Chronology - Family Law | LEAP Community

Chronology - Family Law

Oct 7, 2026
Knowledge

How To

Powered by LEAP, Chronology takes the manual work out of building a family law chronology. Piecing together a matter's history from affidavits, orders and correspondence is slow, and it's easy to miss or misdate an event when the same thing is described differently across documents. Chronology uses AI to read the documents saved to your LEAP matter, extract every dated event with a reference back to the page it came from, and present them in a single chronology. You spend your time checking and refining the facts rather than assembling them, then export the finished chronology to Word.

Key Features:

Chronology is designed to take the work out of assembling a chronology, so the time goes into checking it rather than typing it:

Built from matter documents: Select affidavits, orders, correspondence and reports from the LEAP matter correspondence and Chronology extracts every dated event, each with a reference back to its source.
Four chronology views: Switch between Master, Basic, Factual and Procedural views of the same events, and export whichever one the task needs.
Source preview: Click any source reference to see the passage behind the event, highlighted on its source page.
Verification: Mark each event as verified once it has been checked, recording who checked it and when, and locking it against further change.
Duplicate resolution: Events described in more than one document are grouped for you to decide which version to keep.
Editing and manual events: Correct any date or description in place, add events the documents do not contain, and act on many events at once with bulk select.
Change history: Every edit, deletion and document change is recorded with who made it and when.
Export: Generate a Word document of any view, saved automatically to matter correspondence.

Getting Started

To access Chronology:

Open a Family Law matter in LEAP.
Click the icon in the LEAP ribbon.

Click to edit heading

If for some reason Chronology isn’t appearing in your LEAP ribbon, it could be:

Users are not working in a Family Law matter;
There are too many apps in the LEAP ribbon, click the ‘More’ button to reveal additional apps; or
A quick sign-out and sign-back-in of LEAP could be required.

Source Documents

Chronology builds the chronology from documents saved to the LEAP matter. The Upload documents tab lists the correspondence in the same folders you see in LEAP. Save the document to the matter as you normally would, then select it here.

Selecting Documents

Expand a folder to see its contents, or type in Search documents to find a file by name. If a document was saved to the matter while Chronology was open, click the refresh icon next to the matter name to bring it back into the list.

Chronology is purpose-built for family law documents and produces the most complete results from:

Affidavits, including prior filed affidavits
Sealed court orders and pleadings
Single Expert Reports and other formal filed court documents

Some content is not read:

Bank, credit card and similar statements: the transaction pages are not read. Where another document refers to a statement, that reference is still extracted.
Annexures and exhibits to affidavits: not read. References to them in the body of the affidavit are extracted.
Routine administrative content is left out.

Click to edit heading

Chronology keeps an image of each page it reads, so documents produced under subpoena or subject to an undertaking to the Court may not be suitable to add. Click A note on subpoena material beside the heading for more.

Generating the Chronology

To generate a chronology:

Tick each document to include. Each row shows Uploading as soon as it is ticked, then a time estimate once it is ready.
When every ticked document has finished uploading, click Add to Chronology. The rows change to Generating and the button reports progress by documents and pages.
When generation is complete, click the Chronology tab to see the events.

Once a document has been processed, its row shows how many events it produced, for example 23 events created. You can click it to open the Chronology tab filtered to that document's events.

To remove a document from the chronology, untick it and click Remove on the confirmation. All of its events are deleted, including any you have edited or verified, and this cannot be undone. The document itself stays in the matter.

You can add documents to a generated chronology at any time. Tick the new documents and click Add to Chronology. Existing events, including any you have edited or verified, stay as they are. Events from the new documents are marked New, and any that repeat an existing event are grouped in Resolve duplicates.

Click to edit heading

Generation carries on if you close Chronology or LEAP. When you reopen the matter, a Generating... pill appears beside the Chronology logo until it has finished.

Viewing the Chronology

The Chronology tab lists the extracted events in three columns: Date, Description and Source. The Source column shows the document the event came from with a page reference.

Chronology Types

Chronology holds one set of events and presents it as four views, each selected from Chronology type and exportable on its own, so the same verified facts can be cut to suit a property, parenting or procedural task.

Master: includes every event. This is the default view.
Basic: the relationship history, such as dates of birth, cohabitation, marriage, children's births, separation and divorce.
Factual: the Basic events plus the substantive facts of the matter, such as care arrangements, property, finances and incidents.
Procedural: court events, filings and orders, including hearings, applications and affidavits filed, and each order made. Procedural events are marked with an orange rule on the left in every view.

Hearings are described in a consistent form: the court event, the judicial officer, and whether orders were made or judgment was reserved. Where orders were made, the description includes a summary with an Edit orders summary link beneath it; where judgment was reserved, an Add orders summary link lets you complete the entry once the judgment is delivered. Click the link to edit the summary in place.

Sorting, Searching and Filtering

Click a column heading to sort by it, and click again to reverse the order. There are three controls that can be used to narrow a chronology:

Search chronology finds events by any word in the date, description or source as you type.
Source shows only the events extracted from one document.
Chronology type switches between the four views described above.

While any of these is in force, a Filter applied banner names it, and Remove filter clears it.

Dates

Dates are kept as the documents express them. An event described as occurring "in or about March 2011" or "on or about 20 November 2025" keeps that wording in the Date column and is sorted in its place.

Wherever you type a date, whether editing an existing event or adding a new one, Chronology accepts:

Full dates: 01 01 2026, 01/01/2026, 01.01.2026, 1 January 2026, 1 Jan 2026
A month and year (January 2026), a year alone (2026), or a range (January 2026 - March 2026)
An estimate, by starting with Around, Approx, E or On or around, for example Around June 2026

If a date is entered in another format, a validation message lists the accepted formats.

Where an extracted date is too loose to be placed in order, such as "late 2010 or early 2011", it appears in red at the bottom of the table. Click into the date and rewrite it in one of the forms above, for example Around January 2011 or 2010 - 2011.

Click to edit heading

Fix red dates before exporting. In the Word document they lose the red colour and appear at the end of the table, after the most recent event.

Editing the Chronology

Extracted events are a starting point. Every date and description can be changed, events can be added or deleted, and each event's type can be altered. Changes save as you make them and are recorded in View history.

Editing an Event

Click into a date or description to edit it in place, or hover over the row and click the pencil. Click away to save.

The more actions menu on each row offers Chronology class, Mark as verified and Delete. Choose Chronology class to move the event to a different view.

After a change, an Undo button appears in the header. Click it to step back through the changes made in this session. Deletions cannot be undone.

Click to edit heading

Deleting an event is permanent. It cannot be undone, and although the event's details are recorded in View history, it cannot be restored from there.

Adding an Event

Add event lets you manually record an event the documents do not contain, such as a client's instructions or a date from a phone call. Enter a Date, a Description, a Source if you want one shown in the Source column, and choose a Class.

Click Add event and the event takes its place in the table.

The Date field accepts:

Full dates: 01 01 2026, 01/01/2026, 01.01.2026, 1 January 2026, 1 Jan 2026
A month and year (January 2026), a year alone (2026), or a range (January 2026 - March 2026)
An estimate, by starting with Around, Approx, E or On or around, for example Around June 2026

If a date is entered in another format, a validation message lists the accepted formats.

Bulk Select

Bulk select lets you act on multiple events at once. Toggle it on and a checkbox appears on each row, with a select all at the top of the column. A toolbar shows how many events are selected and the actions available: Mark as verified, Mark as unverified, Categorise and Delete. Each action applies to the whole selection as soon as it is clicked.

Click to edit heading

If Categorise is greyed out, it is likely one of the selected events is verified. Deselect it, or unverify it first.

Verifying Events

Verification records that an event has been checked against its source. It shows who checked it and when, and it locks the event so that nothing changes it afterwards, whether a later edit or a later document being added.

Marking an Event as Verified

The Solicitor to verify panel on the right of the table shows a Mark as verified button beside each event. Click it and the button changes to Verified with a green tick.

You can also verify from the more actions menu on a row, from the toolbar in Bulk select, or from the foot of the Source preview panel.

A verified event cannot be edited or have its type changed. To make a change, click Verified again, confirm the Mark as unverified? prompt, make the change, then verify the event again.

Click to edit heading

You can hover over the Verified badge to see who verified the event and when.

Source Preview

Source preview lets you check an event against the page it came from without leaving Chronology.

In the Source column, click the reference for the event you want to check. The page opens in a panel beside the table, with the passage the event came from highlighted.
Use the zoom controls at the top of the panel to enlarge the page if needed.
If the passage supports the event, click Mark as verified at the foot of the panel.
Click the X button at the top right of the panel to close the preview panel and return to the full table.

Resolving Duplicates

The same event is often described in several documents, and each description is extracted as its own row. When generation finishes, Chronology groups the rows it considers duplicates or related, marks each with a Duplicate pill, and shows the number of groups on Resolve duplicates.

To resolve duplicates:

Click Resolve duplicates, or click the Duplicate pill on an event.
Tick each version you want to keep. To combine details from several versions, tick one and click into its date or description to edit it.

To write a fresh version instead, click Add event.
Check the Keep button shows the number of versions you want to keep and delete, then click it and confirm. The next group opens.
To leave a group for later, click Decide later. Its rows keep their Duplicate pills.
Click Back to return to the previous group.

History

Every change to the chronology is recorded, with who made it and when. Click View history to see a list of changes, with the most recent appearing first.

The history covers actions such as;

Documents being added to or removed from the chronology.
Events edited, recategorised or deleted, with edits showing the previous and new values.
Events verified and unverified.

Click the Chronology tab to return to the table.

Export

Once the chronology has been checked, click Export in the top right and choose the view to export: Export Master chronology, Export Basic chronology, Export Procedural chronology or Export Factual chronology.

A Word document is generated with a Date, Description and Source table containing the events in that view. It is saved automatically to the matter correspondence, for example Master Chronology dated 14 September 2026, and opens in Word.

You can export as often as you like; each export is saved as a new document and the chronology itself is unchanged.

Click to edit heading

The exported document contains the events exactly as they appear in the view at the time of export. Resolve duplicates, and finish verifying before you export, and edit the Word document afterwards as you would any other.

Last Modified Date

7/10/2026 3:52 PM

Title

Chronology - Family Law

URL Name

Chronology-Family-Law-AU

Resolution