Setup Steps to Search Your Everlaw Projects Using ChatGPT

You can now connect the Everlaw MCP Server to ChatGPT, the AI assistant from OpenAI, to securely search your Everlaw projects. This means that you can securely bring in your Everlaw evidence layer when you use ChatGPT Work or Codex for analysis and drafting.

In this article we'll cover:

• Guidance for Admins to deploy the Everlaw connector within ChatGPT
• How to connect to Everlaw from within ChatGPT 
• Background details on how Everlaw and ChatGPT connect

Requirements

Pre-requisite: Before any user can connect to Everlaw from within ChatGPT, an Everlaw Organization Admin must switch on the OAuth2 setting within Everlaw. Once it's switched on, the connection to ChatGPT can be enabled.

To search Everlaw from within ChatPGT, you must have the following:

• A ChatGPT account within a ChatGPT Enterprise workspace that has enabled the Everlaw plugin and app for your specific role
• An Everlaw account with access to at least one project: The searches and evidence you have access to within ChatGPT are limited to the project(s) and documents you have access to.

Supported ChatGPT interfaces

Currently, the Everlaw plugins are supported in:

• Chat and Work on supported ChatGPT web, desktop, and mobile interfaces
• Codex in the ChatGPT desktop app
• Codex CLI through its own plugin browser

Plugins are not supported in the Codex IDE extension. 

Learn more about how plugins in ChatGPT work in OpenAI's Plugins article.

Data privacy and security

Your data privacy and security is our priority. Your use of Everlaw and our data privacy and security commitments to you are governed by our Terms of Service and Data Processing Addendum.

Your interactions within your ChatGPT environment are governed by your specific customer agreement with OpenAI, which also outlines their security and data privacy practices.

Connect ChatGPT to Everlaw

Connecting Everlaw to ChatGPT happens in three steps.

Step 1: Everlaw Organization Admin Enables OAuth2

This step must be done by an Everlaw Organization Admin. Instructions for how to do so are in the Organization Admin: Everlaw API article.

Step 2: ChatGPT Admin enables the Everlaw plugin

A ChatGPT administrator must make both the Everlaw plugin and its connected app available before users can connect. To access the Everlaw plugin in ChatGPT: 

1. Go to Admin > Plugins.
2. Select Public, then search for Everlaw.
   When you enable a plugin, you can select:

   • Installed: Installs the plugin for all selected groups. This means that the plugin will show up in their list of plugins automatically. 

     Tip

     Use this option if you expect everyone in your organization to use the Everlaw plugin as a standard tool.

   • Available: Allow users in selected groups to search for and and install the plugin themselves. 

     Tip

     Use this option if just a subset of users will be using the Everlaw plugin, as it avoids cluttering all ChatGPT users plugin lists with a tool they may not use.

Configure the Everlaw plugin and its connected app for the appropriate workspace roles. You can follow ChatGPT's guidance in their Plugin controls article. 

Step 3: A user authenticates their Everlaw credentials

Required permissions: To connect ChatGPT to Everlaw, you must:

• Have an enabled role within that enterprise workspace
• Have  access to at least one Everlaw project

After an admin has enabled the Everlaw plugin/MCP, it is available for end users in ChatGPT. To get connected:

1. Go to Setting > Plugins.
2. If Everlaw is not already installed, find it in the plugin directory and select the option to install it. If your administrator installed it for you, no installation step is required.

Before you use the plugin for the first time, you'll be prompted to authenticate your Everlaw credentials by signing into Everlaw.
Learn more details about installing and enabling plugins in ChatGPT's Plugins article.

For users on projects in multiple organizations

ChatGPT's ability to search Everlaw projects is based on the owning organization's enablement of OAuth2 in Everlaw. If you have access to projects owned by multiple organizations, you will only be able to use ChatGPT to search the projects for which OAuth2 has been enabled at the Organization level. 

You only need to follow the steps to form the connection within ChatGPT once. When an additional organization enables OAuth2, the projects within that organization that you have access to will immediately become searchable within ChatGPT.

Enabled terms

The following terms are enabled by the Everlaw MCP:

• The Contents term
• The Binders term
• The Bates/Control # term
• Terms in the Metadata category of the Everlaw search page, such as email participants, custodians and, dates
• Deep Dive

Within ChatGPT, you can write queries in natural language that reference these terms. ChatGPT will translate them into Everlaw syntax and return the results. 

For more technical details on the Everlaw MCP server, see our Everlaw MCP Server article.

Supplemental information: How Everlaw and ChatGPT connect

This section provides a bit of technical background on the connection between Everlaw and ChatGPT. It's not necessary to understand this section before using ChatGPT to search your Everlaw documents, but if you're interested in some background information on how ChatGPT and Everlaw connect, read on.

The connection between Everlaw and ChatGPT is formed through a Model Context Protocol (MCP). MCPs have emerged as the standard tool that software companies use to securely connect AI tools with service providers like Everlaw. The Everlaw MCP server provides a secure, standardized, and reliable connection, with defined tools that allow the ChatGPT AI agent to search your Everlaw documents. At this time, the MCP tools that Everlaw has developed allow ChatGPT a read-only connection to Everlaw, meaning that you cannot take actions such as modifying, exporting, or deleting documents from within ChatGPT.

Because the MCP server is authenticated based on each individual user's Everlaw permissions, ChatGPT's responses never share information beyond what a user has access to within Everlaw.

Once a connection to the MCP server is established, you can ask ChatGPT your natural language questions, and ChatGPT will then:

1. Interpret the question to identify the information it needs from Everlaw.
2. Translate the question into Everlaw Search and send the query to Everlaw through the MCP.
3. Use the information received from Everlaw to answer your question. 

Because ChatGPT understands natural language and can synthesize across documents, your searches are not limited to pulling together a specific set of documents based on their characteristics. Instead, you can ask targeted, analytical questions to understand and draw insights from your data.

While ChatPGT does not use the API directly, the tools it has access to mirror those of the Everlaw Search API endpoints for retrieving binders, Bates information, metadata, and text (contents) searches.  

Developers can check out our Everlaw MCP Server article, which has technical details about our MCP implementation.