May 9, 2025: Staging Drive, Legal Hold Questionnaires, and More!

Expected AU release: May 6, 2025 ACT

Expected release for all other: May 9, 2025 PT

Knowledge Base updates: May 9, 2025 PT

With this release, we’ve added Staging Drive for document collection, Legal Hold questionnaires, and more — read on for more information about the features coming out this month! If you would like to learn more about the features in this release, join us for a live training session.

User-facing features in this release:

• Staging Drive for document collection
• Include a questionnaire with a legal hold notice
• Single CSV imports for Search Term Reports
• New segmentation options when uploading chat data
• Produce borderless white redactions
• Redact sheet names in spreadsheets
• Fetch document metadata in API
• People improvements in Storybuilder
• Comprehensive custodian legal hold information export
• Import and export legal hold matter field values
• Increase visibility into database creation information
• Improvements to database setup requests (DSR)
• Warning for unsupported pivot table columns
• Visual improvements

Staging Drive for document collection

Everlaw's Staging Drive is a highly secure, structured repository for native documents designed to help organize large zip files, like disk images or email archives, before processing them and starting review. 

When you’re ready, files in Staging Drive can be directly promoted to any existing database in your organization via a Promote button located in the Drive. This takes you and your files directly to Everlaw’s Native Uploader to get started. 

To learn more about Staging Drive, visit Organization Admin: Everlaw Staging Drive.

Include a questionnaire with a legal hold notice

Everlaw users issuing a legal hold notice can now include a questionnaire for custodians to complete when they acknowledge the legal hold. Including a questionnaire allows hold notice issuers to collect additional information from the custodians, such as identifying additional devices that may contain relevant data and additional custodians who should also be included in the legal hold.

To learn more about legal hold questionnaires, visit Legal Holds: Hold Notices.

Single CSV imports for Search Term Reports

Search Term Report users can now import exported Search Term Report CSV files.  Prior to this release, importing multiple terms required copying and pasting said terms from the export file or uploading them as a plain text file (.txt). By importing exports, users can also automatically restore search settings — such as searching on document contents, text fields, or metadata fields — instead of manually reselecting them when rebuilding a Search Term Report. 

Importing multiple search terms is helpful when you want to template your search term reports or if you are reopening a case for which you already used search term reports, in which case you can re-import a previously exported report.

To learn more, visit Search Term Reports.

New segmentation options when uploading chat data

Users uploading chat data through the native uploader now have four options for how the chat data is segmented across documents. Since chat conversations can span months or longer, it can be difficult to systematically divide the conversations for review. This new option gives the user doing the upload more control over their data and creates more uniform chat documents across different sources and uploads. 

The options for segmenting the chat data are to split chat conversations by:

• Small segments: Each document contains a maximum of 25 messages
• Medium segments (default): Each document contains a maximum of 50 messages
• Large segments: Each document contains a maximum of 100 messages
• Daily segments: Each document contains messages sent in a single 24-hour period in the upload time zone

To learn more, visit Upload Native Data to Everlaw.

Produce borderless white redactions

When creating a production protocol, you can now customize the redactions in your productions to be White without borders. When a production is created with this redaction style, the redactions are burned in to display a white box with no outline. 

There is no change to the redaction tools during review. 

You should select white redactions without borders when you are using redactions to whiteout irrelevant content.

To learn more, visit Productions 1 of 3: Create a Production Protocol.

Redact sheet names in spreadsheets

You can now redact individual sheet names from tabs in spreadsheets. To do this, enter redaction mode in the document’s review window. Then select the redaction button belonging to the sheet tab that you would like to redact.

To learn how, visit Redact a Spreadsheet

Fetch document metadata in API

Organizations using Everlaw’s Search API can now optionally request a project-level view of each document's metadata for the results of a search via the GetProjectSearchResult endpoint. This endpoint takes a projectId and searchId and returns a paginated list of relevant documents. To include metadata for these documents, set the new query parameter “includeMetadata” to true.

We’ve also added a new endpoint — GetProjectDocument —that accepts a documentId and returns metadata, including Everlaw metadata, semantic, and source metadata.

To learn more, visit Organization Admin: Everlaw API.

People improvements in Storybuilder

People and their profiles in Storybuilder are now separated into their own page. Previously, they were accessed via a button within the Timeline. 

There is no change to the functionality of creating, uploading, or editing a People profile, but the user interface for People profiles has been updated.

The table below compares the previous user interface with the new one.

Additionally, a person's profile now appears in a side panel if their label is selected in the Timeline, from the deponent field of a Deposition, or from the evidence panel in a Draft or Deposition.

To learn more, visit Story Timeline.

Comprehensive custodian legal hold information export

An organization's legal holds typically span multiple databases and custodians. A new exporting option includes a comprehensive CSV report of all the legal hold information for the organization, organized by custodian. This new report gives admins a comprehensive overview of legal holds in a single report.

To learn more, visit Introduction to Legal Holds.

Import and export legal hold matter field values

Organization Admins and Legal Hold Organization Admins can now bulk import legal hold custom field values for legal hold matters and databases. This can save a significant amount of time for users adding and/or updating field values across multiple databases/matters.  Custom field data is also now included in filtered legal hold exports made from the Organization Admin Legal Holds page.

To learn more, visit Introduction to Legal Holds.

Increase visibility into database creation information

To increase access to database creation information (e.g. creator and date), it has been added to the following Organization Admin page locations:

• The Database/project details panel on the Project & Users page now displays a Created by value

• The export to CSV options on the Database Sizes page now include the ability to select both Date Created and Created by columns. The Date Created column was previously labeled Date, and the Created by column is a new addition.

• Database creation actions listed in the Organization Access History table on the User Access History page now lists database ID.

To learn more, visit Organization Admin: Organization and Project Administration.

Improvements to database setup requests (DSR)

Everlaw customers on case subscriptions now have 60 days to create a database from a database setup request (DSR) link. Previously, the limit was 14 days. Additionally, the DSR email now specifies the name of the project it is intended for in both the body and subject line.

The email now reads "Click the button below to finish creating your project (Project name). This link expires in 60 days."

Warning for unsupported pivot table columns

A new warning alerts users that some columns may not be displayed when reviewing a spreadsheet that includes a pivot table with calculated fields.

The warning reads "This spreadsheet contains calculated fields in a pivot table. Some columns may not be visible on Everlaw." 

To learn more, visit Spreadsheet Review.

Visual improvements

The following changes have been made to Storybuilder’s document exhibit panel:

• The Back to all tabs button is now called Back to previous location

• The panel now covers the transcript player when open, allowing the panel to have more vertical height

• The preview documents and metadata button is now located on the right side of the panel, after the exhibit name. Previously, it was on the left side, before the exhibit name.

• A + Add to body button was added at the end of the panel.

• The Remove instance from body button was moved from near the top of the panel to within the three-dot menu located alongside the new + Add to body button at the end of the panel.

The New database dialog’s input field labels are now displayed to the left of their corresponding input fields, rather than above the input. The Submit button has also changed to be Create.