Once a production protocol is created, Everlaw automatically runs quality assurance (QA) checks on its settings and associated production set. This pre-production QA 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. This article will describe how to use Everlaw’s pre-production QA tool.
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Tip
Everlaw highly recommends creating a protocol as early as possible. Because pre-production QA reporting is available as soon as you have a created production protocol with an associated production criteria, this allows you to stay informed and resolve issues as review progresses, well before your production deadline.
Everlaw’s pre-production QA tool is also particularly suited for rolling productions. Admins can produce just the documents without QA issues, and then return to address those with potential issues before the next production(s).
Select a protocol and production criteria
Everlaw runs pre-production QA 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 by selecting a protocol, and then building 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.
From the Productions page
To start your production from a protocol:
- Select Data Transfer
> Productions to access the productions page.
- Select the Protocols tab.
- Click the protocol name or the caret to choose a protocol.
-
If you haven't already created a production criteria, select Create production criteria and build a search for the documents you'd like to produce.
- If you have already created a production criteria, you can edit this search or delete the criteria entirely by clearing the search builder and clicking Save.
From the results table
To start your production from a search:
- Open an existing search or build a new one for the documents you want to produce.
- From the results table, select Export > Production.
-
Here, you have the option to select an existing protocol or create a new one. This search will be automatically saved to your protocol as its production criteria.
Review Production QA warnings
Once a protocol is selected, Everlaw displays any applicable QA warnings it detects and suggested fixes that it. If you are checking on this production QA tool periodically throughout review, you can use the suggested fixes to resolve issues in the weeks leading up to the production deadline. Otherwise, if you are producing immediately, you can choose to include or exclude documents with potential QA issues from your production set.
For a full list of what Everlaw checks for these warnings, please refer to the table below:
Table of all QA warnings
Name of Warning |
Potential Issue and Suggested Fixes |
|
Already processed |
These documents do not have a Bates prefix of #, suggesting they may have already been produced. To only produce documents with a # prefix, edit your production criteria to “AND” the search term “Bates/Control: #” to your overall search. |
|
Redactions turned off |
This will produce your documents without any applied redactions. Make sure to turn on redactions in the “Redactions, Natives, and Text” step of the protocol wizard. |
|
No privilege rule |
Without a privilege or withholding rule, you are producing all privileged documents in your production set. You may want to add a privilege rule to your protocol. |
|
Emails with metadata redactions but no image redactions |
Emails also display metadata information (To, From, Subject, Bcc, etc) in their image. You may want to review the images of these documents and make appropriate image redactions. |
|
Spreadsheets with both image and native redactions |
Only native redactions will be produced when a spreadsheet has both image and native redactions. You may want to verify that applied native redactions cover the same information as their image redactions. |
|
No codes |
Documents without codes may not have been reviewed. |
|
Already produced in Everlaw |
These documents are both original source documents and any produced versions. For example, if document #1.1 was produced to ABC001 on Everlaw, this warning would flag both documents #1.1 and ABC001. Please note that we report on any original documents that were produced in your entire database, not just the project. In addition, grouping your production criteria search may bring back in produced documents. If you still intend to produce these documents, you can simply choose to keep this warning in your production set. |
|
No native included for documents without images |
Documents without natives or images will only produce a text file. You may want to choose "Include natives for all documents without images"' in the Natives section of the protocol wizard. |
|
Spreadsheets with metadata redactions and no image |
Only a text file is produced for non-imaged spreadsheets with metadata redactions because the native is withheld. You may want to image your spreadsheets by reprocessing them from the results table. |
| Brought in by final grouping that do not match the base search criteria |
These are documents pulled in by the outer grouping of your production criteria search, but don't match your core search criteria. You may want to review these documents to double check that they are responsive before producing them. |
|
Violates auto-code(s) |
These are documents that do not follow the auto-code rules of your project. You may want to review these documents to resolve any conflicts. |
|
Violates conditional rule(s) |
These are documents that do not follow the conditional rules of your project. You may want to review these documents to resolve any conflicts. |
|
Broken families |
The documents of the production criteria are missing family members. You may want to group your search by attachments. |
|
Missing passwords |
These documents have not been fully extracted upon upload. You may want to create a placeholder rule for this technical error. |
|
No created PDFs |
Everlaw could not create PDFs for these documents upon upload. You may want to create a placeholder rule for this technical error. |
|
Have upload errors |
These documents have not properly processed upon upload. You may want to create a placeholder rule for this technical error. |
|
Family metadata not included in load file |
This information must be included in your load file to preserve document family relationships. You may want to include the “Begin Family” metadata field or another equivalent field in your load file. |
|
Bates numbers not included in load file |
Document identifiers must be included in your load file for this data to be properly uploaded by the opposing party. Include metadata fields “Begin Bates” and “End Bates” in your load file. |
|
Invalid or conflicting load file fields |
Some metadata fields included in your load file (and privilege log) may be invalid, such as if they reference a deleted code or metadata field. Make sure to go to the Load File step of the protocol wizard to resolve these errors by either removing or renaming the invalid fields. |
|
Invalid or conflicting privilege log fields |
Some metadata fields included in your privilege log may be invalid, such as because they reference a deleted field or are referenced twice. Make sure to go to the “Privilege Log” section of the Additional Options step of the protocol wizard to resolve these errors by either removing or renaming the invalid fields. |
|
Invalid Bates |
This warning will appear if you used the Other Bates field to fill Bates values in your production, and some of the documents had Other Bates values that contained one or more of these seven invalid characters: [ ] { } , : / (square brackets, curly brackets, comma, colon, or forward slash). The resolution for this warning will take you to the production configuration page, where you can uncheck “Use Other Bates metadata for numbering.” You could also edit the Other Bates values of the affected documents to avoid these characters. After this, you can choose whether or not you would like to apply your configuration changes to the production's protocol as well. |
|
Potentially Malicious Native Documents |
These documents were flagged as potentially malicious during processing, and they are being produced in native format. Since these native files may be malicious, downloading or sharing this production could transmit malware to the recipient. This can be resolved by editing the production criteria to exclude the flagged documents, or could be resolved by altering the set of documents produced in native format to exclude these documents. |
|
Time Only field in loadfile does not indicate time zone |
This error occurs when the time zone of a production is changed and the load file includes one or more “Time Only” fields. Because “Time only” is used instead of “Time and Zone,” the loadfile will present an ambiguous time; the time metadata is not in UTC, but does not indicate that any timezone adjustment was made during production. This can be resolved by adding an equivalent “Time and Zone” field to the load file for any fields which were produced in a “Time Only” format. |
|
Time only field in privilege log does not indicate time zone |
This error occurs when the time zone of a production is changed, the privilege log/disclosure list tool is enabled, and the privilege log/disclosure list includes one or more “Time Only” fields. Because “Time only” is used instead of “Time and Zone,” the privilege log/disclosure list will present an ambiguous time; the time metadata is not in UTC, but does not indicate that any timezone adjustment was made during production. This can be resolved by adding an equivalent “Time and Zone” field to the privilege log/disclosure list for any fields which were produced in a “Time Only” format. |
|
Date only field(s) in loadfile may be affected by time zone selection |
Because time-zone changes can cause a time to progress past midnight, changing the time zone can change the date component of a date metadata field. Date-only fields do not contain time zone information. If a date-only field is produced without any corresponding time-and-zone field, then the date may be changed, but the receiving party would not be aware of this shift, nor know the timezone used to calculate the shift. This can be resolved by adding a complementary “Time and Zone” field for each “Date Only” field to the loadfile. |
|
Date only field(s) in privilege log may be affected by time zone selection |
Because time-zone changes can cause a time to progress past midnight, changing the time zone can change the date component of a date metadata field. Date-only fields do not contain time zone information. If a date-only field is produced without any corresponding time-and-zone field, then the date may be changed, but the receiving party would not be aware of this shift, nor know the timezone used to calculate the shift. This can be resolved by adding a complementary “Time and Zone” field for each “Date Only” field to the privilege log/disclosure list. |
To view all the checks that Everlaw has conducted across your protocol, select Show checked warnings on the bottom of the page.
For each of these warnings, you can either resolve, or choose to keep or withhold the affected documents before clicking Continue Production. The following sections will go more in depth about both options.
Resolving QA 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 QA 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 QA page, if you wish to return to those documents after the production is initiated.
Important
Everlaw excludes documents by family and outer production criteria grouping to preserve attachment groups and the grouping that you specified in the production criteria. If your production criteria was grouped by versions, removing documents based on a production QA warning will remove each document's family and its versions. This means that even if you chose to keep documents for certain warnings, they could be removed if they were part of a document family that was removed based on prior warnings.
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, you can read the article Productions 3 of 3: Initiating and Monitoring Productions.
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