Reimagining Fact Timelines in Everlaw
Solving the narrative gap in litigation, enabling legal teams to move beyond raw data and proactively evaluate case claims and risk
Released December 2025 • Zero-to-one project
OVERVIEW
Defining the narrative layer for litigation
In complex litigation, the ability to rapidly structure a compelling case narrative is critical to success. Our objective was to move beyond simple evidence aggregation and introduce a foundational fact management system within Everlaw's Storybuilder suite.
To optimize this workflow for litigators, I joined a senior product lead in a deep investigation where we challenged initial assumptions and advocated for a complete architectural pivot—the design of a new, dedicated workspace, ultimately redefining the narrative-crafting experience.
PROBLEM
Did we have all the facts?
Everlaw’s existing Timeline tool was a chronological, list-based evidence repository. The initial user request was simple: provide a supplemental, visual view of this existing chronology to communicate a clear tale of events.
Existing Timeline chronology with events
Although users could layer in time range-based events between the evidence, adoption for this feature was negligible (less than 10% usage), indicating the tool primarily reflected a series of document titles and dates, not narrative structure.
We hypothesized that simply visualizing raw evidence titles (e.g., "ABC0001," "Enron email thread") would not solve the user's core need—it would only add to the confusion.
What exactly did users need on a timeline to be digestible and effective? Initial user interviews revealed that a timeline is an evolving organism, and a binding tool was missing to synthesize the atomic evidence into a persuasive story.
Users did not need a better evidence timeline; they required a dedicated fact manager capable of linking atomic evidence to synthesized, higher-level assertions.
SOLUTION
From dispersed data to unified contextual timelines
Enabling legal teams to identify case gaps, assess the evidentiary strength of their claims, and seamlessly visualize and export facts for use in court filings or depositions.
Fact-first synthesis
We introduced the "Fact" object, the case's single source of truth, allowing teams to assert early claims before the evidence is fully organized, supporting the critical Fact → Evidence workflow.
Contextual timelines for complex cases
To handle multi-faceted cases, we enabled the creation of multiple flexible fact timelines, giving users the ability to find and organize facts by legal issue or entity, instantly visualize gaps, and conduct risk assessment.
Seamless platform integration
Users can tag, cite, and reference strategic facts from any document or draft, accelerating case preparation workflows with zero friction and complete data consistency.
VALIDATED IMPACT & MEASUREMENT STRATEGY
Early signals, lasting Impact
Although the feature has only recently launched, early qualitative validation shows strong product-market fit and clear signals of impact. We led focus groups and demo’ed this feature at our Everlaw Summit conference with 20+ users.
Most expressed that the new workflow represents a “huge fix for most users,” directly addressing long-standing friction points in case preparation. Feedback highlighted that the solution is “a lot more user-friendly” and makes case management “faster, smoother,” with users noting that it will significantly “reduce redundant work and streamline handoffs”.
Our users providing feedback during the Summit focus group
This early validation gives us confidence in the direction, and we’ve established a measurement plan to track meaningful impact over time. We’ll be monitoring:
Adoption and recurring usage of the new workflow
Retention and depth of use within the broader Storybuilder suite
Downstream efficiency gains, such as reduced time spent on manual organization tasks
Contribution to overall Storybuilder adoption, especially as teams move toward more structured and automated case-building workflows
Beyond immediate user value, this release lays the groundwork for our longer-term strategy to streamline AI-powered fact management. This positions the feature not just as a usability improvement, but as a gateway to a more intelligent, end-to-end litigation workflow.
PROCESS
How we got there
RESEARCH AND VALIDATION
Establishing the fact ontology
Uncovering the litigator's terminology and mental models
Early research surfaced a multitude of terms, such as “issues,” “events,” “claims”, and “facts”. We engaged 9 Everlaw employees with legal backgrounds in thought exercises to better understand how they all fit together.
Key insights:
☝️ Facts were the foundation: Facts are key assertions or hypotheses that bridge raw evidence and high-level legal claims, helping shape the narrative and support arguments.
↔️ Bidirectional workflow: Legal teams require the flexibility to start at either end of the assertion chain. The existing tool was rigidly evidence-first; we had to enable the fact-first workflow, allowing users to capture a key assertion before linking its supporting documents.
🧠 Strategic case assessment: Users needed to not only evaluate the strength of their own facts and claims but also to predict and score the opponent’s arguments. This was crucial for informing overall litigation strategy and anticipating weaknesses.
🙅♀️ No industry standards: Existing solutions were described as haphazard and inefficient, often requiring teams to stitch together information across multiple disparate tools. This confirmed the urgency and market opportunity for a purpose-built solution.
Validating the gaps in Everlaw
In interviews with legal professionals, we pinpointed three critical gaps in Everlaw's existing Timeline tool:
📖 Narrative fragmentation: Our approach prioritized what evidence existed over what story the evidence told.
🫤 Misaligned concept: Although the existing "Events" feature was intended to support narrative creation, it failed to align with the real-world mental model of how facts are structured and used.
🧱 Architectural constraint: The single-timeline architecture failed to support the user need for contextual timelines across specific legal issues and parties, significantly impeding the analysis of complex, multi-faceted cases.
These critical insights solidified our challenge:
How might we help users efficiently capture, organize, and synthesize facts to construct arguments with confidence?
DEFINITION AND SCOPE
The architectural bet: securing buy-in for a zero-to-one solution
Our research confirmed that users prioritize workflow efficiency and data reliability over new visualization tools. Thus, we redirected the stakeholder discussion to three potential strategies for introducing data extraction ('facts')—a more critical need than the originally requested timeline view:
♻️ Refactor and rebrand the existing "Events" tool to align better with users' expectations.
➕ Add a new "Fact" object into the existing timeline tool.
🛠️ Build a new, dedicated workspace for narrative synthesis and fact management, while simultaneously preserving the existing evidence chronology for simple review of the raw data.
The product lead and I strongly advocated for the third option, arguing that the ROI of a completely new, architecturally clean solution outweighed the short-term effort of refactoring a fundamentally misaligned tool for managing facts.
We secured buy-in by demonstrating the scale of the user need and the projected long-term value, moving the project from incremental iteration to a strategic platform extension.
TAKEAWAYS
The value of opinionated design 🗣️
This project underscored the necessity of active strategic leadership. Pushing back on early proposals and stakeholder skepticism was critical. By leveraging deep research to establish a clear, opinionated conceptual model, we moved beyond feature iteration to deliver an essential, high-value platform extension that directly contributed to business growth and user confidence.