Introduction to Assignments

Everlaw's assignment groups feature offers a structured approach to managing document reviews. This helps team members overseeing the process to balance reviewers' workloads while tracking review progress and monitoring the project's overall status. This is particularly helpful for matters with large document sets that require multiple stages of review by a team of reviewers. 

This article introduces the concepts of assignments and assignment groups, differentiates between the two types of assignment groups available in Everlaw, lists the available assignment related permissions, and identifies how to search document sets by assignment.  

Table of contents

• Assignments versus assignment groups
• Dynamic vs static assignment groups
• Assignment group permissions
• Assignment groups in search

Assignments versus assignment groups

Assignments are designated sets of documents allocated to a user for review. They includes admin-specified review criteria and are batched into assignment groups.

Assignment groups contain documents that meet admin-specified inclusion criteria.  Administrators then allocate these documents to members of the projects, in the form of assignments.  

Assignment groups can contain unassigned documents, which Project Admins (or anyone with Admin assignment permissions) can assign out whenever they please. Reviewers can also self-assign these documents if given the permission to do so.  Finally, assignment groups can be automatically updated to include any new document that fits the inclusion criteria of that assignment group.

Below is a screenshot of the assignment group dashboard. The required permissions to access the dashboard are Project Administrator,  Admin permissions on assignment groups, or anyone who has received a shared assignment group with "share, edit, and delete" permissions.

The dashboard indicates the following information:

• The number of assignments that  have been created, each represented by the light blue cards, and each distributed to different users
• The percentage of of the documents included in the  assignment group are considered reviewed
• The creator of the assignment group
• The date the assignment group was created
• The number of documents are included in the assignment group
• the number of documents are assigned
• The number of documents that are unassigned and unreviewed. It's possible that unassigned documents may be considered reviewed.
• Whether the assignment group is dynamic or static

 

Dynamic vs static assignment groups

There are two assignment group types in Everlaw: dynamic and static.  

Dynamic assignment groups allow you to specify an inclusion criteria.  As review progresses, all documents matching that criteria are automatically added to the assignment group.  All unassigned documents no longer satisfying the criteria are removed. After a dynamic assignment group has been created, you cannot manually add documents to the group that do not meet the inclusion criteria. 

Static assignment groups do not change over time to match specific inclusion criteria.  Documents only enter the group if they are manually added.  

Regardless of whether an assignment group is dynamic or static, once a document has been assigned to a reviewer, it can no longer be removed from an assignment group.

For more detail on how to set up dynamic vs. static assignment groups, visit Creating Assignment Groups. 

Access assignments and assignment groups

A user's assignments can be accessed from the Assignments column on their homepage. The same column lists all assignment groups that they have permission to access.

Assignment group permissions

Assignment group permissions are managed from the Project Settings > Permissions page.

There are five levels of permission for assignment groups:

• Project Administrator: You can create assignment groups, edit them, delete them, and share them. Your Assignments column displays assignment groups that you've created or that have been shared with you.
• Assignment group admin: You can view and administer all assignment groups on the project.
• Create:  You can create and administer your own assignment groups. Others can also share assignment groups with you.
• Receive:  Other users can share assignment groups with you, with either View or Allocate, Share, and Delete permissions on the specific assignment group.
• None: You are not able to create assignment groups or receive assignment groups shared by others. 

Any user, regardless of any permission, can receive an assignment if they are added to that project.

To learn more about managing user permissions, visit User Groups and Project Permissions. 

Assignment groups in search

You can search by assignments and assignment groups using the search page's query builder. To do this, select Assigned from the list of Review search terms. Then select your criteria.