New options for document dates

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