Table of Contents
- Accessing your Drafts
- Creating a Draft
- Collaboration
- Editing a Draft
- Evidence Panel
- Exhibits
- Copying and Exporting a Draft
Storybuilder’s Draft tool gives your team a collaborative space to create written work product that references drag-and-droppable evidence in Everlaw. Drafts can be used to outline case strategy, to create a template for depositions, or for any document you would like your team to work on together. You can import existing documents into a Draft, as long as they are in the .docx format. Once in a Draft, you can link relevant evidence identified over the course of review as references, including documents, document highlights, and testimony. Multiple users on your project can edit the document in real-time, simultaneously.
Once you're in a Draft, type or paste a Bates number to get started and it will automatically turn into an evidence link.
If you are preparing for a deposition, you can also use Everlaw’s Storybuilder Deposition tool to create an outline and mark exhibits. For information on Depositions, please read these support articles.
Accessing your Drafts 
Your Drafts, and any Drafts shared with you, can be found in the Drafts tab of your story, as well as on the homepage in the Storybuilder column. The Drafts cards will have a pink band. To navigate to the Drafts tab, click on the Storybuilder icon and select the Drafts header. To open a Draft, click on its associated card. Depending on your permission level, you may be able to view Drafts, view and edit Drafts, or have full sharing and deleting permissions on top of viewing and editing. Please note, users subject to document access management may not be able to access Stories.
You can filter Drafts on the Drafts tab by their name, or their owner’s name.
Creating a Draft
To create a Draft, navigate to the Drafts tab of your story and click New Draft. Enter the desired name for your Draft in the dialog that appears. Click Create, and you will be taken to the newly created Draft. You may not see this option if you do not have Create permission on Storybuilder.
You can also create a Draft by clicking the plus sign next to the Storybuilder column header on the homepage. If you have multiple Stories in your project, you can select which Story the Draft belongs to. Alternatively, you can create a standalone Draft by selecting “No Story.” Standalone Drafts are Drafts that are not associated with a story.
Any Drafts you create and any Drafts that are shared with you will appear as a card on the homepage as well as in the Drafts tab of the story they belong to. This means that a standalone Draft will only be accessible from its homepage card.
You can import .docx files into your Draft by clicking Import in the toolbar. If your imported document includes formatting that is available in Drafts, that formatting will be preserved upon import.
Collaboration
A major benefit of using Drafts is that multiple users are able to work simultaneously. The badges on the far right, above the toolbar, show you which users are currently in a given Draft. The badge will have their initials and a color corresponding to their cursor color in the Draft. You can hover over a badge to see the user’s full name. Clicking on a badge will send that user a message.
By default, a Draft will only be visible to the creator of the Draft and users with Admin access to the Story. Please note that Project Administrators have Admin permissions on Storybuilder, and will see all Drafts on the project. You can invite collaborators by sharing the Draft. When you share a Draft, you can set the permission levels for those receiving your invitation. Recipients can either only view the Draft, view and edit the Draft, or view, edit, share, and delete the Draft. If you want to see existing permissions, click the Existing Permissions option on the sharing menu to see a list of users or groups and their permission levels.
Please note that sharing a Draft with a user will give that user View permissions on the associated Story. Also note that they will need edit permissions on the Story to add documents to the shared Draft.
Editing a Draft
If you created the Draft, or if someone shared it with you and gave you Edit permissions, you will be able to edit the Draft.
Multiple users can update a Draft simultaneously and you can add relevant evidence found over the course of review as document references.
You can click into the body of the Draft and start typing to directly add text. Use the format bar to change text’s format, add highlights, and add hyperlinks.
You can also add numbered lists, bulleted lists, and outline lists. Press tab or click the indent button to create a sub bullet. You can also unindent by holding shift and pressing tab or by clicking the unindent button.
Headings and Navigation
Headers and lists are special types of formatting because they allow you to create automatic entries in the navigation panel. These entries serve as document checkpoints, like a table of contents for your document, and allow you to easily jump to specific portions of your document.
Click the navigation button to open an automatically generated table of contents. You will see each header and list items from the Draft added as a line in the navigation panel. Click the caret icon to expand, locate, and select sub-bullets, which are associated with indented list terms or a sub header. Click anything in the navigation panel to jump to it in the body of the Draft. If you adjust your Draft by adding or removing headers or lists, the navigation panel will update automatically, indicated by the status “pending”.
Tables
You can add tables to Storybuilder Drafts and Depositions to organize information and evidence.
There are three ways to add a table:
- Select the table button
from a Draft Body, Deposition Body, or Deposition Summary.
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- By default, a new table is three columns by three rows. Select the caret
instead of the table button to specify the number of rows or columns in your table.
- Import a Word document including a table
- Paste a table from your clipboard
- By default, a new table is three columns by three rows. Select the caret
To edit your table, select or click into a cell in your table. Select the three-dot menu that appears in that cell. From the pop-up menu, you can select how to edit your table:
- Insert row inserts a row above or below your selected cell
- Insert column inserts a column to the left or right of your selected cell
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Delete row(s) or Delete column(s) deletes the row or column you have selected
- Drag your cursor to select multiple rows or columns to delete
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When you select multiple cells, Merge cells combines them into one cell. Unmerge cells uncombines previously merged cells
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- If you merge multiple cells that contain text and then unmerge them, all the text will stay in either the leftmost or topmost cell after unmerging the cells.
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Toggle header row changes the background of the top row gray and bolds its text. Toggle header column changes the background of the leftmost column gray and bolds its text.
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- Both a row and a column can be headers at the same time
- Select Toggle header row or Toggle header column again to change the row/column back to normal
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- Select Delete Table to delete the table.
- Select Undo to revert any accidental or incorrect edit to a table
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Editing History
To view a full history of the Draft, click the history icon in the toolbar. You can see the date and time information of the previously saved versions of the Draft, as well as the name of the user responsible for the saved changes. A new version is saved whenever there is activity on a Draft and more than 10 minutes have passed since the last version was saved.
To see what the Draft looked like at a previous time, click the version you want to see. If you click Revert, your Draft will change to reflect the previous version you have selected. The overwritten version will be saved in the history of the Draft.
Evidence Panel
In Drafts, you will see an evidence panel to the right of your Draft. The panel will include any documents, document highlights, or testimony added to your Draft. Drafts allow you to include evidence as references linking directly to those sources, bookmark specific pages of documents, and publish the evidence references to PDF alongside the text you have written in the body of the Draft.
You can learn more about adding and referencing testimony in this article.
Adding Evidence to Your Draft
The Review Window
You can add an individual document to a Draft from the review window with the Storybuilder Icon.
Click on the Storybuilder icon to expand the Storybuilder tab in the full-screen review window (or open the dialog box in the classic review window). To add a document to a Draft associated with Project Story (default Story selected in Storybuilder tab and dialog box), click “+Add this document to Project Story” then click “+” under the “References” section and select your Draft.
If you have Edit permissions on more than one Story or standalone Draft, add a document to these by clicking the dropdown menu within the Storybuilder tab (or dialog box) and select your desired Story or standalone Draft. Learn more about adding documents to your Story from the review window.
The Results Table
You can batch add multiple documents to a Draft from the results table by selecting your documents, clicking Batch, and then Modify.
Select the Draft you would like to add them to in the coding panel and apply your changes. Learn more about adding documents to your Story from the results table.
The Timeline
You can also go to the associated timeline and add the Draft label to the documents you wish to include in the Draft.
Adding a Document via Bates or Control Number
You can add documents if you have Edit permissions on both the Draft and its associated Story. If you know your desired document’s Bates or control number, you can add it to your Draft by clicking “Add document via Bates or Control #” at the bottom of the document panel.
Note: You should only type whole numbers in the panel to add a document. For example, to add document #356.1 to your Draft, you must enter the number just as "356"
You can also add a document by typing its Bates or control number directly into the Draft body. When you type a Bates or control number directly into the body, you can type the exact Begin Bates or control number, or type just a whole number. Everlaw will automatically convert any detected Bates number into a document reference and add it to the object, as well as to its associated Story. For documents with no Bates prefix, enter at least six digits, adding any necessary leading zeros, to trigger auto-detection of Bates numbers. For example, to automatically include document “151,” type “000151” and then press the space key. Please note that the platform will detect and convert the Bates number after you press space or navigate away.
By default, auto-convert is toggled on for each Storybuilder object and can be adjusted by the “Settings” icon of its toolbar. Only those with permissions to add documents on the object and its Story can adjust the auto-convert setting.
If the auto-convert setting is toggled off, you will see a blue underline and suggestion to convert the text to a document reference when Everlaw detects a valid Bates number. Clicking “Convert to document” will also add this document to the Draft, as well as its Story.
Changing this setting will also change the setting for all others on the Draft. The setting affects future text written after the point that it’s toggled, but it will not retroactively convert (or unconvert) text or documents.
If you add multiple versions of the same document to your Draft, only one copy in the version group will be displayed. If you have not set your priority list, it will be the one you added first. Otherwise, it will be the first available prefix in the priority list if you've set one. For more information about prefix priority listing, please read this help article.
Using the Evidence Panel
To add evidence to the body of your Draft as a document reference, find it in your evidence panel and click the plus sign. You can also drag and drop to the appropriate place in the Draft. You can reference evidence multiple times in the the body of your Draft. Evidence used in the body of the Draft are white, while those that are not currently used are gray.
Click on evidence in the evidence panel to edit the name, date, description, relevance, and labels. Note that any changes you make will change the Story detials in the Timeline.
To remove a evidence from your your Draft, select x Remove from Draft completely. can icon. Select <- Back to all tabs to return to the evidence list. When viewing a document highlight, select “Document details” to view the Story details relating to the overall document a highlight is from.
You can sort and filter the evidence list at the top of the evidence panel. You can sort by Bates, Date, Date added, and Name. Clicking the blue number on the right will take you to a results table of the documents currently shown in your document list, including documents highlights are from.
Each evidence reference in your text body is represented by a white bar with the document’s name and type. To see more information about the evidence, click the reference. To remove a reference from within the text body, select the document then press backspace or delete, or select the x icon.
If a document has more than one page and is referenced in the body of the Draft, its pages can be bookmarked. This allows you to point to specific pages within that document in case you would like to be able to easily reference a particular page or guide other users to view that page of the document. Click the document reference and then click the eye icon in the panel to preview it.
In your multi-page document, navigate to the page you’d like to bookmark. In the “bookmarks” section on the right, click the plus sign to add a bookmark.
You can add multiple bookmarks for each document reference. To navigate to a bookmarked page, click the bookmark number. Each document reference in your Draft has its own unique set of bookmarks. This means you will be able to associate separate bookmarks to the various document references.
You will see a document’s bookmarks in the Document Panel under Bookmarks. If other references to this document have bookmarks, you will see them under “Other Document References.” If this document has bookmarks in another Draft or Deposition, they will be listed here under “Other Depositions” and “Other Drafts,” respectively.
Exhibits
Within Drafts, you can easily view and export any evidence referenced in your Draft. You can toggle from Draft to Exhibits view with the toggle to the top right of the Draft body.
You can configure your potential exhibit list and format your information so that it is suitable to bring to a deposition. Any document bookmarks will also appear here and can be exported in an exhibit list. If you wish to include testimony, document highlights, or attachment families in your exhibit list, toggle the corresponding button on the top left of your exhibit list. A document will only export once even if multiple highlights are referenced from that document, with separate highlight Story details present alongside document details.
You can learn more about this workflow, and how to mark documents as exhibits in this Deposition support article.
Copying and Exporting a Draft
Copying a Draft will create a new Draft with the contents of the version you are copying, retaining any document associations. This new Draft will be associated with the same Story. Click Copy, give your new Draft a name, and click Create to duplicate your Draft.
There are a number of options for exporting a Draft.
- Word Document: Exports your Draft as a Microsoft Word file. Any documents referenced by Bates/Control # in your Draft are exported as links to those documents within Everlaw. Any testimony will be linked and will redirect you back to the associated transcript if clicked.
- PDF: Exports your Draft as a PDF file. Any documents referenced by Bates/Control # in your Draft are exported as links to those documents within Everlaw. Any testimony will be linked and will redirect you back to the associated transcript if clicked.
- PDF (With Images): Exports your Draft as a PDF file. The images of any documents and testimony referenced by Bates/Control # in your Draft are included at the end of the PDF file. You will have the option to stamp Bates numbers and add any necessary slipsheets with the included documents. Within the body of the exported Draft, the document and testimony references are hyperlinked to the pages with their respective images. This way, you can access them easily from within the exported PDF file. A document with multiple highlights will only be included once in the export, with highlight story details appearing alongside document story details.
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