May 13, 2026: Mark Legal Holds Matters as Inactive, New Handwriting Metadata Field, and More!

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Claire Spafford

Expected AU release: May 12, 2026

Expected release for all other: May 13, 2026

Knowledge Base updates: May 13, 2026

With this release, we’ve added a new Handwriting metadata field, the ability to mark legal holds as active or inactive, 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:

New Handwriting metadata field 

When documents are reprocessed with the Force OCR > OCR optimized for English handwriting option, Everlaw now extracts a value for a new metadata field: Handwriting. This makes it straightforward to build a search to identify documents that have been detected as having handwriting on them.

Learn more in our Reprocessing Everlaw and Non-Everlaw Processed Documents article.

Mark legal hold matters as active or inactive

Sometimes, a case for which your team has already identified custodians and created legal holds can pause indefinitely. You want to retain the work you've done, but don't want the paused matter to clutter your legal holds page. With this release, you can deactivate (and reactivate) legal hold matters, and use their status to filter them. When a legal hold matter is marked as inactive, no new hold notices or data preservations can be made within it. 

This improvement makes it easier for admins to keep track of their legal holds, maintain accurate records and reporting, and to filter to the subset of matters they need to access.

Learn more in our Introduction to Legal Holds article.

View-only access to productions

Project-level permissions now include a new View permission level for Productions. This gives designated user groups read-only access to production cards and configuration details without allowing them to share, download, edit, delete, or run productions.

Learn more in our User Groups and Project Permissions article.

Has PDF comments metadata field and search term

Prior to being uploaded to Everlaw, some PDFs have comments added to them in Adobe Acrobat. These comments might add important information or context to a document. Previously, there was no way to identify all PDFs with comments at once for offline review. 

With the release of the Has PDF comments metadata and search term, your team can identify all the PDFs that have comments so you can review the comments offline.

A value for this metadata field is extracted both from natively uploaded PDFs and processed documents that include native PDF files. 

Important

For databases created before May 13, 2026, you must take the following steps to enable PDF comments: 

  1. Contact support@everlaw.com and request that they enable the Has PDF comments metadata field.
  2. Once it's enabled, reprocess all the existing PDFs to capture their value for the Has PDF comments metadata field.
  3. Any new documents you upload will automatically have their value extracted for this field.

Learn more in our Standard Fields article.

Fact management improvements

We have made several small upgrades to Fact management and working with Facts. This improves the overall experience of working with Facts and Fact Timelines.

Improvements:

  • When filtering Facts by multiple labels, you can now select either:
    • Match all: Facts must meet all selected filters, which is equivalent to connecting filters with AND
    • Match any: Facts must meet at least one of the selected filters, which is equivalent to connecting filters with OR.

This aligns with the filtering behavior of evidence on the Evidence page.

  • Each user viewing a Fact Timeline will now have a badge with their initials visible to all others viewing the timeline. As with these badges elsewhere in Storybuilder, a user can select the badge to message the user it belongs to.
  • An outline that includes a user's name will indicate to others when a user is working on a Fact
  • You can now disassociate Facts from evidence in a batch: The Link documents to Facts dialog now allows you to select a Fact's checkbox twice to remove it from its link to evidence. 
  • Facts referenced in Drafts and Depositions can now be expanded to display their description. This adds to the utility of referencing Facts within your drafting: a later reader can get key context from the Fact without leaving the body of the Draft/Deposition.
     

Learn more about Fact management in our Storybuilder Fact Timelines article.

Automatically remove parents and containers when permanently deleting documents 

When you delete documents using the Purge option (previously Delete without storing backups), Everlaw now also removes any parent or container documents. This ensures that when sensitive documents are purged no remnants remain accessible anywhere in the system, such as via an export. When this job runs, Everlaw will:

  • Permanently delete all selected documents without backups, and
  • Permanently delete all exact duplicates and parent or container documents of the selected documents being removed as part of that same purge action, also without backups 

Note

If your organization has not already enabled the Purge (previously called the previously Delete without storing backups) option, reach out to support@everlaw.com.

Learn more in our Deleting Documents documents.

Support for HWP and HWPx files

Everlaw now natively supports Korean word processor formats HWP and HWPx (Hancom). When you include these files in your native uploads, Everlaw generates a PDF rendition, searchable text, and standard metadata so they appear and behave like other documents in search, review, analytics, and productions.

Improved error handling to help you restart failed clusters

We updated the Clustering tool so that when clustering fails, you see clearer, actionable error messages and can restart clustering yourself after adjusting your document set, instead of needing to contact Support.

Processed documents included in Has Linked Documents term

The Has linked documents search term, Linked documents results column, and Linked Documents Data Visualizer chart now surface all Everlaw-processed native documents and eligible links in documents uploaded through the processed uploader. Productions you receive from opposing counsel can be analyzed for linked cloud-hosted documents alongside your own collected data.

Previously, these tools only surfaced documents in which Everlaw’s native processor extracted link references, which meant many processed uploads were excluded. 

OCR optimized for English handwriting available on GovCloud

Everlaw GovCloud Database Admins are now able to Force OCR during reprocessing using the OCR optimized for English handwriting option. Previously, this option was not available on GovCloud.

Learn more in our Reprocessing Everlaw and Non-Everlaw Processed Documents

Visual improvements

  • The options to Force OCR during reprocessing, available to Database Admins, are updated. There are now 4 options to choose from:
  • The file picker for uploads initiated via cloud connection to OneDrive and SharePoint has been updated. You no longer need to choose between files/folders when you start the upload. 
Before
After

Additionally, the overall user interface when selecting files has a new look.

  • We made a handful of visual improvements to the Project Settings > Users page. These include:
  • The page header is Users instead of Project Users, to match the page name in the right side navigation panel
  • The page now has two tabs — Project users and Pending invitations — instead of displaying the users table above the pending invitations table
  • The Edit user’s group button that appears on hover in the User table’s Groups column, is now represented with a pencil button instead of a gear button
Before
After
  • The top of the page and table headers remain static on the page even when the table is scrolled. Previously, the entire content of the page would scroll, hiding the top of the page and table headers.
  • The User permissions dialog has improved scrolling and updated styling.
Before After

 

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