Perform Pre-Production QC on Everlaw

Once a production protocol is created, Everlaw automatically runs quality control (QC) checks on its settings and associated production set. This pre-production QC tool informs you of documents with potential issues and points to recommended fixes. Once the issues have been either resolved or acknowledged, you can initiate a production.

Everlaw’s pre-production QC tool is also particularly suited for rolling productions. Admins can produce just the documents without QC issues, and then return to address those with potential issues before the next production(s). 

This article explains how to use Everlaw’s pre-production QC tool.

Requirements

To perform pre-production QC you must be an Organization Admin, Project Admin, or have Admin permissions for productions.

Step 1: Select a protocol and production criteria

Everlaw runs pre-production QC and produces documents by running the production criteria search against the specified protocol. The production criteria search describes the documents you want to produce, and the protocol describes the rules for the production.

You can start your production from an existing protocol (from the Productions page), and then build a production criteria search from the Productions page.

Alternatively, you can start by building a search, and then create or select a protocol from the results table.

Start from the Productions page

To start your production from a protocol:

1. Select Data Transfer > Productions to access the Productions page.
2. Select the Protocols tab.
3. Choose a protocol from the list provided.
   If one doesn't exist, you will need to create one. Visit Create a Production Protocol to learn how.
   
4. If the protocol doesn't already have production criteria, select Create production criteria and build a search for the documents you'd like to produce.
   
   If it does have production criteria, you can optionally edit this search. To do this, select the modify production criteria button, make your edits, then select Save.
   
   
   

Start from a search

To start your production from a results table search:

1. Open an existing search or build a new one for the documents you want to produce.
2. From the results table, select Export > Production.
3. Here, you have the option to build your production using an existing protocol or to create a new one.
   To use an existing protocol, choose Existing protocol. Then select the protocol from the list provided.
   To create a new protocol, choose New protocol.
   
4. Select Next.
   If you chose an existing protocol, the search is automatically saved to your protocol as its production criteria. 
   If you chose New protocol, you will be redirected to the new protocol wizard. To learn how to create a protocol, visit Create a Production Protocol.

Step 2: Review Production QC warnings

Once a protocol is selected, Everlaw displays any applicable QC warnings it detects, along with suggested fixes.

A protocol’s QC checks are displayed on its Production QC page in the Warnings section.

Depending on the protocol the checks listed may consist of Everlaw’s standard checks and custom project-specific checks. For a full list of Everlaw’s standard checks for these warnings, please refer to our table of Everlaw standard QC checks.

For each of these warnings, you can either resolve, or choose to keep or withhold the affected documents before clicking Continue Production. The following section of this article goes more in depth about both options.

To view all the checks that Everlaw has conducted across your protocol, select Show checked warnings on the bottom of the page.

Step 3: Resolving QC warnings

Each warning has a suggested action to fix the issue, such as creating an assignment to review impacted documents or making edits to protocol settings. Select the resolution text to be dropped into the appropriate place to make edits or changes. 

You can also refer to the QC suggested resolution text that appears for guidance on the suggested fix.

Include or exclude documents from your upcoming production

You can initiate a production by acknowledging all the warnings that are listed. For each warning, you can either choose to Include in production or Exclude from production. Excluding documents from your production set may be an effective method to meet your production deadlines. The documents that are removed will remain in this pre-production QC page, if you wish to return to those documents after the production is initiated. 

If there were no detected issues, or all warnings were acknowledged by being included or excluded from your production set, select Continue Production.

For the next steps to create and review completed productions, visit Initiating and Monitoring Productions.