Keep a sensitive chronology clear and sourced.
Family matters can involve competing accounts, extensive messages, and events recalled under stress. A sourced chronology helps counsel review that material without flattening it.
Where the factual work sits
Illustrative
Emotional recall is not chronological recall.
Clients in family matters are describing their own lives under stress. Events arrive in the order they hurt, not the order they happened, and dates shift between tellings without anyone intending to mislead.
Capturing each account as a dated event with an explicit source and date confidence makes conflicting details visible for the firm to review.
- Incidents dated with honest uncertainty rather than false precision
- Messages, photographs, and records linked to the incident they evidence
- Third parties recorded once and reused across incidents
- Internal inconsistencies flagged for clarification early
Sensitive by default
Current pilot evaluations use synthetic or fully redacted matters. The production data model separates internal attorney notes from client-visible activity, while encryption, access control, vendor terms, and retention remain production requirements subject to diligence.
Read the security page for the current status and requirements.
Where it helps most.
Custody chronologies
A dated record of arrangements, exchanges, and departures from them, assembled as the client recalls it.
Evidence that lives on phones
Messages and photographs attached to the incident they relate to instead of arriving as an undated screenshot dump.
Fewer difficult re-interviews
Follow-up questions are targeted, so clients are not asked to retell a painful account from the beginning.
Where the record comes from in a family matter.
Most supporting material in these files is held by the client and arrives undated. Recording where each item came from is what makes it usable later.
Messages and call logs
Held by the client. Needs the date captured at the point it is provided.
Photographs
Held by the client. Frequently the only record of a specific exchange.
School and medical records
Held by third parties, and requested rather than supplied.
Financial records
Split between the client, an employer, and institutions.
Prior orders and filings
On the record already, and the fixed points a chronology is anchored to.
Third-party accounts
Held by people who may or may not be willing to provide a statement.
Sensitive by default
Family matters carry material a client would not want mishandled. Notes recorded by the firm are internal by default and are not part of what a client sees, uploaded records are served through expiring links, and pilot evaluations use synthetic or fully redacted matters.
Questions from family law firms.
- Clients often provide undated screenshots. Does that help?
- Only if the date is captured when the item is provided. The intake asks for it at that point rather than leaving it to be reconstructed later, and where the client genuinely does not know, that is recorded as unknown instead of guessed.
- Can the other party see any of this?
- No. A matter is visible to the firm working it and to the client it belongs to. There is no shared or opposing-party view.
- Is the client able to see the firm’s assessment?
- No. Notes recorded by the firm are internal by default, and the current design has no setting that exposes them to a client.
Keep every record attached to the event it evidences.
Messages, photographs, and third-party records linked to the incidents they support.