Fact timelines allow you to start building the narrative backbone for your case as soon as you open your project. As you move through the matter, you can continue to flesh out your timeline with documentary and testimony evidence that supports your narrative. The Facts you create in your timeline can then be used as you prepare for depositions, draft motions, and for any other written work you do in Drafts.
Use this article to learn some best practices for making use of Fact timelines throughout the lifecycle of your case.
To see more specific instructions for Fact timelines and Facts, see our Storybuilder Fact Timelines article.
Requirements
To create and edit Facts, you must have Edit or Full Access on the Story, or have Admin permission for Storybuilder.
If you have View permission for the Story, you can view Fact timelines and reference Facts already added to any Drafts/Depositions you have access to, but not make any edits.
Overview of Fact timelines and Facts
A Fact timeline is a space to create a timeline of the key events of your case. The building block of a Fact timeline is a Fact, which is a discrete piece of information about your case. Each Fact you create can have a date and description, and be linked to evidence, people, and other Facts.
Learn more about creating Facts in our Storybuilder Fact Timelines article.
Fact timelines at the beginning of your case
Early in your case, your team might not have completed much (if any) document review or run any depositions. However, you likely do have a firm sense of the issues and claims at play in the matter, and you might have identified some key individuals and events. This is a great time to start building a Fact timeline. A Fact timeline at this phase of your case can outline both what you know and what you think you know.
There are several advantages to drafting Facts early in a case:
- Create a shared view of the case: A unified view of the key moments and details of the case helps your team make internally consistent decisions
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Identify moments of uncertainty: Use Facts to highlight confusing or contradictory issues/events. For events with uncertain dates, you can mark the date range as approximate.
For complex cases, you might consider drafting multiple Fact timelines that outline competing theories of the case. This can surface the most important issues to clarify during review. - A place to store insights: Early in a case, you might be gathering information from multiple sources. Often this information gets jotted down as notes in a private word processing document, and isn't organized or visible to other teammates. Storing this information as Facts makes it accessible and easy to return to in the later phases of a case.
We strongly recommend starting a Fact timeline as soon as you start work on your matter. Even without a pool of hot documents, you can create an organized view of the case that can help your team stay focused on the key issues.
Add to your Facts during document review
As you move through document review, you can refine and add to your Facts:
- Bolster Facts by attaching key documents and testimony to them. Built out Facts strengthen the narrative backbone of your case and can make initial drafting more efficient.
- Edit or delete Facts as you uncover clarifying evidence. For example, you might find evidence showing that a particular event happened on a different date than you realized. When this happens, you can update the date of that Fact within the Fact timeline.
If you jotted down a Fact that you later find is not supported by the evidence, you can delete it.
Using Facts like this helps you clarify your thinking and support an evolving view of your case. - As new and interesting evidence surfaces, slot it into the timeline you're already building. Add new Facts as you uncover them throughout review
Map Facts and Evidence
As document review is winding down and you have populated your Evidence page with key documents and testimony from completed depositions, you can cross reference your Facts and evidence to make sure your case backbone is as strong as it can be.
Evidence that hasn't been linked to any Facts might mean that part of the story is missing from your timeline. Filter the Evidence page to view only the evidence that is not yet associated with any Fact timelines. The evidence here might include information that helps you add or clarify Facts on your Fact timeline. From here, you can associate the Evidence with existing Facts or add new Facts to a timeline.
Likewise, you can filter your Fact timeline to view only the Facts that don't yet have any evidence linked. This might point you to parts of the narrative that are still fuzzy and need more attention.
Support your writing with Facts
Throughout your case, you may be drafting memos or outlines that make use of information in your Facts. Rather than rewrite this information each time, you can add Facts into your Drafts and Depositions, and then reference them inline within your writing. This "shortcut"' can speed up your drafting and help you stay consistent across documents. When a Fact gets updated in one place, it gets updated everywhere else it is referenced, meaning that your writing always reflects the most up-to-date version of your timeline.
Additionally, any evidence linked to a Fact that is referenced in your Draft/Deposition body is automatically included in the Exhibit view. This allows you to export all the evidence linked to your Facts without having to build a separate search, and can save time and manual (error-prone) effort.