The chronology is one of the first things a litigation team needs. It is also one of the last things anyone wants to maintain by hand.
A case chronology has to capture every key event, the date it happened, and any supporting documents or testimonies. On top of that, the chronology must stay current as new material comes in. For case managers, paralegals, and litigation support professionals, maintaining a chronology can quickly snowball into an enormous amount of work.
Here is how teams have typically handled this work and how Everchron makes it easier to build and update case chronologies.
Building a case chronology manually
Most teams build their case chronology in a Word table or an Excel spreadsheet. After setting up columns for the date, the event, the source, and some notes, teams then populate the rows by reading through the record and entering what they find.
Three things make this process especially painful:
- Maintenance never ends. Teams must continually pore over documents as they come in, pull relevant facts and dates, and add them into the correct spot. To correct a fact or update an entry, teams must hunt down each entry that references that fact and fix them one at a time.
- Sources are difficult to track down. The “source” column tells you that a document exists, but it does not get you to the document. Confirming an entry involves leaving the spreadsheet and going to find the file in another system or folder.
- Versions multiply. The moment someone emails the chronology, several copies are in circulation. When an attorney only wants to review the events tied to a single witness, they must filter the sheet or build a separate version – creating even more copies to keep straight.
Case chronology management in Everchron
Everchron's dynamic chronology treats the timeline as a single living record connected to the underlying evidence rather than a file that has to be passed around manually. This changes the nature of the work that must be done to maintain the chronology.
- Add an event once, with its source attached. When you create a chronology entry, you link it directly to the document, testimony, issue, or person it relates to. The entry is not a note about an exhibit; it is connected to the exhibit itself. Build the timeline and you are building those connections at the same time, so you do not have to reassemble anything later to trace where a fact came from.
- Work in the view that fits the task. The same chronology data is available three ways. Use the Visual Timeline to see the shape of the case and spot gaps in the sequence. Use Table View for detailed review and data entry in the familiar row-and-column format. Use Card View for a vertical timeline. Switching views changes the presentation, not the data, so you are never maintaining three versions to serve three needs.
- Filter instead of rebuilding. When an attorney asks for only the events tied to a particular witness or issue, you can filter the existing chronology rather than creating a new file. Nothing gets copied, and nothing falls out of sync.
- Keep everyone on the same version. Because the chronology is one shared record, there is a single source of truth that all teams can work off of. Add a fact or correct a date and the change is there for the whole team. No emailing updated spreadsheets, no reconciling copies, and no wondering which one is right.
- Import what you already built offline. Teams that have built a chronology in Word or Excel do not have to redo everything in the Everchron platform. Rather, your chronology can be imported directly into Everchron so you are not starting from scratch.
What case managers gain
Chronology upkeep is often the task that crowds out the work these professionals were actually hired to do. Move the chronology into Everchron and the time you used to spend re-entering data, chasing down source files, and rebuilding filtered versions goes back to the work that takes judgment: deciding which events belong in the record and how they connect to the issues in the case.
In Everchron, the chronology stays current because it is maintained in one place, and it is immediately usable to the attorneys who depend on it, from early factual investigation through hearings and trial.
For a deeper look at what separates a strong chronology from a merely complete one, check out six tips for simplifying chronologies.
