Choose the right view of the chronology
The timeline in the linear, relative or table view that suits the task, with display settings set.
Screenshots are taken from the app on every release. Updated 13 October 2026.
The same chronology gets read, checked and analysed in different ways over the life of a dispute. Reading the story before a client call is not the same job as checking 300 dates against the bundle, or working out how long the other side sat on a notice. Each task has a view that suits it.
The question that decides it: are you reading the story, looking at the timing, or checking the detail?
Switch the view
Open the timeline. The switcher at the top of the timeline has three views: Linear, Relative and Table.
Choose Linear to read the chronology as a story. The events follow each other in date order, evenly spaced, so a dense week and a quiet year take up the same room. This is the view for walking someone through what happened.
Choose Relative to see the timing. Each event sits at its date on a scale, so the reader sees how close together things happened and where nothing did. Swimlanes and the zoom between years and hours are in this view; see see the timing of the dispute and show each party's side in swimlanes.
Choose Table to check and correct. Each event is a row, with its dates, title, description, notes, documents, people and tags in columns, so you can go through the chronology line by line and change many events at once.
The view only changes how the events are drawn. The events themselves stay as they are, and a filter you have set stays on when you switch.
Which view for which task
| The task | View |
|---|---|
| Reading the chronology before a meeting or a hearing | Linear |
| Telling the story to a client or to counsel on screen | Linear |
| Showing delay, gaps, or what happened in the same week | Relative |
| Setting out each party's events side by side | Relative, with swimlanes |
| Checking dates and titles against the documents | Table |
| Adding tags, people or documents to many events | Table |
Set the display
Click Settings (the cog in the toolbar). What you can change depends on the view you are in.
- Compact mode (linear and relative views) shows each event as a short card with its title and tags, and leaves the description, people and documents off the card. Hover over the information icon on a card to read the whole event. Use it when the chronology is long and you need to see more of it at once. A PDF export follows this setting.
- Collapse timeline (linear view) brings events that share a date together at one point on the line, so a day with five letters takes one place instead of five. Switch it off again with Expand timeline.
- Placement of events (relative view) puts the event cards Above or Below the date line, or lets Juristic choose with Auto.
- Row colours (table view) colours each row in its event's background and text colours, so colour-coded events stand out in the table too.
- The date format and the size of the dates are the two drop-downs in the same menu (the size is not used in the table view). Choose the format the reader expects.
Collapse, placement, date format and date size are saved with the timeline, so they change it for everyone who opens it. That is why only people who can edit the timeline can change them.
Tips from practice
- The timeline remembers your view. It opens in the view you chose last in this browser. Until you have chosen one, it opens in your firm's default view, which your admins set; see give timelines the firm's look.
- Check in the table, present in the timeline. Correct dates and titles in Table, then switch back to Linear or Relative to see the result. Nothing is lost between views.
- The view does not decide the export. When you export, you choose the layout again, so you can work in the table and still send a linear or relative PDF; see present the case chronology.
Next: tag events by issue, so you can see which events go to which part of the case.