Chronologies

Building a chronology is one of the most common and most time-consuming tasks in legal review. You need to read each document, identify the key event, pin it to a date, and write a concise summary -- then do that hundreds or thousands of times.

Claira can handle the heavy lifting by reading each document and producing a single dated sentence that captures what happened, who was involved, and when. You get a ready-to-sort timeline that you can refine and verify.

How Claira helps

• One sentence per document. Each document is distilled into a concise, dated summary -- just enough to place it on a timeline.
• Consistent format. The standardized [Date]: [Event summary] format makes it easy to sort, merge, and compare across documents.
• Works at scale. Build a chronology from thousands of documents in a single bulk scan rather than assembling it manually.

When to use this

• Creating case chronologies for litigation preparation
• Preparing timelines for regulatory submissions
• Organizing documents by event sequence
• Supporting expert reports or witness preparation with dated summaries

Sample prompt

The YYYY/MM/DD date format ensures your results sort chronologically when exported. If your team uses a different date convention, adjust the format accordingly.

Tips for better results

• Export and sort. The real value of a chronology emerges after you export the results and sort by date. Review the sorted timeline for gaps, clusters, and unexpected entries.
• Combine with objective coding. If your documents lack reliable date metadata, run an objective coding pass first to extract document dates, then use those dates as anchors for your chronology.
• Flag undated documents. Some documents will not have a clear date. Consider adding a fallback instruction like "If no date is identifiable, begin with '[No Date]'" so you can filter and handle those separately.

Need help? Contact support@claira.to