Contracts Viewer

Note: Contracts is not generally available, but is currently available in an Advanced Access Program until July 26th, 2023. If you’d like more information about this program, please contact your Account Executive.

While Relativity has its own document viewer catered to e-discovery, the Contracts Viewer is a custom-built review interface especially tailored for contract review. The goal of the Contracts Viewer is making the review process easier.

When you've imported a document into Relativity, but haven't run Contracts OCR, clicking on that document will display the viewer. On the other hand, clicking on any document you've run through Contracts OCR will display the Contracts Viewer. You must run Contracts OCR to enable the Contracts Viewer. You don't need to run any other type of contracts analysis. The Contracts Viewer empowers reviewers to quickly and easily pinpoint key clauses, data points, and contract metadata.

This page contains the following information:

Navigating the Contracts Viewer

Following are details on navigating the Contracts Viewer and all of its functions.

Navigating definitions

This section provides an overview of how you can navigate definitions in the Contracts Viewer after extracting definitions from contracts.

Navigate to where terms are defined

There are two ways that you can navigate to where terms are defined in the contract:

The definitions pane in the left pane of the viewer.
The definitions object list that you can add to a layout.

Via the Definitions Pane

To navigate to where terms are defined in the contract via the Definitions pane:

Click on the definitions pane in the left pane of the Contracts Viewer.
Click on a definition name. They are sorted alphabetically from top to bottom.
The contract will navigate to where that term is defined and underline the definition in red.

Via the Definitions Object List

To navigate to where terms are defined in the contract via the Definitions object list:

Click into the layout drop-down menu in the top right side of the viewer.
Click the edit icon next to a layout to which you'd like to add the definitions object list.
Under Layout Options on the right, click the Add Category drop-down menu and select the Add Object List option.
Under Layout Options on the right, select the Contracts Definition object.
Click the Save and Close button.
To add an existing definition to the list, click the Edit button on the inline object list. To add a new definition, click the Add button.
Once you have definitions in your list you can filter the definition name to find the text of the definition you're looking for.
Click the edit button in the row for that definition and then click the Text field to navigate the contract text to that definition.
Note: If the Text field does not have a green dot, that means that when you clicked the Add New button on the object list, you did not use send-to-field when capturing the Text of the definition. This is a best practice so that Contracts knows the location of the definition.

Navigating sections

The sections that contracts analysis creates are nested beneath the contract title on the left side of the Contracts Viewer.

Click the name of your contract to expand and view sections. Click again to collapse.

Each section displays a section heading, which is extracted verbatim from the contract. Below the heading, you'll find the section type, provided by Contracts Analysis or manual entry.

When you click a section in the left pane, you're automatically navigated to that section in the extracted text. The section is also marked with an orange highlight to the left of the text.

Hover over the highlight border to view a contextual pop-up displaying the Section Heading and Section Type.

Context menu for sections

Right-clicking on a section in the left pane will display the following options:

Merge Above—combines the section with the one above it creating one larger section that will inherit the section heading and section type of the top section.
Merge Below—combines the section with the one below it creating one larger section that will inherit the section heading and section type of the top section.
Edit Section Heading and Type—opens a modal for you to update the section heading and section type.
Edit Section Boundary—enters the section edit workflow where you can create new sections, merge, split, and delete sections. You'll also be auto-navigated to the section for which you clicked this option.
View in Relativity—opens the Relativity Viewer in a new tab displaying your section document.
Code Section—enters section-coding mode where you can code this individual section document.
Delete—deletes your section and the Relativity document for this section. You'll be presented with an option to Undo this at the bottom of the screen. If you choose NOT to Undo, note that any coding you've done on this section will be lost.

Document list navigation

Reviewers require the flexibility to freely navigate to contracts across their batch. This can help spot patterns and similarities for faster review and augment coding decisions using similar contracts. Access your document list faster directly from the Contracts Viewer.

Select List View, located directly beneath the Contract Navigation Pane.
The document list appears in place of the Section Navigation Pane. Sort, filter, and click to access contracts from the document list that led you to the Contracts Viewer.
Open the detailed list view in its own tab or window and arrange side by side for dual coding power.

Navigating related documents and their sections

The Related Documents pane displays the number of documents linked to the master contract. It's typically used to group master contracts to their amendments, exhibits, and addendums. Administrators can configure this using the Contracts Related Documents field.

The first item located at the top of the navigation pane is always the Master Agreement. The second item that appears is the Related Documents tab, which displays all related documents including amendments, exhibits, addendums, etc.

Click the Related Documents button to expand and view all related documents. Click a related document to view its sections.

When you click on a section, you're automatically redirected to its location in the extracted text, marked with an orange highlight to the left of the text.

Navigating data points

The Data Points pane helps reviewers locate and quickly navigate to key data in contracts.

Data points visible in the Contracts Viewer fall into three categories. The following documentation provides information on setting up data points:

Create and edit regular expressions

Set up data points in the viewer

Below you'll find instructions and relevant information on navigating data points:

To view regular expression or persistent highlight results, locate the Data Points pane in the Contracts Viewer. To see all the data points, including ones without hits in the document, click Show All.
Note: There is a Filters drop-down menu above the list of data points. Here you can select a filter from the drop-down menu to only show the data points associated with that filter. Learn more about setting up data point filters in Set up data points in the viewer.
The data point group name is the name of the regular expression or persistent highlight set created for this review project. When you click a data point group, it expands to show all results. If a result is repeated throughout the contract, it includes a badge indicating the number of individual hits. You can expand this result group to see all results. You can toggle the highlights on and off by clicking the dot to the left of the data point group name.
Each result displays the section type in which it is located. Clicking a result navigates you to its location in the contract. Even if you toggle the highlights off, you can click results and navigate to them in the contract.
Data points are also visible on the Highlights Minimap, and respect all colors from regular expressions or persistent highlight sets.

Highlights minimap

Whether you're in the first pass review or the final QC stage, the Highlights Minimap provides a visual snapshot of important data points and reviewer actions across a document.

Clicking on the Highlights Minimap quickly navigates to search results, coded fields, data points, or comments. Each action is categorized by a different color, providing a visual overview of key contract data across the document.

Highlights minimap color key

Below are descriptions of each of the colors that appear in the highlights minimap:

Green—iindicates send to field action in contract.
Red A—activated only when a coded field is clicked in a layout. Underlines the associated text in the document.
Red B—indicates locations of search results. Text is highlighted by clicking up and down arrows.
Gray—default color to indicate text found by regular expressions, or persistent highlight sets, listed in Data Points. When clicked from the Data Points pane, indication on minimap turns fire red.
Yellow—indicates location of inline comments.

Contracts toolbar

The Contracts toolbar appears at the top of the Contracts viewer. This section explains how to use various functions in the Contracts toolbar.

Search for documents

The Contracts Viewer's search functionality offers reviewers flexible options and intuitive navigation controls to quickly arrive at desired results. There are four main search options in Contracts :

Default—displays real-time results with each key stroke using partial words, whole words, multiple words, and symbols.
- Default search option
- Enabled when no other search option icons are highlighted in orange
Whole Word—finds case insensitive results for single and multiple words.
- Select the Ab icon to the right of the search bar, now highlighted in orange
- Searching for "termination" avoids "determination" in results
- Symbols not supported
Case Sensitive—finds case sensitive results for single and multiple words.
- Signified by Ab icon
- Searching for "Chief Executive Officer" avoids "chief executive officer" in results
- Can be used on its own or in conjunction with Whole Word search
- Symbols are not supported
Regular Expressions—signified by the .* icon. For information on regular expressions, see Create and edit regular expressions.

Run a search

When the auto-run toggle is on: As you type, Contracts will run your search and return results.

When the auto-run toggle is off: Contracts will only run your search and return results after you press the Enter key.

Navigate search results

Below are details on navigating search results:

The result list helps reviewers understand the location of a result in the contract.
The section heading is displayed in bold gray text below the search bar.
The section type is noted in parentheses next to the section heading.
The number of results currently viewed out the total number of results found is displayed in the search bar.
Use the arrows that appear in the search bar to navigate to the result location in the contract. Clicking on a result will navigate you to that result.
To expand or collapse your search results, click the three dots below the search bar.

View documents

The Contracts Viewer allows reviewers to open the currently viewed document in the Relativity's review interface.

Once you click the Relativity button, a new browser tab will open with the same document in Relativity.

Working in multiple tabs

By keeping both tabs open, you can switch back and forth between the Contracts and Relativity Viewers. Or, you can separate tabs into their individual windows, allowing a side-by-side view.

When both tabs are open the action of navigating from document to document in the Contracts Viewer will duplicate in the Viewer. For instance, if you click to the next document in the Contracts Viewer, the Viewer will replicate that action and proceed to the next document.

This can save time by removing additional or redundant clicks and opening new tabs or windows.

Image viewer

You can click the Show PDF button to view the original PDF of the contract in Contracts Image Viewer.

Navigating section, data point, and send-to-field highlights

Whether clicking on a section, data point, or field, the Image Viewer will navigate to your highlight and display it in an active state, as the Text Viewer does.

As you toggle between the text and PDF, Contracts will maintain your location in the document based on last-clicked highlight.

Image viewer toolbar

The Image Viewer has a toolbar with different options from the Document Viewer.

Below are the toolbar buttons and brief descriptions of what each button does.

Context menu options

If you right click on the document in the image viewer, you are presented with a context menu with an option to Go To Text. Selecting this will navigate you to that exact location in the Text Viewer.

If you select text in the Image Viewer, you are presented with a context menu that includes the option to Go To Text, and an option to Send to Field. If you select Send to Field, you can then click on a field on a layout in the right pane to populate it.

Edit sections

In the Contracts Viewer you can create, split, merge, delete, and cut entire sections of text using the Edit Section workflow.

While you can also create new sections directly from the viewer's context menu, the following instructions describe how you can adjust many sections at once by clicking the Edit sections button in the viewer toolbar.

Create sections

Follow the steps below to create sections.

To enter Section Edit mode, right-click on a section on the left side of the Contracts Viewer, or alternatively click Edit Sections at the top of the page.
Highlight the text you'd like to create as its own section. Select Create New Section from the context menu that appears immediately after highlighting the text.
Contracts will try to auto-populate Section Heading and Section Type. If this does not happen automatically, you can send to Section Heading or select your Section Type.
If you're ready to leave Section Edit mode, but the Save Changes button is grayed out, click on the # Sections Need Attention warning. This will automatically navigate you to flagged sections that need action. Continue adding new sections or click Mark to Ignore to leave as is.
Once all section warnings have been addressed, click Save Changes.

Split sections

Follow the steps below to split an existing section.

While in Section Edit mode, click into the desired section and highlight the text that needs to be split.
Select Create New Section from the choice menu that automatically pops up after highlighting text.
Add your Section Heading and select the Section Type tag from the mega menu below it. Otherwise, create a new one by typing out the new Section Type entirely and clicking + Add [XYZ] As New Type.
Confirm all other sections have the desired Section Heading and Section Type. Click the check mark to save.
If you're ready to leave Section Edit mode, yet the Save Changes button is grayed out, click on the # Sections Need Attention warning. This will auto-direct you to flagged sections that need action. Continue adding or click Mark to Ignore to leave as is.

Merge sections

Follow the steps below to merge two sections.

While in Section Edit mode, click the Merge button that appears between two sections in order to combine them into one section.
Confirm the Section Heading and Section Type and click the Save Changes button in the top right corner.

Remove sections

While in Section Edit mode, click into the desired section and select Mark to Ignore to remove from the Section List.
You can also remove unnecessary text from a section. Simply highlight the text that needs detaching, select Mark To Ignore and click the Save Changes button.

Adjust text size

In the Contracts Viewer, you can adjust text size of the contract you're viewing.

Click the plus (+) or minus (-) icons in the Contracts Toolbar to increase or decrease the text size of the document you are viewing.
Clicking the magnifying glass icon will reset the text back to 100%.

Context menu

The Context menu is the main review interface of the Contracts Viewer. This section describes various functions available via the Context menu.

Send text to the section heading field

You can select text in the viewer and, if it's within a section, send that text to the Section Heading field.

The use case for this is if segmentation did not properly extract the section heading and you'd like to quickly correct it.

To send text to the section heading field:

Select text within a section in the text or image viewer.
Click the Send to Section Heading button.
Notice that the section who's text you selected will go into a loading state on the left pane and the new section heading will appear.

Create sections

Creating sections from the viewer context menu allows the user to:

Create a new section from the image viewer where the outlining format is more visually obvious.
Create a more intuitive workflow for reviewers to add sections in the course of their review.
Take advantage of the left pane navigation and search to find the section you'd like to create.

To create sections from the Image Viewer or Text Viewer:

Select the text of the section that you would like to create.
Click Create New Section.
This will bring up a modal with the text of your section on the right and section information to fill out on the left.
Contracts will try to auto-populate the section heading and the section type. If it cannot, simply add that information manually. For section heading, you can select text on the right and Send to Section Heading.
Once you enter your section heading and type, click the Save button.
The left pane of the viewer will re-load with your newly created section. This section is now a new document in Relativity and is grouped with the parent contract via the Document Parts field.
Note: If the text you select to create new section is part of an existing section, Contracts will auto-adjust the offsets and highlights associated with that existing section so that it will be smaller. If the text you select to create a new section covers an entire existing section, that section will be deleted and replaced with your new section.

Remove text from sections

You can select text in the viewer and, if it's at the beginning or end of a section, make that text no longer part of the section.

An example use case for this is if segmentation mistakenly lumped a page number or footer at the end of a section.

To remove text from sections:

Select text at the beginning or end of a section in the text or image viewer.
Click the Remove Text from Section button.
The section you removed text from will go into a loading state on the left pane.

Create definitions

You can create new definitions that you can later navigate to in the Contracts Viewer. There are two ways that you can create a new definition that will show up in the Contracts Definition object list and in the definitions pane of the viewer.

By selecting text in the viewer and clicking Create New Definition
By adding a new definition to the definitions object list on a layout.

To create definitions by selecting text in the viewer:

Select your definition in the contract text and click the Create New Definition option.
Contracts will attempt to auto-populate the definition name. If we cannot, you can enter the text of the name manually or select text on the right and click the Send to Name option.
Click the Save button and your new definition will appear in the definitions pane to the left. If you refresh the page, it will also show up in the definitions object list on your layout.

To create definitions via the definitions object list:

If you've already added the Contracts Definition object list to your layout, you can ignore steps 2-5.
Click into the layout drop-down menu in the top right side of the viewer.
Click the Edit pencil icon next to a layout to which you'd like to add the definitions object list.
Under Layout Options, click the Add Category drop-down menu and select the Add Object List option.
Under Layout Options, select the Contracts Definition object.
Click the Save and Close button.
Click the Add button on the top right of the object list.
Type the name of the definition in the Name field.
Select the full definition text in the contract and send to field for the Text field.
Click the Save button in the top right of the object list.

Note: If you later find that a Text field does not have a green dot, that means that when someone added a new definition, they did not use send-to-field when capturing the Text of the definition. This is a best practice so that Contracts knows the location of the definition.

Create bookmarks and links

With this feature, you can create bookmarks in documents and link other text in the document to those bookmarks.

For example, you might see text in a contract that says “as referenced in Section 6.2.” You could go to Section 6.2, create a bookmark for it, and then create a link for the “as referenced in Section 6.2” text that will point to your bookmark.

You can also link text to sections that Contracts has found via Segmentation or that you created manually via Section Edit Mode.

Add a bookmark

To add a new bookmark:

Select any text in the Contracts Viewer.
Choose the context menu option to Add Bookmark.
A bookmark icon will show up in the left margin. Hovering over it will underline your bookmarked text.

Link to a bookmark

To link text to a bookmark:

Select any text in the Contracts Viewer.
Choose the context menu option to Link to Bookmark.
A list of all bookmarks will appear.
Sort or filter on fields to find your bookmark and click anywhere in the row to select it.
Click Save.
The text you selected in Step 1 will now appear as a hyperlink and clicking it will navigate you to the bookmark you selected in Step 4.

Link to a section

To link text to a section:

Select text.
Choose the context menu option to Link to Section.
A list of all sections will appear, pre-filtered by the contract you are viewing.
Sort or filter on fields to find your section and click anywhere in the row to select it.
Click Save.
The text you selected in Step 1 will now appear as a hyperlink and clicking it will navigate you to the section you selected in Step 4.

Deleting bookmarks or links

To delete a bookmark or link:

Right click on a bookmark icon or a link.
Choose the context menu option to Delete Bookmark or Delete Link.

Linking to bookmarks or sections in other documents

Using the steps above for linking to a bookmark or section, you can link to bookmarks or sections that are in other documents. After doing so, clicking on the link will open up a new browser tab and navigate you to the appropriate bookmark or section in that other document.

Navigate to exact lines between image and text

When viewing a document in the Contracts Viewer, you can navigate between the same line of text in the image and text viewers.

From the image viewer:

To navigate to text in the text viewer from the image viewer:

Right-click any word of text that you're reading.
This will bring up an option to switch to the Text Viewer.
Click Go to Text.
This will navigate you to the same line in the Text Viewer.

From the text viewer:

To navigate to text in the image viewer from the text viewer:

Right-click any word of text that you're reading.
This will bring up a an option to switch to the Image Viewer.
Click Go to Image.
This will navigate you to the same line in the Image Viewer.

Context menu search

Context Menu Search allows reviewers to use text found in a contract to quickly activate the full search functionality found in the Viewer Toolbar. To enable Context Menu Search, follow one of two methods below.

Highlight your text to activate the Context Menu and click Search.
Highlight your text and use your keyboard to hit Ctrl + / B on Windows devices, or Command + F on Apple devices.

Coding contracts

Coding refers to capturing and storing metadata about a contract or its clauses. You can code a contract by clicking into fields, from send-to-field, or via data point suggestions.

Relativity is extremely flexible in creating custom fields with varying format options, so the sky is the limit in terms of the type of data you can extract. Examples of use cases include extracting a lease's renewal date, or determining the risk level of a change-in-control provision from an employment agreement.

Field types the Contracts Viewer supports:

Fixed Length
Long Text
Date
Whole Number
Decimal
Currency
Yes/No
Single Choice
Multi Choice
Single Object
Multiple Object

The Contracts Viewer does not currently support coding the following field types:

File
User

Coding by clicking into fields

In the Contracts Viewer, you can code contracts by clicking into fields. Fields are organized by field type.

For all field types populated with any value, hovering over the field will show an X button to the right of the field for clearing out the value.
All drop-downs support dynamic searching to find choices.
If you select a child field in a nested list, Contracts will automatically select all its parent fields as well.

For information on field types in Relativity, refer to Fields.

Listed below are various field types and their coding limitations.

Fixed-Length and Long Text—you can configure fixed-length text fields with length up to 4,999 characters and long text fields can exceed this. The technical limitation of a long text field is 2 GB. If you attempt to code a text field and you exceed these limitations, you'll receive an error.
Date—after selecting a date using the date picker, it will always display in the format of "March 14, 2011". When you save, it will be stored in a format friendly to your SQL server's regional settings.
Currency/Whole Number/Decimal—type to enter a whole number or decimal number.
Yes/No—select Yes or No from the drop-down menu.
Single Choice— type to enter a choice, or select from the drop-down menu. The list results will dynamically update as you type.
Multiple Choice—type to enter a choice, or select from the drop-down menu. The results will dynamically update as you type.

Coding contracts via send-to-field

Send to Field is a way to quickly and accurately send text found in a document to a field on a layout via the context menu of the Contracts Viewer.

Not only can you intuitively select text and populate a field, Contracts also saves the location of your text and links it to the field so when you click that field in the future, you'll be navigated to the correct location in the document. This is powerful for QC workflows where the QCer would like to know why a reviewer made a certain coding decision.

Supported field types

Send to Field works for all field types that Contracts supports for coding documents. These are list below and categorized by behavior.

For each field type listed, the contract text you select to send to field is used to populate the field value and will create a link between the text in the contract and the field.

Group 1

Fixed-length text
Long text
Date
Whole number
Decimal
Currency

Note: You can configure fixed-length text fields with length up to 4,999 characters. Long text fields can exceed this. The technical limitation of a long text field is 2 GB. If you attempt to code a text field and you exceed these limitations, you'll receive an error.

For the field types below, sending to field will create the link between the text in contract and the field but you must select your values to finish coding the field.

Group 2

Single/multiple object
Single/multiple choice
Yes/no

Send to field from the Text Viewer

To send text to field from the text viewer:

Select text in your document and choose the Send to Field option in the context menu. You'll get a confirmation slide out at the top of the page where you can edit the selection before sending it to a field. This is helpful if you need to make an adjustment due to an OCR mistake, for example.
Click on a field on a layout in the right pane of the viewer.
If you click a Group 1 field type, you are done and can Save.
If you click a Group 2 field type, select a value and Save.
After saving, you'll notice a green underline under your text and a green dot near the field. If you click the field, it will navigate you to the text and the underline will turn orange.

Note: Send to field highlights are represented as green blocks in the Highlights minimap.

How to send to field from the Image Viewer

Follow all of the same steps above for sending to field in the text viewer. The only difference is that in the slide out at the top of the page, it includes the cropped image of your selection to compare against the extracted text below it. As with the text viewer, you can edit the text before sending to field.

Sending to long text fields multiple times

For long text fields, you can send to one field many times from different locations. For example, if you have an All Assignment Language field and assignment language is scattered throughout the contract, you can send each location to the field.

When a long text field already contains text and you send to field again, you'll see a modal to append, prepend, or replace.

Prependwill place your new text before the existing text.
Append—will place your new text after the existing text.
Replace—will replace existing text with your new text.

If you choose to Prepend or Append, after you Save, hovering over the field will give you a tooltip letting you know how many highlight locations are associated with that field. If you click the field multiple times, it will cycle through all highlights.

Coding contracts with data point suggestions

Administrators can configure data point suggestions, which use regular expressions and persistent highlights results to suggest possible values to help reviewers make a coding decision.

For an explanation on how to configure data point suggestions, see Set up data points in the viewer.

Using data point suggestions, reviewers can expand a field to show suggested values, and one-click send them to the field. In doing so, you can guide reviewers in the direction of highly relevant data. This will increase both speed and accuracy of review projects.

To code documents using fields linked by data point suggestions, complete the instructions below:

Click the chain-link icon to the right of the field name.
Click on the data point group to expand and view all individual results. The number at the far right of the group name represents the total number of results found.
Clicking a result navigates you to its location in the contract. From here, you can assess the relevance to the field.
When hovering over a result, click a check mark to populate the field with that value. This functions exactly the same as if you were to use Send to Field.

Coding at the section level

When you are coding a document in the Contracts Viewer, your coding decisions will save on the parent master agreement by default . However, if you would like a coding decision to save on a section document instead, you have that option.

Right click on a section in the left pane of the Contracts Viewer and click Code Section.
The layout on the right will reload and a header bar will appear above the layout notifying you that you are now coding a section. The coding values are now reflected for the section document, not the main document. Make coding decisions on the layout as you normally would. Send-to-field and all other coding capabilities are supported.
Once you make your coding decisions, click the Save button to confirm your decisions.
Note: Saving does not exit section coding mode. In order to exit this mode and begin coding the main document again, click the Exit button in the header bar above the layout.

Regular expressions

There are two ways you can create and save a new regular expression in the Contracts Viewer.

Data Points pane

To create and save a new regex via the data points plane:

Click the + button in the data points pane. This will automatically enter you into the search bar with the regular expression toggle activated and Regular Expression Details expanded.
As you type in the search bar, results will display dynamically beneath the search area.
You can expand and collapse the save options by clicking on Regular Expression Details.
Name your regular expression by entering text for the Friendly Name.
Optionally change the background color of the highlight for your regular expression hits.
Optionally filter your regular expression's hits by choosing a Saved Search Filter.
Optionally hide the regular expression from the data points pane in the viewer by toggling off Visible in Contracts Viewer.
Optionally Preview hits on other documents.
Optionally Preview segmentation if you want to use the regular expression to segment documents.
If you want the regular expression to be case sensitive, click the case sensitivity toggle to the right of the search bar.
Click the Save button and your regular expression will now show up in the data points pane in the left navigation of the viewer.

Via the search button and regular expression toggle

To create and save a new regex via the search button and regular expression toggle:

Click the Search Button in the tool bar of the viewer.
Click the Regular Expression Toggle on the right side of the search bar.
Follow steps 5-12 above.