Early in the litigation review process, you likely have a large number of documents. At this stage, you might have a sense of search terms to apply to your data (such as keywords, dates, or custodians) but you probably don’t have enough information to assign documents out for review.

To help with the costs associated with hosting large amounts of data, only a portion of which need to be reviewed, Everlaw offers ECA databases. These databases contain both a limited-functionality ECA project and at least one full-functionality review project.

ECA projects have a limited feature set that includes all our analytics tools to help you identify the documents that are likely relevant for your case.

Once you have used the ECA project to identify at a high level the documents that should be reviewed, you can promote batches of documents to one or more review projects in the ECA database, which come with complete Everlaw functionality.

Documents housed in the ECA project but not in a review project are billed at a lower rate than documents housed in both.

This article describes the functionality of ECA projects and suggested workflows for making use of them.

Feature availability in ECA 

All Everlaw features are available within review projects in an ECA database. ECA projects have limited functionality. 

The following features are available in ECA projects, though they may have modified functionality. 

• Search Term Reports
• Search, Data visualizer (limited search terms available in ECA)
• Project settings (excluding most permissions and anything related to restricted features)
• Messaging
• The following pages under Analytics:
  • Project sizes graph
  • User activity page
  • Promotion history
• Clustering
• Homepage folders
• Results table
• Review window
• ECA specific promotion coding 
• Binders 
• Batch Export of natives from any results table or database settings page (only natives can be exported from the ECA database. If you need to export images and texts, you'll have to promote those documents and export them from the review project)
• CSV export from any results table
• Document access management, but no other permissions
• Everlaw AI Assistant: Document summaries, topic analysis, custom extractions, and document Q&A
  If you generate a custom extraction from an ECA project and promote that document to review, the extraction is not available in the review project
• Deep Dive: Deep Dive enrollment is controlled at the Organization level. ECA projects are eligible to enroll in Deep Dive.

The following features are not available in ECA projects:

• Productions
• Storybuilder
• Analytics (except for the pages mentioned above)
• Document export (except for CSV export and export of natives)
• Redactions
• Notes/Highlights
• Predictive Coding
• Ratings
• Codes and freeform codes
• Assignments
• Persistent highlights
• Editable Metadata 
• Writing Assistant
• Coding Suggestions

Create an ECA Database

Required permissions: You must be an Organization Administrator.

Create a database on the Organization Administrator page and select ECA as the database type.

When you create the ECA database, you see the option to copy project settings from existing projects. ECA projects can only use other ECA projects as templates, and review projects can only use other review projects as templates. The only available settings to copy in ECA projects are:

• Permissions and Users
• Metadata
• Review
• Search Term Reports
• Project Defaults

Once you have selected a project to copy settings from, select the dropdown or uncheck Include all project settings to expand the full menu. Deselecting any checkbox will prevent those settings from transferring to your new project.
 

Turn an existing database into an ECA database

To migrate an existing database to an ECA database, you must be an Organization Administrator and your organization must have migration permissions. Please contact Everlaw Support if you are interested in migrating databases to ECA.

To migrate:

1. Navigate to the Organization Administrator page.
2. Select the three-dot menu next to the database you wish to convert
3. Select Migrate to ECA.

When the database has been converted to an ECA database, a new ECA project is added to the database. Because ECA projects must be complete projects, all documents in the database are automatically added to the ECA project.  However, existing work product is not automatically added to the documents in the ECA project.

The documents, review work, and work product in the pre-existing projects in the database are unchanged. This includes work done in Storybuilder, predictive coding models, and any other work product that already existed in these projects. Review work applied during the migration process is maintained within the review project(s) in which it was applied.

Use the ECA Project

When you are on an ECA project, there is an ECA label near the case name and the menu bar will show fewer icons. To upload documents, select the upload icon . From there, you can upload processed or native documents.

Once you have documents in your ECA project, you can run searches based on metadata (such as Custodian or Date) and keywords. From there, you can promote documents to review projects in the ECA database to access full Everlaw functionality. 

ECA project settings and permissions

Required permissions: Project Administrator or Organization Administrator

To edit project settings in ECA, go to Project Management >  Project Settings > Groups. 

Users can either be in:

• Admin group: Has access to all documents and all ECA functionality
• A user-created group: A group you choose to create. A user in a user-created group:
  • Has Receive permission for Search Term Reports
  • Has View permission for Clustering
  • Cannot export to ZIP or CSV
  • Cannot access Project Settings
  • Cannot access Project Analytics
  • View permission for Everlaw AI features; cannot generate values
  • No access to Deep Dive (if the ECA project is enrolled)
  • Optionally, you can restrict document access in a user-created group via Document Access Management. Users in a group with limited access to documents cannot upload documents, even if they have database upload permissions.

To create a restricted permissions group:

1. From the Project Settings page, access the Groups tab.
2. Select New group.
3. Name your group and choose whether or not to copy an existing group's settings.
4. Select Create.
5. [Optional] Go to the Document Access Management tab. Select your new group and choose the restrictions for the group's document access. 
6. Select Save settings.

From Project Settings of the ECA project, you can also:

• Edit metadata settings
• See the statuses of active or completed tasks
• Change general settings for your project, including:
  • Email notifications
  • Multi-factor authentication
  • Full-screen review default
  • Timezone, date and time format
  • Default page size.
• Turn on machine translation and add expected languages

Promote documents

Adding a document to a review project from the ECA project is called promotion. 

Required permissions: You must meet both of the following:

• Be a user on both the ECA and review project
• In the review project have either (1) Partial Project Document Management or (2) Project Admin permissions

To promote documents:

1. Open a results table containing the documents you wish to promote.
2. Select Batch > Promote. 
   If all the attachment families for the documents in your results table are complete, this opens the Batch promote dialog, described in step 3. 
   If there are broken attachment families, this opens the Broken family warning, which contains links to two sets of documents. 
   
   From here:
   • You can open a results table to see the documents:
     • Select the number next to "documents" to view the list of document(s) in the promotion set missing family members
     • Select the number next to "family members” to view the list of the missing document(s) themselves

   • To include the detected missing family members in the promotion set, select the checkbox next to Include missing family members in the promotion set, then select Continue to move on to the Batch promote dialog. 
     If you don't want to include them, select Continue without selecting the checkbox.

     Note

     If you do not have access to restricted family members due to document access restrictions, the warning message will indicate that. You cannot promote any documents that you cannot access. Reach out to a user with full permissions on the ECA project to promote those restricted documents instead.

3. In the Batch promote dialog, you select where to promote the documents and indicate why you are promoting them. 
   First, select the project(s) to promote the documents to in the Select projects to promote to field.
   
4. Select the promotion code(s) that apply for this promotion in the Select promotion codes field. The code(s) you select here indicate the reason you are promoting the documents. The codes will be visible in both the ECA project and the project(s) you promote into.
5. [Optional, but recommended] Enter a custom note about the reason you are promoting these documents in the Promotion note field. This might include specific keywords or details that are helpful for those planning or conducting review. 
   
   The promotion note cannot be longer than 256 characters.
   The codes and notes will be visible in both the ECA project and the project(s) you promote into.
6. When you're done, select Promote. This starts the task to promote the documents into the Review project(s).

Promotion information in the ECA project

You can track promotion events and history in the ECA project.

All promotion codes and notes applied to a document will appear on the ECA project. This means that if you promote documents to Project A with the Keyword promotion code and a custom note, and promote documents to Project B with the Date Range promotion code and a different custom note, the documents in the ECA project will have both promotion codes.

In the results table’s Promotion Codes column, there is no indication of which code was used to promote the documents to which project.

The Promotion Note column has a popover that details the promotion code, promotion note, date of the promotion, and name of the user who promoted the documents.

In the review window, a Promotion details panel displays all the promotion events and any notes, if included.

This information is also within the document's History tab, along with all other actions taken on it.

Once documents have been promoted, you can search in the ECA project:

• To identify documents based on the code they were promoted with,
  use the Promotion code search term.
  This term also allows you to track which documents have been moved from a review project into the complete ECA project because they were produced or unitized within a review project. Because the ECA project is the complete project for a database, it always has all documents within the database.
  
• To identify documents based on which review project(s) they have been promoted to, use the Projects search term 

Audit promoted documents 

On the ECA project, the Project Management > User Activity > Promotion page records each promotion.  

Every promotion is displayed alongside:

• Date
• User
• Search: The description of the search used to identify the documents for promotion
• Promotion codes
• Promotion note
• Projects
• Matched search during promotion: A column that shows the documents that were promoted at the date in the row
• Matches search now: The documents that currently match the search. This number can differ from the Matched search during promotion number if, for example if you upload new documents that match the search after the first promotion.

Documents uploaded directly to a review project will not appear in the Promotion Activity table.

Select the export button to download a CSV with all the promotion information represented in the table.

For the export, a task is created that can be viewed and tracked on the Batches & Exports column of the homepage. Once completed, the export can be downloaded from the associated card. The card under Batches & Exports expires after 28 days.

Demote documents

To demote documents, you must remove them from all review projects in the database. Removing documents from ECA review projects is the same as removing documents from partial projects in normal databases.

To demote documents:

1. Select the documents you want to demote in the results table of a review project.
2. Select Batch in the toolbar and select Add to or remove from project.
   If there are any attachment family members missing from the selected set, you will see a warning. See the steps in the Promote documents section for details.
3. In the dialog, select the project from which you want to remove the documents.
4. Select Remove.
5. Select Remove documents.

To demote the documents, you need to repeat this process for all review projects to which the documents have been promoted.

Copy binders from an ECA project to a Review project

Binders in ECA projects work the same as in standard projects. Learn about how to use binders in our Binders article.

Binders in ECA projects can be copied to review projects. Copying over binders supports the organization of promoted documents by ensuring that all documents in the review project belong to the same binders as the ECA project. 

To copy binders from ECA into a review project:

1. On the results table, select Batch > Copy binders to project.

   Note

   This can only be done if at least one document from the Results Table has already been promoted to the review project. When copying over binders, Everlaw will inform you of how many documents match this criteria.

2. Select the project to copy the binders to in the Destination project field.
   
3. When you're done, select Submit.

Use the Review Project

Review projects in an ECA database are identical to any standard partial project on Everlaw, with the following exceptions related to tracking a document's promotion details:

• A Promotion code search term allows you to search based on promotion codes
• In the results table, there is a Promotion code column and a Promotion note column available
• Documents added to the review project via promotion from an ECA project display the promotion code in the Document History tab. You must have permissions on the ECA project to see the promotion code in the review project.

• Documents uploaded directly to the review project (without being promoted from the ECA project) will also be uploaded to the ECA project with the Uploaded Directly promotion code.

Search based on promotion

On the review project, promoted batches appear as an Import card under the Document Sets column on the homepage.

Select this card to access a results table of the documents.

You can search for promoted documents in a couple ways:

• To search for promoted document sets based on their import card, use the Binders search term. This is a good option for searching for a specific promotion batch.
• To search based on promotion code, use the Promotion code search term. This lets you search for documents that were uploaded directly or promoted to a review project with a given code. This is a good option to search across promotion batches.
  

ECA billing

Any document in a review project will have its size added to the review size bucket. If a document is not in any review project, its size will contribute to the ECA size bucket.

To view size totals for all your ECA databases, go to Organization home > Database Sizes. You can learn more  Organization Administrator Database Sizes page in this article.

To see the overall size of a specific project, go to Project Management > Project Analytics > Project Size. Here, you can see the project size of the individual project in any Everlaw database.