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Before we cover how to create a legal timeline, let's first explore why you'd want to build one. The answer is that you're already building a chronology in each case; but the chronologies you currently build probably have several disadvantages. These chronologies appear in your pleadings, briefs, notes, discovery responses, and in your own memory. For some cases - especially cases that follow a simple pattern - this is more than enough. But for other cases, this system gets strained. Your memory and your desk begin to be equally cluttered with scattered information, documents, notes, and facts. It can be overwhelming, and it only gets worse when you have numerous cases to juggle. We know: we've been there ourselves. That's why we built CaseFleet.
CaseFleet gives all of your case information a home. Facts have a home, witnesses have a home, documents have a home. And each of these pieces of information can be related or linked to other pieces of information. For example, you might have dozens of facts in which one witness plays a part. Half of those might be related to a particular legal issue, and several of them might be provable by a particular document. CaseFleet lets you see all of these connections and work with them in an intuitive way. By creating legal timelines for court cases, you'll reduce clutter, stay organized, and experience the zen-like state of having everything in its place!
When creating legal timelines, there are a few best practices to follow. These steps can help you create legal timelines for court cases:
1. Create Issues
2. Link Contacts
3. Add Facts
4. Filter Facts
5. Link Evidence
Step one in using CaseFleet is creating issues. Each issue serves as a category or tag for the facts you'll be adding later. You can optionally add a description for each issue, but all that an issue needs is a name. In the screen-grab below, we've added sample issues for a torts case, such as "Causation," "Adverse Action," and "Job Duties." We've also added handy issues called "Key Dates" and "Background." Even though these latter issues aren't elements of claims, they are very useful for grouping facts in your case chronology. As you can see, issues can be tied to a claim or they can remain separate.
The next step in creating a legal timeline is to add a cast of characters to your case. You can add both businesses and people, and you can assign them roles, such as client, opposing party, or witness. If you already have a contact record for the character in CaseFleet, you can search for the existing record and link it to the case. Otherwise, you can create a new contact directly from the form.
Now that you've completed the basic set up for your case chronology, you can begin creating facts that are linked to both issues and contacts. When you're typing in the text of the fact, simply type "@" whenever you want to refer to one of the contacts. This is how you link contacts to facts. If you only type the contact's name, there won't be a link. If you ever miss a link, you can go back and add it by deleting the name and using "@" to select a contact from the list of contacts on the case.
To add an issue to a fact, you can click one of the issues shown, or you can search for an issue to attach it if it's not in the list already. You can also add a date and time to each fact.
To create facts linked to their supporting evidence, which is the cornerstone of CaseFleet, you'll want to use our Highlights document viewer.
In some cases, you'll have a lot of facts. Indeed, it's not uncommon to have hundreds of facts in a complex case. We do not recommend consuming that much information in one sitting! Instead, for the most part, you'll want to review and edit only a subset of facts at a given time. For example, you might want to see facts that occurred in a particular date-range that involve the issue of negligence and one particular witnesses. Simply click the "Filters" button, enter the dates, select the issue and witness, and the fact page will refresh to show you only the information that you need. You can also search through the facts by entering a query in the search box above the bar with filters.
With filters, you can manage a complex case without getting overwhelmed with information. But remember that filters rely on correctly linking contacts and issues when you're creating facts.
What good are facts if you can't prove them? Not much. One of the most powerful features of CaseFleet is the fact that you can create facts from and attached to your sources of evidence.
In November of 2016, we launched Highlights to help you create facts straight from the documents that you will use to prove them. To use Highlights, just upload a file, and click "Launch Reviewer." This will open a window that utilizes our patent pending technology to enable you to read a document and highlight it to create facts. Each fact created in this way will be linked to the section of the page that you highlighted to create it.
Moreover, the way that CaseFleet stores files is very sophisticated. Every file is connected with its unique signature. This means that you have a safeguard against evidence getting changed, and you can be sure that you're actually dealing with the same evidence when you're attaching it to different facts. This also has important implications for eDiscovery. You can see the metadata for each file you upload into CaseFleet by clicking on the name of the file.
