Release Notes: Version 9.0

Release Notes: Version 9, new UI, Redaction, custom columns, reporting, and more …

Aug 21, 2021

Release Notes highlight improvements we’ve made so you can easily see what’s new. v9 brings precise redaction and reporting, background OCR with Kofax, custom columns in views, enhanced Exhibit management and Trial binder creation, the new Drafting Minion (an end to citation frustration!), and more. We hope you like it!

What’s new

Redaction

In v9 MasterFile’s new built-in redaction module lets you control the application, coding and reporting of redacted evidence or material.

A redaction is a blacked out, private part of any page of a document. Typically, you mark those lines or areas on a PDF (using Acrobat for example) and then apply the redactions to erase underlying content and replace it with a black box. In MasterFile, redactions are simply an attribute of Extracts. As MasterFile users know, simply highlighting a passage in MasterFile creates a linked extract of that key information. To mark it for redaction, simply set the extract’s attribute to “Redaction”, and add an optional reason or redaction code. You can now preview, apply or remove redactions from any PDF document as needed, produce redacted documents, and easily create redaction reports by code, or other criteria.

Kofax and Acrobat are also integrated with MasterFile for redaction via MasterFile’s external redaction option. Mark your redactions and click OK in MasterFile when done. Redaction extracts are created automatically from either Kofax or Acrobat.

OCR

In MasterFile v9, you can use Kofax’s new OCR engine for normal Evidence Cruncher processes and for background OCR – which, of course, lets you use MasterFile normally while that takes place. Selected documents are OCRed to a folder on disk and you’re notified when the task completes. Using Express Load, select the one CSV file in that folder to update OCR results within MasterFile in one click.

Brainspace. Near duplicate processing that works.

Integration with industry leading near duplicate analysis tool Brainspace is new in v9 too. Near duplicate analysis clusters documents and threads emails by content analysis. That means you only need review the main or pivot document and the differences between it and its similar copies – since any exact duplicates are eliminated from review.

The process is straightforward. Select the documents to analyze and choose “Dump for analysis”. A ZIP file is created that you upload to us. Typically, within a few hours you receive the results. Choose “Apply results” and the near duplicate views are automatically created in the the new Brainspace Near duplicates section.

Drafting Minion – the end of citation frustration

For lawyers, the seemingly simple task of copy/paste often ends up taking on a life of its own. Why? Formatting. No matter what you try, weird things begin to happen the moment you paste a selection from a deposition. And you’ll need at least 6 separate (and convoluted) steps to get the text the way you want. That’s at least about 3 – 4 minutes per citation.

What’s different about MasterFile? Our Drafting Minion!

Since any relevant deposition sections would already have set and marked as key extracts during review, all you need to do is:

Select the section (i.e. extract) you want and then wake up MasterFile’s Drafting Minion.
Switch to your motion, right click and select paste, or press Ctrl-v.

Total time to copy, paste and format a citation in your brief: about 15 seconds.

You can paste your extract as is, with original line numbers, or cleaned with perfectly formatted Q and A, style a citation as you need with precise control over formatting and content, and optionally, set a custom Minion format for specific documents and users. It’s easy to apply a Minion template to multiple documents at a go too. Extract views now show you as-is or formatted text.

When you just need a section of a deposition to quickly paste into your brief (or a profile) and nothing else, use the Drafting Minion instead of struggling with copy/paste. You’ll get clean formatted text according to your Minion formatting and MasterFile will create the extract on the fly.

Updates and improvements

Exhibit briefcases – number exhibits, create (trial) binders and more

The Exhibit briefcase is a special MasterFile database that’s used, amongst other things, to create numbered exhibits quickly and easily. Let’s say you’ve a brief with 25 exhibits that were referenced through out by number. The steps are two:

Paste the exhibits’ doc-links into the brief’s Attachment field. You can reorder them as needed by simple drag and drop.
After selecting the brief’s profile, clicking [R+ Create > Exhibits Briefcase], automatically creates the associated Exhibits Briefcase, copies the brief and its exhibits into it, and numbers and links everything together. Disseminating the motion, brief or affidavit is a simple matter of dumping the briefcase to disk as individual PDFs or one aggregate PDF with all exhibits bookmarked.

What else can you do?

Trial binder preparation.

Trial binders often contain several sections such as research, pleadings, filings, affidavits, your notes, etc., each consisting of different types of documents. Any [Binder Type] keyword, such as [Binder Type]\Affidavits Keywords can be used to automatically create a binder tab and bookmark to each section in the final PDF. Again, the steps are simple:

As you add your documents to the binder profile, choose the Insert Binder Tab from the Actions menu or profile’s Doc-links icon. A separator page is created automatically and its doc-link inserted at the cursor. You can drag and drop doc-links to to reorder them as needed.
After selecting the brief’s profile, clicking [R+ Create > Exhibits Briefcase], automatically creates and numbers the associated Exhibits Briefcase as explained above, but this time, also creates hierarchical bookmarks at each divider section.

The new functions also let you

Control exhibit numbers used for documents. These do not have to be sequential. Moreover if a document (affidavit, for example) and its exhibits are all cited with one number, that can be assigned to the same set as previously used in a filing.
Designate whether exhibit numbers should be new or ones previously used.
Set bookmark levels for better document organization.
Add extracts, rather than a full document, to Exhibit briefcases. Extract text is converted to PDF, or, if the extract has no text, the original PDF containing the extract will be added.

Custom Columns

Display Issue/Topics in views as columns using the new column activators.

Enhancements

Chronology and Timeline
- In v9, documents and extracts can be shown in any fact or chronology view and added to Timeline charts. This lets you mark a document’s time of existence when further explanation or notes (and therefore a linked fact or event) is not needed.
Concordance Convertor
- You can now reuse a Concordance mapping from another case saving you re-specifying or mapping fields again.
Email Loader
- A new option lets you select selected emails from a folder, or all emails from selected folders, when importing an Outlook PST.
- You can now omit conversion of emails to PDF when loading. The Evidence Cruncher’s email conversion service lets you convert emails to PDF when needed.
Express Load
- You can now omit conversion of native email files to PDF when loading deferring that to those emails that need it, when necessary, for example at production.
- When splitting a PDF via CSV, and the aggregate PDF being split contains bookmarks, you can now optionally append each document’s bookmark to its summary field as it is split out.
Evidence Cruncher
- You can now load and extract text from multiple PDF transcripts at a go. A court reporter’s AMICUS format transcript is always our recommendation, but sometimes transcripts in PDF format are what you get.
- Native production can now be assigned Bates numbers (not just exhibit numbers). A native document is treated as “one” page, and Bates numbers are incremented by one for each native document, which lets you continue Bates numbering native documents in concert with the PDF/TIFs you are producing.
- In some cases, B&W images cause or are dithered which affects OCR. A new option, forcing greyscale, improves OCR results.
- When you produce files as single page TIF, a Concordance .OPT file is generated as well.
Keywords
- You can now create keywords while using the following functions, making that process smoother
  - Express Load,
  - Mail Loader,
  - Global Replace, and
  - Power Assisted Review.
Review and Revision Tools
- Comparing documents has been redesigned to make differences clearer. Word is still used for comparisons but the results now display in your browser with links back to MasterFile to control various actions you might want to take thereafter.
Viewing
- When you view an extract, the extract is now displayed as a PDF. However, if it has no text, its source document is displayed, or, if it’s a redaction extract and the redaction has been applied, the redacted PDF is displayed.
Views
- Views that show extracts (either as a blue line or in a column) now display their parent document’s Bates numbers so you can easily reference their source.
- Any issue/topic category can now be displayed as a column in views via MasterFile’s new column activators.
- Probative material linked to facts is now visible for easy reporting – with Bates numbers if needed.
- Administrators can now customize view columns to show
  - Doc-link descriptors from fact profiles – with Bates numbers if needed,
  - Extract text as-is,
  - Extract text formatted by the Drafting Minion template in effect, and
  - Designate what part of an extract to display in blue extract lines.
Watch Folder
- If you use CaseText, all your research is saved in PDF format in one ZIP file. Since the Watch Folder understands the CaseText export, it will extract and process the ZIP file for you.
- .TXT files dragged to the Watch Folder are automatically loaded, processed as transcripts if that’s what they are, and automatically saved in their profiles’ OCR field.

Changes

Other housekeeping changes, usability improvements and bug fixes include

Global Add/Remove
- Now processes Issue/Topics for selected players at a go.
Incomplete issue/topics
- These have been renamed to Dynamic Issue/Topics to make their function clearer. Adding/editing their dynamic values has been redesigned to make that easier.
Navigators
- [R+ Administration > User Settings] now lets you set whichever functions you aren’t (currently) using to personalize the [L+] and [R+] navigator panels. Hide/unhide these with the [R+ General > Toggle Advanced Functions] command.
Reminder tasks on Document, Extract and Fact profiles
- Setting Priority and Reminder tasks for players has been simplified. Now, you need only prefix a question with a player’s name followed by “…”.
- All the [L+ Things to do] by Player views have been updated to use the player’s name to the left of “…” and columns and categories have been reorganized for better clarity.
Server replicas
- The command to prepare a database for use on a Domino server has been moved from [R+ Administration > Database Fix-up Utilities] to [R+ Administration > User Administration]. You’ll get a message if you select the old command.
User Administration
- Administrators can now change ACLs on many databases at a go.
Upgrade databases
- When you upgrade databases to a new version, Windows might not refresh MasterFile’s display for a while. v9 opens Explorer at the location of the log files for the databases being upgraded to ease monitoring of the upgrade task. If the log files are increasing in size every few seconds, upgrade is progressing. This is a useful since upgrades can take quite a while to complete, even up to an hour or two, depending on your existing version and database size/document count.
Views
- The [L+ Documents > Document Binder] view now only shows documents that are tagged with a [Binder tab] Issue/Topic.