For more information on productions in Everlaw, please see the help articles in our Productions section.

To produce documents on Everlaw, you must first create a production protocol. This specifies both the rules for a production as well as the documents that you want to produce. In Everlaw, you can store any number of protocols for future use, allowing you to reuse previously created protocols. 

This article will walk you through each step of creating a production protocol on Everlaw.

Table of Contents

• Step 1. Access the Productions page
• Step 2.  Production criteria
• Step 3. Document settings
• Step 4. Configure image settings
  • 4A. Choose your Image format
  • 4B. Select the Bates stamp location
  • 4C. [Optional] Add custom endorsements
    • Code endorsements
    • Metadata endorsements
    • Text endorsements 
    • Processing Error endorsements
• Step 5. Redaction, native, and text/transcription settings
  • 5A. Redaction settings
    • Audio and video redaction settings
  • 5B. Native settings
  • 5C. Text/transcription settings
• Step 6: Withholding or privilege rules
• Step 7: Placeholder settings
• Step 8: Load file metadata settings
  • Configure date and time metadata
  • Create your load file
• Step 9: Additional options
  • 9A. Privilege Log
    • Configure privilege log by withholding reason
  • 9B. Migration
  • 9C. Packaging
• Step 10: Saving a protocol

Step 1. Access the Productions page

1. If you have Admin permissions on Productions, you can navigate to the Productions page by clicking the Data Transfer icon and choosing Productions.
   • Note: if you only have Share permissions on Productions, you will be able to navigate to the Productions page and download/share completed productions, but you will not be able to initiate or edit them yourself.  
2.  Select +New Protocol on the left panel to create a new protocol. 
   You will see the option to use an Everlaw template or use an existing protocol as a template.
   • Selecting Everlaw Recommended Template will bring you to the standard production protocol wizard with Everlaw default settings.
   • Selecting any of the template options will also bring the user to the standard production protocol wizard, but with different defaults that match the specifications of the selected template. Template descriptions are located in the Production Protocol Templates article.

You can also create a new protocol based off an existing protocol's settings. To do so, navigate to the protocol of interest on the Protocols tab, and click Copy.

This article will go through the nine steps of configuring a protocol on Everlaw.

Step 2. Production criteria

The first step of the protocol wizard is to add a production criteria search, which defines the full scope of documents that you intend to produce with this protocol. Though optional, adding this is recommended as Everlaw can use the production criteria and protocol settings to automatically set-up a pre-production quality assurance workflow for you and report on any documents with potential issues.

By default, the production criteria excludes documents that have been produced on Everlaw. These are both original source documents from the database and its produced versions.

1. Build a search to define the set of documents to include in your production.
2. To include families in your production criteria,  click Search settings on the bottom right of the search builder, and group by attachments.

If you are copying from an existing protocol, the production criteria will be autofilled in the new protocol wizard.

Step 3. Document settings

The next step is to name the protocol and define some basic information for documents that you want to produce, including their sort order and how their Bates numbering is configured. 

1. Choose a sort order for your produced documents. 
   • By default, Everlaw uses filepath as the sort order for a production. Families are grouped together, with the parent documents immediately followed by respective attachments in the Production Bates range, as child attachments are extracted from their parent. The children are also sorted by filepath within their family.
   • You can adjust the sort order of your produced documents and choose additional sub-sorts. The selected fields will be applied in the order that you choose them.
     
   • Any custom sorting will affect the parents of the family, but all children will remain in filepath order within that family. This means that attachment families are kept together regardless of sort order. In the example below, produced documents will be grouped by family and then sorted by custodian (with children sorted by filepath still). Should multiple documents have the same custodian, the documents will then be sorted by their Date field:

   

2. Choose the Bates numbering for your production. There are a number of Bates options that you can modify:
    
   • Use metadata Other Bates for numbering: If you have assigned Other Bates numbers to your documents, you can choose to use these values for your documents' Bates values upon production. 
   • Produce without a Bates prefix: Checking this box will set the Bates prefix for all documents to an empty prefix.
   • Use page numbering: Checking this box will Bates stamp your documents such that each page of a given document will receive a different page number. You can also specify whether or not to display page numbers on the first page of your documents, the number of digits padding your page numbers, and the page number separator character (period, dash, or underscore). A three-page document with page numbers on the first page, six digits of page number padding, and a period separator character would have the following Bates stamps on its first, second, and third pages, respectively: ABC000001.000001, ABC000001.000002, ABC000001.000003. 
     
3. Choose your Bates prefix.
   • You can use an existing prefix by selecting from the drop-down list, or create a new prefix by typing into the input box (new prefixes will be highlighted in yellow as you type). Please note that if you have added any spaces before or after your Bates prefix, these will be deleted upon production. However, documents grouped by produced versions will account for spaces in the Bates prefix.
     
4. Choose your starting Bates number
   •  The starting Bates number is the number that will be applied to the first document in a given production. This will affect the numbering of subsequent documents/document pages in a production. By default, the ‘use next number for the prefix’ box is checked. This means that one greater than the highest number for a particular prefix will automatically be chosen as the starting number for a production. For example, let’s say you ran one production using the ‘Prod’ prefix. The last Bates number applied in that production was 4000. If you run a new production with a protocol that uses the ‘Prod’ prefix, 4001 will automatically be chosen as the starting Bates number for the new production. In this case, entering a starting number lower than 4001 will prevent you from being able to proceed with protocol setup. This is to avoid overlapping Bates numbers on the platform.
     
5. Choose your number padding.
   • The number padding is the minimum number of digits you want to reserve for your Bates number (pre-page separator). If the actual number has fewer digits than the number you input, the space between the Bates prefix and number is filled in with zeros. In other words, if you input “6”, and the Bates number is 4 digits long, there will be two zeros appended between the prefix and the number. If the actual number has more digits than the reserved number, there will be no zeros separating the prefix and the number. A preview of the Bates stamping is shown at the bottom.  
     
     

If there are concurrently running productions using the same Bates prefix, Everlaw will attempt to reserve the necessary Bates range for each production to prevent overlaps.

Step 4. Configure Image Details

Many production protocols require you to provide the documents in image format. You can think of images as digital snapshots equivalent to what the documents would look like when printed. You can also modify these images during production. For example, you can redact privileged content, Bates number the pages, or apply other desired annotations. 

4a. Choose your Image format

Choose the type of images you will produce:

• By default, Everlaw produces images as PDFs, which can display color.
• You can choose to produce no images or images as black-and-white TIFF files. You have the additional option to produce a subset of those images as color JPGs.
  • To produce color JPGs in addition to TIFF, click the “Color JPG” box and create a search for the documents that should be produced in color. All documents in a production matching this search will have color JPG images instead of black-and-white TIFF images. 

4b. Select the Bates stamp location

• By default, the Bates number will be stamped in the lower right corner. You can specify a different location for the Bates stamp on the produced document.
• Additional space on documents is provided for Bates stamps, preventing any document content from being obscured. You can choose to stamp the Bates number in any corner, or in the top/bottom centers of your produced documents.
  
  • •  

4C. [Optional] Add custom endorsements

You can customize endorsements by codes applied to the document, metadata values in your protocol, text, and/or processing errors.

• • Endorsements will be applied to produced documents, when applicable.
  • Image endorsements support characters from Unicode Basic Latin and Latin-1 Supplement, which includes all letters, numbers, and symbols available on a US keyboard.
  • For PDFs and color JPGs, you can choose to use red or black text for your endorsements. Endorsement text for Tiffs will always appear in black.

Code endorsements

 You can use document coding to automatically endorse document images.

1. 1. 1. Select the location on the page for your code endorsement.
      2. A dialog will appear where you can add or remove codes and associated endorsement text to be stamped on images with that code.
         • Selecting a category will add all of its codes, and editable endorsement text is prepopulated with the name of each code
         • Selecting a code will add just that code, , and editable endorsement text is preopulated with the name of that code.
      3. [Optional] Once you’ve closed the dialog, you can use a checkbox to copy your code endorsement rules as native filename endorsements on the next step.

Metadata endorsements

You can stamp metadata values on your produced documents. The process for selecting multiple metadata fields to endorse is the same as the process for selecting multiple codes.

1. Select the location of your metadata endorsement.
2. A dialog will appear where you can add or remove metadata fields and select the settings for each metadata field.

   

   • • If the document has a value for that metadata field, the value will be stamped. If the field is redacted, and the Redaction stamp toggle is turned on in Project Settings, then the metadata value will be replaced with “REDACTED." If that setting is toggled off, no endorsement will be stamped for redacted metadata.
3. Select which set of production images each metadata endorsement should appear on. 
   • Default endorses metadata on all images EXCEPT placeholders for withheld or privileged documents. Non-privileged placeholders, such as placeholders for spreadsheets or audio/video files, will still receive metadata endorsements when this option is selected.
   • All placeholder images endorses all placeholders, including those for withheld and privileged documents. Documents that are not placeholders will not receive this endorsement. You should select this option only when you want to endorse a metadata field specifically on placeholder images.
     
     
   • You can include any number of metadata fields, and all metadata fields will receive the same placement on the page. If the endorsement text length exceeds the space given, the text will continue onto the next line.
   • Only ASCII characters will be produced. If your metadata includes non-ASCII characters, those characters will be removed from the endorsement.

Text endorsements 

You can also add text endorsements to your images, applying your chosen text to all images in a production

1. Select the location of your endorsements
2. Enter your text endorsement in the input box. You can create one text endorsement per protocol. 

• If a selected center stamp is accompanied by a left or right stamp at the same vertical alignment, text endorsements may wrap after the character limit exceeds allowable space. Generally, the text will wrap after around 30 characters if space is limited.
• User-determined line breaks will be respected. 
• The preview will not reflect text endorsement wrapping but will reflect any user-determined line breaks.

Processing Error endorsements

You can add processing error endorsements only to placeholder documents. Please see this article for more information on processing error types.

4D. [Optional] Add a watermark:

You can add a watermark to the documents you  produce. The sample document on the right of the Image Details page shows a preview of the watermark, along with any applied stamps.

• Note: adding watermarks to your production will increase the file size of your production.

Single-line and multi-line watermarks are supported, and you can adjust the opacity and rotation of the watermark as needed.

1. Select Watermark.
2. Choose your watermark type.
3. If you choose Text, enter your text in the box
4. If you choose code, click Select codes to watermark to open up a dialog  to choose your codes and edit the watermark text for those codes. The default is the name of the code. Watermarking by code will only apply watermarks to documents with the selected codes. When you have selected the codes to watermark, select Save.
   

• A maximum of one watermark will be applied to a document, and watermark priority will be based on the order in which codes appear in the dialog. If a document has multiple selected codes applied, only the first will trigger its associated watermark. For example, as shown in the image below, if a document has Watermark Codes: Water A and Watermark Codes: Water B, Water A will be the code watermarked on that document.

• You can add by code category or select specific codes to add. You can adjust the order of the codes by adding codes in the order of your desired prioritization. You can remove codes by clicking on the corresponding X under the Remove column.

• You also have the option to copy the selected codes as native filename endorsements. The native filename endorsement will be the text in the Watermark text field for the corresponding code.
  

 

• • Any changes you make in the watermark codes dialog, such as removing a code or entering custom text for a code, will be reflected in the native filename endorsement dialog. If you adjust the settings in the native filename endorsement dialog, however, those changes will not affect the watermark codes dialog.
    • For example, if you selected three codes in the Confidentiality category for your watermarks, then removed the “Confidential” code from the native filename endorsements dialog, the “Confidential” code would still be shown in the watermark codes dialog. This means that documents coded as “Confidential” would be watermarked as “Confidential,” but there will be no native filename endorsements for these documents.
  • Any changes you make to the watermark codes dialog after adjusting native filename endorsement settings will no longer be reflected in the native filename endorsements dialog. If you change the watermark text or remove a code from the watermark codes dialog after adjusting native filename endorsement settings, these changes would no longer be reflected in the native filename endorsements dialog.
    • To make any changes in the watermark codes dialog be reflected in the native filename endorsements dialog again,  uncheck and recheck the box Copy selected codes as native filename endorsements for the next step.

• The applied watermarks will be visible when you view the produced documents on Everlaw and on downloaded versions of produced documents.

5. Redaction, Native, and Text/transcription settings

On this page, you configure your redactions and choose which native files and text files to produce.

5A. Redaction settings

Everlaw automatically detects which documents in your production have image and native redactions applied. During production, Everlaw will burn the image redactions into the produced images, and re-OCR the new image to ensure redacted text will not appear in the produced text file.

If you do not want to apply redactions during production, select the Do not include redactions button.

• For native redactions, redacted text is removed from the document at the time of production and the document text is then extracted to ensure redacted text will not appear in the produced text file.
• Generally, images are not included for natively-redacted documents. If a document has both image and native redactions, the native redactions will take precedence.
  • Note: Everlaw will automatically produce the natives for any files with native redactions even if the production protocol is configured to not produce natives.

• If your production settings up to this point meet all three of the following criteria, then you will need to select the format to produce your redacted images in. Criteria:

  • • You excluded images from your production on the previous step
    • You are choosing to include redactions
    • Your production set includes image-redacted documents
      
      
• The parent documents of any redacted documents will not be produced natively. Instead, only the image and text formats of the parent documents, if available, will be produced.
  • Example: if you redact a PDF that is an attachment to an email and produce the entire attachment group, the native format of the parent email will not be produced. The same is true for emails and attachments embedded in other emails.
    • Since native email files often contain associated attachments, this precaution prevents the redacted content from being accessible from anywhere in the final production
    • Note: this functionality is only available for Everlaw-processed documents.

To control how redactions appear:

1. Click the customize button.
2. Make your selections in the dialog that appears. You can customize:
   • Whether  your redactions are black or white
   • The default text that is stamped on top of your redactions
     • Note: If custom redaction stamps are used in your project, the custom stamps will appear on the completed redactions, overriding any text you may specify at this step.
3. Select Save.

Audio and video redactions

If you are producing audio and/or video files with redactions, you can configure the redaction settings at the step:

• Videos are produced as .m4v files and audio files are produced as .m4a files.
• Redacted audio and video files will be stored in the Natives folder of the production.
  • The produced text transcript will be generated from the transcript shown in the review window, but the redacted text will be replaced with the selected redaction stamp. If a redaction does not have a stamp, the redacted text will be replaced with [REDACTED].
• Redacted portions of video files will be replaced by a black screen displaying the redaction stamp(s) or [Redacted] if there are none
• By default, the audio for redactions less than 4 seconds will be replaced with a continuous 1000 Hz bleep and those longer than 4 seconds will be cropped out and replaced with a short bleep
  
  • Note: redaction length refers to the total length of a redacted section, even if this longer redaction has been created by multiple shorter redactions. In other words, if you create 2 overlapping 3-second redactions, with a total redaction length of 6 seconds, this will be treated as a 6-second redaction. To change these settings, click the blue Customize button and then select the Audio/Video Redactions tab.

You can choose both the threshold for longer redactions and how those redactions are processed. To do so:

1. 1. Select Customize and then select the Audio/Video redactions tab
   2. Choose the threshold for longer redactions
   3. Choose how Everlaw should process longer redactions:
      • If you select Crop redacted audio and/or video sections: redactions longer than your selected time will be cropped out of the file entirely, and the cropped portion will be replaced with a 0.5 second bleep.
      • If you select Do not crop redacted audio and/or video sections. Replace redacted audio with silence, with short bleeps marking the start and end: the cropped section will begin with a short bleep, then continue with silence for the duration of the redacted section, then end with a short bleep.
      • If you select Do not crop audio and/or video sections. Replace redacted audio with continuous bleep: the entire cropped section will be replaced with a continuous bleep. This option means that long and short redactions will be treated exactly the same.
   4. Select Save.

5B. Natives

You can choose if you want to include native documents in your production. Native documents are the files in the format of their originating application, such as .xlsx and .docx. For natives that you do include, you can choose to append endorsements to the native filenames and which placeholders are generated. 

1. Choose which natives to include. The default selection is to include natives for all documents without images. Select Refine to make a different choice. You can choose from the following options:
   • Include natives for all documents
   • Include natives for all documents without images (default)
   • Do not include natives
     • Regardless of your selection, the following will never be produced in natives (See the Excluding attachments when producing native emails article for exceptions):
       • Withheld or privileged documents
       • Documents with metadata or image/PDF redactions
       • Parents of any of the above documents
       • Container files
       • Parent emails, chats, and calendar objects whose children are not included in the production
     • If your production does not include natives for documents without images, you’ll see a warning: Documents without natives or images will be produced in text only, or, if you haven’t included text files, will be entirely replaced with a placeholder image. To address this, you can:
       • Choose to produce natives for those records
       • Reprocess the original documents to generate images from your natives for those images to reflect the content of each document. 
       • Learn more about reprocessing here. 

Native Filename Endorsements: You can choose to endorse native filenames in your production with codes and/or metadata for documents including native versions. These endorsements are appended to the end of the Bates number in native filenames, e.g. ABC001_Confidential.xls. To create native filename Endorsements

1. Select the arrow to expand out the native filename Endorsement section.
2. Choose codes and/or metadata in the same manner you would select image endorsements on the previous step, described above. As you make your selection, a preview below will show a sample native filename matching your choice.
   • Note: a checkbox on the Image Details steps copies over your code endorsements as native filename Endorsements.

Placeholders and encryption: You can choose to automatically generate native placeholders for documents. For encrypted documents, you can choose to either produce the encrypted version of the document or a decrypted version.

• By default, the checkbox is selected so that decrypted versions of documents will be produced.
  • Note: these options are only available for encrypted documents that have had passwords provided on Everlaw.
• Encrypted documents uploaded before the March 3, 2023 release will have decrypted versions stored and created upon reprocessing. After reprocessing, decrypted versions will be available to produce. Everlaw will always produce encrypted documents with native redactions as decrypted in order to preserve redactions.
• If the checkbox below the dropdown is selected, Everlaw will automatically generate a placeholder rule for documents produced in native.  This rule will be displayed on the Placeholders page of the production wizard.  You can learn more about this rule in the Placeholder section below.

At the Image Placeholders step of the production wizard you can edit the placeholder text to be displayed. Learn more about image placeholder settings.

5C. Text

You can choose whether you want your production to include text files in the ZIP folder included in your production. 

• Text files are produced as TXT files
• Everlaw automatically creates transcripts for all media files with extractable voice text that are uploaded to the site, and you can choose whether or not to produce these media transcripts.  
• Text files will not be produced for privileged media files that are withheld from production, regardless of whether you have selected the option to produce media transcripts in this dropdown.

1. Under Text, click the dropdown menu.
2. Choose the documents for which you'd like to produce text files. You can choose:
   • Produce all text files excluding media transcripts
   • Do not produce text files
   • Produce all text files including media transcripts

Step 6. Withholding or Privilege Settings

In this step, you can choose withholding rules. You have the flexibility to define what documents you want to withhold and customize the placeholder text that appears in place of those documents. Withheld documents can also be automatically added to a privilege log (below). Because you can choose to withhold documents based on a wide variety of criteria, privilege settings do not automatically withhold documents until you specify how to identify them. 

To withhold documents:

1. Select Withhold documents.
2. Select Add a rule to create a search that Everlaw will use to identify documents to withhold.
   • Note: all documents in a production that match the search will be withheld. This means that the images, text, natives, and metadata of these documents will not be included in the production. Instead, Everlaw will create a placeholder image for the withheld documents. You can modify the text that will be stamped on these placeholders in the “placeholder text” input box.
3. Select Advanced settings to configure withheld Bates range and placeholder text files.
   • Placeholder images for withheld documents usually result in a single Bates number gap per placeholder in a production. However, you can also choose to reserve the full bates range for each withheld document.
     • For example, if you are withholding a 20 page document, a 20 Bates number gap will be in your production. One advantage of this is that if you do happen to produce a withheld document at a later time, Everlaw can allocate the document its full Bates range without any overlap. 

       

        

4. Under Advanced settings, you can also choose to produce placeholder text files for withheld documents.
   • By default, no placeholder text file is produced for withheld documents. This has the advantage of not mixing placeholder text with the underlying searchable content of produced records.
   • By selecting the checkbox, productions will instead include a text file with the same placeholder text as the standard image placeholder. If you instead wish to produce privilege rules or placeholder text in a metadata field, you can do so during the load file step.

• If you withhold documents, parent documents that are associated with the documents will not be produced natively. Instead, only the image and text formats of the parent documents, if available, will be produced.
• Since the native files of parent documents often contain associated attachments, this precaution prevents the privileged content from being accessible from anywhere in the final production. This functionality is available to documents whose parent is embedded in a third document. However, it is not currently available for documents that were not processed by Everlaw. 

A note about creating disclosure lists: Some of our clients need to create disclosure lists. Our privilege log functionality allows you to do this. Remember, because Everlaw cannot automatically detect privileged documents, you can specify whatever criteria you need for your list of withheld documents. This allows you to select whatever criteria you need for documents to be withheld in this step and exported in the Privilege log step.

Step 7: Image Placeholders 

At this step you will see the placeholder rules already in place, both from your choices in the Redactions, Natives, and Text step and in the Withheld or Privileged step.

•  If you chose to include placeholders for all native documents in the Natives step of the production wizard, you will see an automatically generated placeholder rule.  
  • This placeholder rule uses the search you defined in the Natives step to identify the documents that need placeholders.
  • Any other placeholder rules you generate will take precedence over this automatic rule.  If you go back to the Natives step and modify the natives search, the placeholder rule will automatically change to match the new natives search.
  • If you change this rule's name or search, it will break its automatic link to the Natives step. The checkbox to automatically create placeholders on that step will be deselected. You may change the placeholder text for this rule without breaking its link to the Natives step.
• If you chose to withhold documents in the Withheld or Privileged step, you will see the rule that you generated here.

You can also create image placeholders for additional documents. Unlike placeholders for withheld documents, image placeholders created in this step will only replace the image file.

Placeholders are generated according to rules that govern the documents to produce placeholders for, and the text to stamp on the placeholders. To create a rule:

1. Select +Add a Rule.
2. In the dialog that appears, name the rule and specify the text that you want stamped on the placeholder.
3. Create a search for documents you want to apply this particular rule to. If Include Families is toggled on, this rule will propagate to all family members of documents captured by the search. Toggle this setting off if you don't want the rule to affect family members.
   • The total number of documents matching your search in the production will be shown right below the query builder.
   • If you are creating a protocol but did not select your production criteria in Step 2, the number shown corresponds to the total number of documents in the database that would receive the placeholder.
   • If you did select production criteria, the number corresponds to the number of documents within your production set that would receive the placeholder.
4. Select Save.

Multiple placeholder rules can be in effect simultaneously in a single production protocol. Rules at the top of the table take precedence over rules below. As a result, documents matching the search criteria of multiple rules only contribute to the document count of the top rule. Similarly, documents already withheld at the Privileged step do not contribute to the document count of placeholder rules.

You can edit a rule by selecting the pencil icon. You can edit the name, the display text, and the search identifying the set of documents that the rule applies to.

•  Note: you cannot edit the privilege rule at this step, as these documents were identified in the previous step of the production wizard. 

Step 8: Load file metadata settings

In this step, you choose the metadata fields to produce in your load file, and the names of the chosen fields. You can additionally group fields together for production.

Load files are included by default. To create a production without load files, select Do not include load files at the top of the page.

There are two primary sections in the metadata step of the production wizard: the left panel shows available metadata fields and the right panel shows the fields that you’ve selected to produce.

 

• The metadata field type can be identified by the section under which that field appears as well as the color of the field's outline. 
  • Calculated fields, with blue outlines, are fields that are calculated on production, such as the Begin and End Bates of the documents in the production.
  • Everlaw fields, with purple outlines, are fields that are interpreted from the original or load file metadata, including user fields and aliases -- i.e., anything that you could view as document metadata in the results table or review window.
  • Code fields, with gray outlines, are fields that include information about codes applied to the original document. "Code Category" will populate the field with any and all codes that have been applied within the selected category. "Code" will populate the field with the selected code. "Freeform Code" will populate the field with the value of the selected freeform code.

Configure date and time metadata

In your load file, you can specify how you would like your date and time metadata to be produced and select the time zone to which date and time metadata is to be produced.

• You can adjust your Date fields to show up as DD/MM/YYYY instead of MM/DD/YYYY.
• Once you select your date format, you can select a time format as well. You can choose between a 12-hour, 24-hour, and hour/minute/second format.
  
• By default, date and time metadata will be produced to the UTC time zone, and no abbreviated time-zone indicator will be used. To add a time zone indicator (e.g. “UTC” for Coordinated Universal Time, or “PST” for Pacific Standard Time”), select the Show Time Zone selector to toggle it to the on position.
• To convert date time metadata fields to a different time zone in the production load file, enter your preferred time zone in the Time Zone box.
  • The time zone settings used for the load file will be applied to any image endorsements of date time metadata (if enabled in image settings) and will be used in the privilege log/disclosure list (if enabled).
    
    
  • Note: changes to time zones only change how the information displayed in the load file, images, and privilege logs/disclosure lists. When viewing a produced document in Everlaw (such as in the review window), all metadata will still be displayed according to the project’s default time zone settings.

Create your load file

To create your load file:

1. You can use Everlaw's recommended fields by selecting Use Everlaw defaults. This will automatically load a preset selection of fields to be produced.
2. You can also select or drag individual fields in the left panel to be added to the right panel. All other fields are originally part of the documents in your database.
   • You can use the filter box at the top of the left panel to find fields by name.
3. To remove a field that you’ve chosen to produce, select the red ‘x’ associated with the appropriate field in the right panel.
4. [Optional] You can also group fields together into a single field. In the resulting documents, the grouped field will display values from the first available field in the group. This means that when a document’s metadata does not include values for the first field in the group, the second field (or the next available field with values) will be used for the grouped field.
   • To group fields, click and hold a metadata field, then start dragging it. Boxes will appear next to the selected fields in the right panel.
   • To group the field you’re holding with a selected field, drag your cursor to the box of the field that you want to group it with.
   • A green plus icon will appear in the box. Once you let go of the mouse, the fields will become grouped. The names of the fields included in the grouped field will be added in gray, and a gear icon will appear in the far right that you can use to remove fields from the group. The name of the grouped field will be the name of the first field in the group. 
   • For example, if you drag the fields “Date Created”and “End Date” into the “Date” field, all three fields will be grouped under the “Date” field. If a document produced with this protocol does not have values for the “Date” field (first field in the group), the values from the “Date Created” (second field in the group) will be displayed for the grouped field. 
5. [Optional] To rename any field, click on the name of the field in the right panel so that it is highlighted. Then, input the desired name.
   • Note that the renamed metadata field will not be found in metadata search, or available as a results table column. Instead, the Everlaw metadata field used to populate this load file field will be populated on your produced document.
     
   • Upon production, Everlaw will populate existing Everlaw metadata fields on your newly produced document, regardless of the load file name configured, i.e. if you produced the ‘Custodian’ field under the name ‘CUST’ then the produced document on Everlaw would still have a value under ‘Custodian’ and no ‘CUST’ field would be created. This is true for all produced fields, including aliases and combined fields. Only the value used in the load file will be populated on your produced document.
   • Some field names allow you to pick a specific field to use in its place. For example, you can select a field that allows you to show either the date or the time value for a specific field, e.g. "Time Sent". To do this, drag a "Date Only" or "Time Only" metadata field to the right panel. Then enter the name of the original metadata field that you would like this value to come from e.g. "Date Sent". You can then rename this field as described above.
     
     

   • Below is a table of metadata fields for which you can specify how the metadata is structured:

     Field	Function
     FAMILY VALUE	If there are attachments to the document, uses the parent value for the selected field for children documents (ex: a parent email's date sent value used for child attachments).
     DATE ONLY	If a field contains both date and time values, uses only the date portion of the selected field.
     TIME ONLY	If a field contains both date and time values, uses only the time portion of the selected field.
     TIME AND ZONE	Uses both time and zone portions of the selected field.

• Some production protocols require the inclusion of fields that might not appear by default in your database when the documents are uploaded. If you don’t see a field that you need in order to abide by a production protocol, you can use freeform codes to accomplish this workflow. This article will explain how to create freeform codes.
• If you produce metadata fields that are redacted on some documents, those metadata fields will be replaced in the loadfile with the redaction stamp you applied.  If you did not apply a redaction stamp, the redacted fields will be replaced with the word “REDACTED.” If you would like to leave the unstamped fields blank instead of printing “REDACTED,” please refer to this article.
  • Note: redacted non-text metadata fields, such as fields with DateTime values, will still be left blank. This ensures that production loadfiles will remain compatible with Everlaw and other platforms by avoiding introducing text into non-text type fields. However, redaction stamps for non-text metadata fields will appear in the production privilege log, which you can create from the Additional Options step in the production wizard.
  • If you are on Everlaw Australia, please visit this article to learn about producing to a Microsoft Access Database format.

• You can package your production into subfolders for load files, images, text files, and natives, or package all files in the production into one single folder.
• You can produce all images into one single PDF.
  • Note: The size limitation for this is 2GB.
• To rename a folder, select the default name and type in your new desired name. 
• All productions on Everlaw are then subsequently packaged into one top level folder that contains subfolders or one single folder.
  • Productions packaged into one single folder cannot exceed 65K files; for productions larger than this, it is recommended to produce in the format of subfolders.
• Production subfolders are by default split per 1000 files, but you can choose to adjust the file count limit to any number between 100 and 65K files. Some ediscovery platforms cannot handle processing subfolders that exceed 1000 files, so please coordinate with the parties that will receive the production.