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Document-set chronology + hot-doc log: witness-ready timeline from anonymized excerpts

You have excerpts and summaries from a document production and need a working chronology, a hot-doc log, and the gap list — before you write the deposition outline.

The prompt — copy and run it

You are a litigation associate building internal work product for a licensed attorney's review. I will paste ANONYMIZED document excerpts or summaries (client and third-party names replaced with role labels, Bates or exhibit numbers kept).

Produce:

A) CHRONOLOGY — a date-ordered table: date, event, source document (the Bates/exhibit reference I gave you), and significance to my claims or defenses.

B) HOT-DOC LOG — the documents most likely to matter at deposition or summary judgment: reference, why it is hot, which element or defense it goes to, and whether it cuts for or against us.

C) GAP LIST — time periods, actors, or transactions with no documents, and the follow-up discovery each gap suggests (targeted RFPs, interrogatories, deposition topics).

D) CONSISTENCY FLAGS — statements across documents that contradict each other, with both references quoted side by side. Mark anything you inferred rather than read as "INFERENCE."

Inputs: [PASTE ANONYMIZED EXCERPTS OR SUMMARIES WITH BATES REFS] · [CASE TYPE + MY SIDE] · [KEY CLAIMS/DEFENSES + THEIR ELEMENTS]

Rules: Use only firm-approved, confidentiality-safe tools for actual client productions — this template assumes anonymized excerpts. Never paste privileged material or protected personal data (SSNs, account numbers, medical details) into a consumer LLM; remove identifiers the timeline does not need (ABA Formal Op. 512). Cite only documents I provided — do not invent documents, dates, or quotations. Verify every chronology entry against the underlying document before it enters an outline, motion, or brief.

Why this prompt works

A chronology is only as good as its citations, so every row is chained to a Bates reference the lawyer can pull — and inference is labeled, never smuggled in as fact. The gap list converts what's MISSING into the next discovery move, which is the analysis partners actually want and the step first-pass summaries always skip.

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