Category: Updates

This update has focused on improving performance. We’ve made a number of performance improvements to how email threads, possible threads and similar documents are queried and displayed, resulting in a more responsive user experience, particularly with large volumes of documents (100,000+).

We’ve also significantly boosted performance for importing documents, in particular large email archives (PST and MBOX files), and processing large complex Excel spreadsheets.

Other changes include:

• Smarter detection of deemed duplicates in email threads and possible/detected email threads;
• More accurate scoring of similar documents (i.e. the ‘score’ that indicates the similarity of two documents);
• Added an option to allow documents to be exported named by their production numbers (instead of internal ID);
• Added an option to allow documents to be exported within subfolders mirroring those in the project.

New features

• Multi-document compare process for easier comparison of similar documents.
• New process for matching and linking deemed duplicate documents.
• Addition of “associated documents” category, for linking associated documents (not associated on other grounds, such as part of the same email thread) together.

Improvements

• Significantly improved interface for reviewing email threads (and detected possible email threads), and setting discovery information and hiding documents on a group basis.
• Discovery review checklist now includes checks for inconsistent discoverability of similar, text-duplicate and deemed duplicate documents, redundant duplicates, and documents with failed attachment extraction.
• More information about related documents added to Discovery tab.
• PDF text extraction now includes form data (this remains dependent on the structure and settings of the PDF form, but standard form text should now be extracted).
• Move Documents and Hide Documents pages now show the locations of documents to be moved or hidden;
• PST extraction now shows the total number of items to extract.
• Improved layout of document lists on Related tab.
• Tag documents option added to tray pop-up menu.

New features

• First release of the Casebook Module – a major new feature designed to support the creation of electronic casebooks in accordance with the Senior Courts Civil Electronic Document Protocol. We will post more about this soon.
• Addition of document “alias” property, allowing documents to be assigned a unique alternative identifier (an alias) which can be used to find and reference documents.

Improvements

• Significantly improved import document information process.
• Cleaner layout of table columns in main documents page and list views.
• When browsing documents in a repository in details view, the folder is now shown in the browse menu.
• Improved detection of dates in scanned documents.
• Document information can now be imported for documents in all repository types, not just client discovery documents.
• Better handling of very long Excel spreadsheets.
• Better progress reporting during bundle generation.
• Longer search query input (up to 500 characters).
• Back-end changes for better handling of very long documents.

An interim update include some new features, improvements and fixes:

New features

• The built-in redaction tool now provides an option to increase the size of text on a redaction.
• Various custom list columns are now optional, and can be configured via List Settings.
• Option to clear production numbers when unlocking a discovery list.

Improvements

• Easier way to re-order a custom list using manual ordering.
• Hiding of duplicates in various categories in main Documents page – for example, if a group of 10 duplicates is set as “key document”, only one duplicate will now be shown in the Key Documents category.
• Improved notifications for when documents could not be added to a bundle.
• Deleting a party automatically unlinks any linked email addresses.
• Various bug-fixes.

An interim update include some new features, improvements and fixes:

New features

• Initial support for custom fields (allowing custom field data to be imported and displayed).
• Option to ‘scale up’ small pages to A4 size in list bundles (useful when a document is smaller than A4, but you want it to appear as A4 for the purposes of stamping and compiling it in a list bundle).
• Added extra columns to Export to Excel function.

Improvements

• Better performance when moving, hiding or deleting large numbers of documents (tens of thousands).
• Better performance when importing discovery information.
• Better performance for merging/splitting folders.
• Various bug-fixes.

We’ve been very busy in the past six-or-so months, adding loads of new features – many of which have come from our users. There are too many to list, but here are some highlights. We will also write about some of these in more detail later.

New major features

• Keyboard mode for data entry and navigation on the Discovery tab. This is a long-awaited enhancement makes it easier and more efficient (less mouse clicks) to enter discovery information for a set of documents.
• Enhanced email thread detection, for auto-detection of of possible email threads. This supplements LawFlow’s existing ability to detect “definitive” email threads, but allows for possible thread detection with PDF-version emails and emails from disparate systems.
• An intelligent Discovery Review Checklist function to help identify potential errors or issues.
• Identification of “text duplicates” – these are documents where the text is identical, but the file is not. Previously, text duplicates were able to be detected via the “Similar Documents” feature, but this new feature provides specific handling for text duplicates.
• Tool for quickly reviewing and deleting duplicate images.

Other improvements

• On the Discovery tab, the system now prompts to create an author or recipient that doesn’t match an existing entry
• The “Key Documents” category now shows only one instance of duplicate documents.
• More accurate scores for detected possibly similar documents on the Related tab.
• Re-order PDF function.
• Bundle downloads that are interrupted (e.g. if a network interruption occurs, or a download is paused for some other reason) can now be resumed.
• An additional link on the Document page shows attachments, or sibling attachments, of the current document.
• Summary information about an attachment’s parent document is shown when viewing the attachment.
• Improved functions for stripping attachments from parent emails.
• Ability to manually order attachments.
• Ability to manually set production numbers.
• Improved “merge parties” function.
• Ability to compare thread and possible-thread emails.
• Tailored discovery categories in Excel list reports.
• The Discovery tab now shows if assessed similar or possibly similar have been redacted.
• Placeholders for empty (zero byte) documents – usually the result of an invalid or corrupted file – are now generated for bundles that happen to include such documents.
• Mode to upload and merge PDFs.

Thank you as always to our valued users for your suggestions and feedback.

New features in this update

• Added the ability to import document “Name”, “Description” and “Email subject” values from a worksheet.
• The production number of a document can now be manually set.
• Option to scale pages in a bundle down to A4 size. This is useful when a bundle includes a number of oversize documents, e.g. architectural drawings that are often in A3 size or larger.
• Option to view “author” and “recipient” columns in a custom list
• Option to include an ordinal number (a sequential counter number) on custom lists and bundle files

Improvements

• LawFlow now handles zips containing entries with very long file paths (such as those created by some document management systems). Previously, this was causing occasional problems because the file paths exceeded the maximum length allowed by an operating system.
• When a document is deleted, it is now shown as ‘struck out’ on the current category being browsers (like hidden documents).

Thank you as always to our users for your suggestions and feedback.

New features in this update

• A function to bulk-set the name, description and key document fields of multiple documents at once.
• The ability to upload a new file directly as an attachment of an existing document. This is useful if an existing document is missing an attachment. Once the attachment file is located, it can be uploaded and attached to its relevant parent document in one step.
• The bulk-discovery page now allows setting the “estimated date” flag independently of setting the date fields.
• An option to split a single PDF attachment into multiple attachments of the same parent. Previously, you could only split a PDF (attachment or standalone) into separate documents, or into attachments of the first split.
• A tool to rotate multiple PDFs at once. This is useful where a set of documents have been scanned upside down or sideways, and you want to rotate them all to the correct orientation.
• An option for generating a list with the unredacted version of any redacted document.
• A function to “unlink” an issue from multiple documents at one time (to compliment the existing function for linking an issue to multiple documents).
• The sign-up page now automatically creates accounts for users of registered firms. This is a convenient way for users from existing firms to instantly create their own accounts.
• Support for XPS files.

Improvements

• Improved rendering and display of CSV files.
• Excel spreadsheets now render cell comments in PDF versions.
• Added an option in the File Types category for viewing documents with no extension (usually, these are corrupted or system files).
• Improved performance when importing a large number of files extracted from a zip file.
• Manually re-ordering a custom list now dynamically updates page numbers.

Thank you as always to our users for your suggestions and feedback.

We’ve been so busy adding new features, we haven’t had time to tell you about them!

Notable recent features include:

• A white-out tool, allowing irrelevant/unwanted parts of a document to be “whited out”. A common scenario is removing unwanted email or fax headers.
• An affidavit exhibit stamper, facilitating the easy stamping and numbering of affidavit exhibits.
• Bookmarks can now be inserted in compiled PDFs.
• The ability to rotate specific pages of a document (instead of all pages).
• An option to include a table of document type codes in exported lists.
• New “batch scan” function for handling very large, bulk-scanned sets of paper documents.
• Improved handling of duplicates.
• A function for comparing similar documents.
• Option to add parent/child documents to those already in the tray.
• A new “non-discovery documents” repository for holding other types of documents (e.g. pleadings).
• Option to download documents with their original filenames.
• Highlighting of search terms in PDF documents.
• Improved reordering of documents on custom lists.
• The ability to enter discovery data via Excel.
• Function for setting/editing party codes for multiple parties at once.
• Ability to add watermarks to list documents (e.g. to apply a “CONFIDENTIAL” watermark).
• More details about the status of related documents on the Discovery tab.
• The ability to enter more information when splitting a PDF.
• A way to scroll through PDFs one page at a time (instead of “continuous” scrolling).
• Searching by number of pages.

Some of these are significant features that we will blog about separately in future.