Skill: Timeline

Category: Summarize

Features and benefits

The power of
Timeline
is its flexibility in handling requests. You can generate a complete timeline using all your uploaded data to provide a broad overview of events.
Or, you can focus your user prompts to extract specific chronological information and generate a more tailored timeline.
For instance, when working on a case, you can upload multiple transcripts and interviews, then request a timeline solely focused on events to establish the cause of action.

Practice tips

CoCounsel is flexible enough to understand that a user might not use the word “timeline” or “chronology” when trying to create a timeline. However, using one of these terms in the prompt can help ensure that CoCounsel uses the
Timeline
skill.
CoCounsel can create focused timelines that are limited to a certain topic or timeframe. Instead of requesting a timeline of all events in a document, you can ask:
Prepare a timeline of events that occurred from 2019-2025.
Create a timeline of John's employment history.
Prepare a chronology of the events leading up to the litigation, but don’t include anything after the complaint was filed.
I need a timeline detailing Susan's medical history as it pertains to her car accident. Exclude anything relating to her diabetes.

Limitations to keep in mind

If you ask CoCounsel “when” something specific happened, it will generally route to the
Review Documents
skill, not
Timeline
. It is best to use the
Review Documents
skill if you need to know when 1 specific event happened. If you want a more comprehensive outline of events, try to use a broader user prompt (query) to ensure that CoCounsel routes to
Timeline
.
The
Timeline
skill generally errs on the side of being overinclusive. Therefore, if you want the timeline to exclude certain events, specifically tell CoCounsel to do so.
With large sets of documents, extraneous information – information not directly related to your instructions – may be part of CoCounsel's results. To refine your timeline, you can delete any dates and events from the downloaded results.
Timeline
can capture events that happen in the same timeframe in chronological order, but as the request gets larger, it may be difficult to ensure accuracy. Therefore, when asking for events happening in the same timeframe, consider limiting the request to a more focused set of events.
While not required, it may be helpful to specify in your user prompt what to exclude from a timeline or what wouldn’t be considered an “event” for the purposes of the timeline you intend to create. For example, you can tell CoCounsel to exclude the dates when a document was faxed or photocopied.