Category: Updates

We have rolled out two updates this month, adding a number of new features, performance improvements, and fixes.

Performance improvements

To keep up with the rapidly growing usage of LawFlow by New Zealand firms, we have made some behind-the-scenes performance improvements. These are aimed at improving overall performance and keeping the system ‘snappy’, especially when browsing documents. We have also ironed out some bottlenecks that could arise at peak times.

As always, for best performance you should use a high-speed network connection and a modern browser. If you are browsing PDF documents in particular, we recommend Google Chrome or Firefox over Internet Explorer, because Chrome and Firefox have built-in PDF viewers which are often faster and more stable than using a PDF plug-in with Internet Explorer.

We find Google Chrome is usually the fastest, but different options may work for you.

Multi-level discovery lists

LawFlow now supports multi-level (subgrouped) discovery lists. This allows discovery lists to be sub-divided into multiple levels or subgroups, e.g.:

• ABC.001 … ABC.025
• ABC.UnitA.001 … ABC.UnitA.007
• ABC.UnitB.001 .. ABC.UnitB.015
• Etc.

While you could always create this structure manually, the latest update makes this a built-in feature.

Automatic date extraction from scanned PDFs & other documents

LawFlow has always been able to extract dates from native emails (e.g. emails extracted from PST files and  .MSG and .EML files), and document properties (subject to file compatibility). However, it could not do this for scanned documents where the structure and internal data of the native had been lost.

LawFlow now attempts to extract the date from scanned PDFs (after OCR-ing the PDFs, if necessary). While this is always subject to OCR capabilities and is not as effective as reading the date from native email files, it attempts to extracts identified dates which can be a useful time-saver. Of course, extracted dates can be changed if necessary.

Other improvements

• Better identification of privileged & confidential documents (documents set as privileged or confidential now display this information more prominently)
• Improved highlighting of search terms in results
• Boolean search operators (‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’) can now be lower case or upper case
• Improved extraction of text from PDFs with columns and other non-linear layout
• More ways to tag groups of documents
• Ability to browse documents by date where the documents have partial dates, and custom dates
• Easy way to switch between discovery list bundle download and report generation
• Ability to upload documents with non-Windows-compatible filenames (e.g. some filenames that are valid on Macs are invalid on Windows PCs)

As always, thanks to our users for providing feedback and ideas. As the users who are carrying out discovery, we welcome your thoughts on how we can continue to improve LawFlow to make your process more efficient and effective.

We’ve been hard at work adding new features and improvements to LawFlow. Here is a roundup of recent updates.

• Performance improvements: As discovery projects get larger and the volume of text in a typical project continues to grow, we’ve put lots of effort into performance improvements to keep your projects running smoothly. For optimal performance, we recommend using the latest Firefox or Chrome browsers.
• Expanded OCR capability: LawFlow has always offered free OCRing of PDF documents. We have now expanded this to enable OCRing of common image files (JPGs, TIFFs, PNGs). [As always, remember that all OCR technology is inherently limited and dependent on numerous factors]
• More document categories: it’s now easier to browse documents by repository, within various categories (by confidentiality, by privilege, by document type, by date range). We’ve also added options to easily browse documents with notes, descriptions, and linked issues.
• More list options: in response to user requests, we’ve added more bundle and list report options.
• Increased upload limits: we’ve increased the individual file upload size limit to 5 GB. This allows larger zip & PST files to be uploaded (these files are then automatically extracted).

As always, we welcome your suggestions to how we can make LawFlow work better for you. Thank you to all our users for your continued support.

A number of users have requested a feature for creating common bundles as required under the High Court Rules (2012).

We have been working hard to add this new functionality, and we will have an announcement on it soon. These enhancements will simplify the often laborious process of collating, paginating and indexing a common bundle.

We also have plans for further enhancements to support electronic bundles which are being introduced by the Courts and encouraged within the profession.

We expect to roll out common bundle features later this month.

Stay tuned!

We are pleased to announce that LawFlow now supports partial dates – e.g. 00/03/2013 – making it easier to assign date information to documents as required to generate discovery lists.

When the exact date of a document is known, you can enter it in a standard format, e.g. 19/03/2014 or 19 March 2014. However, sometimes the exact date of a document is not known. You may only know the month and year, or just the year.

With the most recent update, LawFlow now supports the entry of a partial date comprising just the month and year, or just the year. For example:

• If you know only the month and year of a document, you can enter a date in the form 00/03/2014 or 03/2014 or March 2014.
• If you know only the year of a document, you can enter a date in the form 00/00/2014 or 2014.

This replaces the previous method of using a “sort date” and a free-text field. Documents with partial dates continue to be sorted in date order based on the partial date information provided.

You can also specify a custom date value for the date field (as free text) which will override any exact or partial date. This enables you, for example, to give a custom date value of 2013-2014 or Late 2013.

You can also expressly flag whether a date (exact or partial) is an estimated date, per the High Court Rules.

As with many of the ongoing new features in LawFlow, this was added following feedback from our users. As a New Zealand company focused on New Zealand requirements, we are always very pleased and grateful for your feedback to continue making LawFlow New Zealand’s discovery solution.

If you have any questions about the new date options, please contact us at support@lawflow.co.nz

We have recently added a great new feature to LawFlow – similar document detection. This uses the extracted text of a document to instantly match “similar” documents in the project. If any similar documents are detected, they are listed on the “Related” tab of the document being viewed.

Similar document detection can provide a number of benefits, including:

• Detecting email chains;
• Finding draft or revised versions of documents;
• Quickly setting a group of similar documents as not discoverable, etc.

How it works

As with other search tools, similar document detection relies on the text that is extracted from documents. If the documents are in a compatible native format (e.g. standard Office formats and emails), most if not all of the text can be extracted. If the document is a PDF of a scanned document, then text can be extracted via OCR (although as always with OCR, results are dependent on the quality of the scan and other factors).

Each document’s text is then cleaned and broken up into sentences or fragments. These fragments are then used to find other documents that contain the same fragments.

What is “similar”?

A “similar” document is one that has a specified number of matching fragments. LawFlow lets you configure the minimum number of matches for a document to be “similar”. LawFlow also lets you flag certain fragments as “junk” fragments which will be ignored for the purposes of determining similarity – for example, common email footers can be flagged as junk to reduce the number of matches.

Limitations

Like any search function or automated tool, the efficacy of similar document detection is dependent on a large number of factors and should be used judiciously and as an aid, not a substitute, for a review of documents. For example, documents with a significant amount of unusual or non-textual content (e.g. documents containing financial data), or unusual formatting, may not produce matches.

As always, we welcome all feedback and look forward to making this a useful addition to New Zealand’s e-discovery solution.

If you would like more information on this or any other LawFlow feature, please contact us.

Welcome to 2014! We have made a stack of enhancements and updates to LawFlow in the past few months including:

• Similar document detection: we are very pleased to annouce this major new feature. When you are viewing a document in LawFlow, it automatically shows you (on the “Related” tab) any similar documents that are detected. This can be very useful when reviewing large volumes of data, and can help (for example) identify threads in emails. We will post a separate blog about this new feature.
• Related documents: each document now shows related documents (duplicates, similar documents, email thread documents) in one place, the Related Documents tabs.
• References to High Court Rules: we have added references to the High Court Rules on certain screens to provide more information about particular requirements.
• More list & bundle options: as requested by customers, we have added more options for list and bundle generation, including the ability to export certain file types as native documents while exporting the rest as PDFs.
• More options for setting discovery information: you can now choose to overwrite existing values (the default option) or preserve any existing values.
• Improved email thread options: it is now easier to browse and review email threads by repository and by review status.
• Split / combine folders: you can now split a folder of documents into subfolders with equal numbers of documents in each (useful for assigning to multiple users for review). You can also combine or “flatten” folders.
• Strip attachments function: a function for stripping attachments from parent documents (useful if dealing with scanned documents sent by email).
• Improved PDF splitting: more options for splitting a PDF into separate documents
• Browse by year / month: in addition to browsing by a specific date, you can now browse by year or month.

And many more!

A number of these enhancements are a result of feedback from our customers. As always, thanks to our customers for your support, and we look forward to a great 2014.

It’s been a busy few months, with customers using LawFlow for new projects ranging from a few hundred to tens of thousands of documents, including some with non-standard requirements.

We continue to add new features and improvements, some of which are in response to specific customer requests – as a New Zealand-developed discovery solution, we are able to modify our system to meet specific local requirements. Here is a selection of recent changes:

Easier way to add/edit document types

It’s now easier & faster to add a new document type that is not already in the list, or to edit a document type that has already been set. This is particularly useful for projects where longer, more descriptive document types are being used.

Options for how authors & recipients are displayed

Authors and recipients can now be displayed in a number of ways, including with organisation and party code included.

Return to last-edited document

There is now an option to return to the document that you last edited, which makes it easier to pick up reviewing documents from where you left off. There is also a summary of unreviewed documents on the home page of the project.

Review email threads

A tool for reviewing detected email threads as a group has been added.

Easier linking of email addresses to parties

Linking email addresses to parties (authors/recipients) can save a lot of time and effort. The process for linking email addresses to parties has been made easier.

Optional extra columns in discovery lists

An option has been added to generate discovery lists with additional information (beyond what is required under the High Court Rules, but which users have requested).

Document status page

A document status page has been added to provide a summary of documents in the project, their conversion status, indexing status, etc.

Export current view to Excel

The current category on the Documents page can be exported to Excel. This is useful if you want to export a list of the documents currently being viewed.