Pull the facts of your case together
MasterFile lets you get a handle on the relevant facts, players and issues in a case by bringing together all the building blocks of your case – facts, dates, times, issues, witnesses and evidence – in one intuitive platform. Its chronological tools let you collaborate easily, and share research and insight that strengthens your case analysis and legal strategy.
You can ...
- Link and tag any fact or content by issue, theme, witness or other criteria – and to documentary proof or key extracts.
- Specify and mark the date and time events occurred, automatically adding them to the chronology,
- Execute complex searches quickly, and filter content and explore evidence through different viewpoints.
Content is automatically categorized as you review, making browsing or finding content and organizing information simple.
Extract and link key evidence
MasterFile mimics how lawyers and litigators work on paper. You can highlight what’s important from any document and extract it – or create a fact or event – in one click. Facts and extracts are automatically linked to their source and displayed in context in MasterFile’s views. Tag them with case issues too, and see what’s important across dozens of documents at a glance.
See how your case is shaping up
Creating the case chronology is as simple as highlighting key facts and assigning event dates. Facts then appear automatically organized in MasterFile’s live chronological views. You can instantly review the chronology for any issue as well, to focus on critical matters without constantly printing reports. Multiple, independent chronologies for different arguments or themes are easily managed too.
Create visual timelines of all or selected events with one click so audiences can easily grasp pivotal information at a glance.
Issue outlines – the key to case analysis
MasterFile’s live issue outline structures evidence and the case chronology. It gives you an important visual snapshot of where you stand on the claims and issues. You can see everything related to an issue at a glance without the need to print reports “by issue” whenever the case is updated. That makes it easy to explore and pursue different trains of thought in parallel and make connections that may not be obvious.
Explore relationships
Relationships between facts, players, places, issues, events and so forth are very often the key to “cracking” that elusive case or understanding how the evidence and facts of a litigation, investigation or research project fit together.
You can ...
- Explore and follow chains of relationships among issues, players, places or any word or phrase in documents, extracts or facts.
- See everything related in the live issue outline and topic index.
- Find all references to players and “objects” using advanced search.
Write argument; link probative evidence
As you pull your case or research together, draft, format and substantiate argument directly in MasterFile. Add as much detail as you need: notes, argument around an issue, or a brief in its entirety. Since you can see every fact related to any aspect of the matter and probe evidence to explore patterns, you’re easily able to cite key material at the exact point you need.
Managing multi-party arbitration, tribunals and propositions
In fraud or criminal investigations, there are often several suspects and you must assess facts as for or against each rather than simply for or against “us”. MasterFile lets you do just that making it invaluable in arbitration, tribunals, investigations, research and the like.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Case Analysis software?
Case analysis software helps litigators and legal professionals manage, analyze, and set out their argument while answering these four questions:
- What do we want? These are the issues you set out in MasterFile.
- What is the law? As you collect the law that supports your case, it forms part of your case evidence in Masterful too.
- What do I need to prove? What will the judge want to know? By breaking down the law into its legal elements, and thinking about proving them, you can flesh out the issue outline and facts with your notes right in MasterFile, linking probative evidence as you review.
- How am I going to prove it? This is where you explore evidence in MasterFile, link substantive material and key evidence to the facts and issues to prove your position, and set out why.
Why are chronologies an important asset in litigation?
Assembling case facts and chronologies is a tremendous asset that can put you on track to courtroom victory. Chronologies are far more than just one of the thinking tools you’ll find in MasterFile: They’re invaluable communication aids with your client, the opposition, and the trier of fact. Event chronologies are critical to almost all cases especially medical litigation. And at settlement conferences, chronologies show why the facts back your view and can make a powerful case to judge and jury – especially during opening statements and closing arguments.
How linking works in MasterFile and why you need it
Any entity can be linked to another in MasterFile by a simple highlight and click.
Doc-links not only record the connections you have discovered between documents and transcripts or facts, issues and key extracts, doc-links
- can be interspersed within text to reference any material at the exact point in an argument or a thesis where they’re needed. Case knowledge is preserved; firm members can review those relationships at any time and benefit from their colleagues’ analysis.
- connect to other MasterFile databases too, making it easy to accumulate firm knowledge in reference databases of authorities, research from the literature, patents, etc. Or simply to move a case’s bulky evidence such as digital audio and video into it’s own linked MasterFile database.
- eliminate CaseMap’s document links and folder/files paths which fail when you’re mobile or off-line.
- work only for those with database access so security remains tight.
- can be traced to find wherever a document, extract or fact has been referenced or cited to explore connections and fellow team members’ insights.
Sharing ideas with fellow users and tasking individuals with follow up or research using doc-links securely via Outlook or email is simple too.
How MasterFile’s extracts and doc-links preserve case knowledge
Since MasterFile’s doc-links interconnect documents, facts and other MasterFile databases, you can easily extract, annotate and collaborate across any content, centralize your firm’s analysis and key research, and build upon each other’s insights in real-time – even sharing work product in one click.