How to create better
case chronologies and legal timelines

In this first step of creating a legal timeline, add all players (witnesses, lawyers, experts, organizations, etc.) as player keywords. Include whoever has authored a document or is relevant to some fact. Don’t worry if you miss some as you can always add them later, but starting with a good list will greatly speed up loading and classifying documents and evidence. You can optionally add roles to add relevance and context.

The next step, creating issues, is perhaps the most important aspect of your case analysis and strategy. Issues link probative facts as you identify them, and automatically form the case’s issue outline which assists you when structuring your strategy and argument.

For any issues including legal issues that need to be addressed or can affect the outcome of your case or investigation, create an issue keyword. In a torts case, for example, the elements of claims might be causation issues or adverse actions. However, issue and topic keywords let you create any logical structure and grouping you need – even if they aren’t elements of, nor tied to, claims. For example, if there are several locations that are relevant in your case, such as branch offices, you might create general issue/topic keywords for each under a category called “Locations”.

Issues and topics can be quickly created with just a description or include relevance, impact and other criteria.

The prior two steps complete the basic setup for your case.

As you develop a deeper understanding, set out additional relevant facts and chronological events – even those not part of the event chronology such as hypotheticals, assumptions, disputed facts, facts from relevant authorities and research, and those needing further investigation. These will become the building blocks of your case.

When you review evidence and highlight key extracts, facts and events, MasterFile links the underlying proof automatically the moment they’re created. This is the cornerstone of the factual analysis process and easily done from MasterFile’s dual pane review mode.

MasterFile lets you create key extracts and facts directly from the documents that you will use to prove them.

You can drill down into evidence and facts by any logical grouping – by issue, author, custodian, etc. – in two clicks. As you review, MasterFile’s split pane review mode lets you highlight and create a key extract, fact or event in one click – each linked to its exact spot in the source document.

When you can see key information across dozens of documents at a glance, and can retrace probative evidence for any fact in a click, looking at your evidence from different angles too, is easy.

After all, what good are facts if you can’t prove them?

Or key material in a document, if you can’t find it?

MasterFile’s extracts instantly locate key evidence and the proof for any fact or event. And one click takes you to the exact page and line in its source document.

You can easily deal with metadata too.

Key metadata is pre-categorized so you can easily browse and drill down into evidence in one or two clicks. Need to see all emails by domain? It’s already there. Documents by specific authors? That too.

It’s not uncommon for even relatively simple cases to have dozens of facts, and complex ones, hundreds. MasterFile lets you easily browse to, or filter, facts or any sequence of events by issue, witness or date range, and more. You can search across your entire matter, and dive deep to explore connections that might otherwise have not been obvious: chronology software that goes beyond rote issue tagging. Collaboration is easy too, since you can delegate a precise sets of facts across a date range related to the specific issue of negligence and a particular witness, for example, to a colleague for review.