by the project name.
5. 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.