The May 2023 Nebula update introduced substantial improvements to the early case assessment (“ECA”) user experience, specifically around the promotion of data from Cull to Review. It is now easier than ever to handle reporting, deduplication, and earmarking of important data, even across multiple Review matters.

How to promote data in Nebula

Nebula users will immediately recognize one feature of Cull document listings that is distinct from those found in Review: the promotion bar. The Nebula promotion bar, found at the top of any document listing in Cull, is the tool used to identify, deduplicate and promote unique data from Cull to Review. This tool provides instantaneous insight into one of the most critical data points of ECA: net-new documents for review. And because Nebula supports unlimited Review matters linked to a repository, the promotion bar naturally allows for targeted, customized data staging across a company’s entire discovery portfolio. Once a user identifies documents that require review, two clicks is all it takes to promote that data.

Promotion view

One challenge that practitioners experience when preparing for promotions is the inability to precisely analyze deduplicated data prior to actually promoting it. To solve this, we added a new feature called “promotion view” that allows users to generate a document listing of only the documents that would be promoted, post-deduplication. To access this listing, a user simply clicks the dynamically generated “Promotion Count” link in the promotion bar. From this new listing, any available mass action (Reports, Doc List to CSV) or bulk association (Lists) can be run on the documents slated for promotion. To return to the main listing, click the preceding portion of the breadcrumb trail above the document list panel.

Note that while in promotion view, the settings in the promotion bar cannot be changed, and facet explorer searches cannot be run.

Building up to a promotion

It’s not always feasible to finalize a perfect promotion in one go. Depending on remaining processing tasks, or the ever-changing scope in a legal proceeding, often it’s necessary to earmark and/or aggregate promotable data over time. Nebula makes this easy with Lists. Users can continuously add (or remove) documents to a single List over time, or manage multiple Lists - whichever workflow works best for the project. Lists can be created with pre-deduplicated document populations using the promotion view, or users can opt to deduplicate just before promotion. Additionally, users can now deduplicate Lists directly, with a new feature located at the Lists management page (Cull > Explore > Lists).

Using “Deduplicate List” allows for instant culling of a List’s duplicate contents, based on a global, family-hash deduplication strategy. Lists can even (optionally) be deduplicated against a second List that serves as the source of truth for previously earmarked/promoted data. Nebula users may recall similar ability from working with Export Queues, a feature that has now been removed with the enhanced functionality of Lists.

How and when users identify, save, and deduplicate data for promotion is ultimately a decision driven by both user preference and case logistics. With these new tools, Nebula can defensibly and seamlessly support any ECA workflow no matter how complex the litigation.