Show each party's side in swimlanes
A relative timeline with one named, coloured lane per party and every event in its lane.
Screenshots are taken from the app on every release. Updated 2 November 2026.
Read the transcript
You have built the chronology of the dispute. Now it has to work for someone who was not in the documents with you.
In the Linear view, the events follow each other in date order, evenly spaced, so you can walk the client through what happened.
Switch to Relative, and each event sits at its date on a scale. The reader sees how close together things happened, and where nothing did.
Swimlanes give each party a lane of its own: the claimant above the date line, the respondent and the court below it.
When it is ready, click Export, choose PDF, and pick the layout. A relative timeline suits a client meeting.
Tick the events that belong in this version, check the preview, and click Download. One timeline, with a version for every reader.
The whole case on one page, for the client, counsel or the court.
Who did what, and when, is often the heart of the case. Give each party its own lane on the timeline (the claimant, the respondent, the court) and the chronology shows it at a glance: the claimant's letters stacking up while the respondent's lane stays empty, or the court's directions landing between the parties' steps.
Swimlanes belong to the relative view, where every event sits at its real date. Two questions decide how you set them up. What divides the facts in this case? Usually the parties, sometimes workstreams, entities in a group or jurisdictions. Where are those divisions recorded? Events already tagged or saved as stories fill each lane in one step. If the chronology is still in Excel, a party or workstream column can put each row into its lane during import.
Bring the lanes in from Excel
If the client's spreadsheet already has a column naming the party or workstream for each event, map it to Swimlane in Import spreadsheet. Each event goes into the lane named in its cell, and lanes that do not exist yet are created. See import an existing chronology from Word or Excel for the upload and mapping steps, then choose Relative to arrange the lanes.
Add the lanes
Open the timeline and choose Relative in the view switcher in the toolbar.
Click Add swimlane in the toolbar on the left. The new lane appears above the date line, numbered and in a colour of its own. To add a lane below the line instead, right-click an empty part of the timeline below the line and choose Add swimlane.
Hover the lane's title and click Edit. Give the lane a Name ("Claimant", "Respondent", "Court") and pick its Colour. The slider for transparency in the colour picker decides how strongly the lane shows: a pale lane keeps the events easy to read, a stronger one makes the parties easy to tell apart on a projector.
Under Title position, choose whether the name sits at the top, the middle or the bottom of the lane, and set its Size. Turn on Show full title if a long name is cut short.
Fill a lane in one step
If the events are already tagged by party, or you have a story for each party, there is no need to place them one at a time.
- By tag. In the lane's Edit panel, choose the party's tag under Tag. Every event with that tag moves into the lane, and a lane that still has its number for a name takes the tag's name. When more events have been tagged since, hover the lane and click Add by tag to bring them in too.
- By story. Select the party's story in the story tabs under the toolbar, then hover the lane and click Add by story: every event in the story moves into the lane. With All events showing, Add by story lets you choose which story to take.
If some of the tagged events also carry the tag of another lane, Juristic asks before moving them (Swimlane Tagging Conflict). Click Confirm to move them into this lane, or Cancel to leave the lane and the events as they were.
Place single events
Hover the event and click Placement.
Pick the lane in the Select Swimlane field. The list shows each lane with whether it sits above or below the date line.
Clear the field to take the event out of the lane again. Without a lane, Auto, Above and Below decide which side of the date line the event sits on.
Arrange the lanes
- Hover a lane's title and use Move up and Move down to change the order of the lanes on that side of the line.
- Move below and Move above put the lane on the other side of the date line. With the claimant's lanes above the line and the respondent's below, the two sides face each other across the dates.
- Delete removes the lane for everyone on the timeline, once you confirm. The events in it are kept and leave the lane.
Make the lanes clear for the reader
Before a client call or a hearing, decide whether the coloured bands alone separate the parties clearly, or whether an outline helps the reader follow each lane.
In Relative, click Settings (the cog in the toolbar).
Switch Show grid off for a clearer background when presenting. Turn it on again when you want the grid while arranging events. PDFs and snippets leave the grid out either way.
Choose a style from Swimlane borders. It applies to every lane on this timeline, rather than to one party's lane.
What the reader needs Choose Coloured bands without outlines No border, which keeps each lane's colour fill A continuous outline to follow across the chronology Solid A different outline treatment to suit the presentation Dashed, Dotted or Double, using the line samples to choose
Grid visibility and the border style are saved with the timeline and shared live with everyone viewing it. Only people who can edit the timeline can change them. A relative PDF uses the chosen border style too.
Tips from practice
- Tag first, lanes second. Tagging each event with its party pays off twice: the lane fills from the tag, and the same tag filters the chronology for a story or an export.
- Give the court or tribunal a lane of its own. Directions, hearings and deadlines read best apart from what the parties did, and the lane shows at once whether a party acted before or after the court's order.
- Check the outlines on the presentation screen. A relative timeline exports to PDF as one page, with the lanes, colours and chosen border style. Set Empty swimlanes to Remove in the export to leave out lanes with none of the chosen events, so the rest prints larger.
Not tagged yet? Start with tag events by issue. To put the lanes in front of the client, see make a one-page overview of the dispute.