> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.rytz.com.au/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Stage Review
> One-card-at-a-time review of AI proposals about which stage of the court process each piece of evidence is most relevant to. Keyboard-driven triage.
import { Card, CardGroup, Steps, Step, Frame, Note, Tip, Warning } from '@mintlify/components'
**Stage Review** is the Evidence Portfolio sub-surface that turns "I have a vault full of evidence" into "I know exactly which evidence belongs at which point in my matter". It works by surfacing AI-generated proposals one at a time and letting you accept, change, skip, or reject each.
You'll find it at `app.rytz.com.au/evidence-portfolio/stage-review`.
## What it does
Every piece of evidence in the Portfolio has a potential **stage relevance** — the court stage where it would carry weight if produced. The seven stages map to the FCFCOA process (see the [Case Roadmap](/case-roadmap/overview) for the full process):
1. **Pre-action** — material that should sit in your s60I disclosure or your initial position
2. **Application** — exhibits to the Initiating Application or supporting affidavit
3. **First court event** — material the registrar may need on day one
4. **Interim hearing** — evidence relevant to interim parenting or property orders
5. **FDR / conciliation** — material to disclose at mediation or conciliation conference
6. **Trial preparation** — evidence-in-chief annexures, cross-examination material, expert briefings
7. **Final hearing** — what gets tendered or referenced at trial
Stage Review takes each piece of evidence in your Portfolio and proposes which stage(s) it most belongs in. You confirm, change, or reject. The decisions feed the [Court Readiness Matrix](/evidence/court-readiness-matrix), which shows your readiness percentage by stage.
## Why one-card-at-a-time
A vault of 200 evidence items can take hours to triage if presented as a single grid. Stage Review surfaces items one at a time so you can move fast — typically 30–60 seconds per item once you've found your rhythm.
The interface is keyboard-driven:
| Key | Action |
| ------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `A` | **Accept** — the AI's proposed stage(s) is correct, move to next |
| `C` | **Change** — open the stage selector to edit before saving |
| `S` | **Skip** — leave un-decided, come back later |
| `R` | **Reject** — this isn't relevant to any stage (informational only) |
| `←` `→` | Navigate between items |
| `?` | Show shortcuts panel |
Most users settle into a pattern where 70–80% of items are clear Accepts within 5 seconds, 15% need a Change (typically to add a stage the AI missed), and 5% are Rejects (genuinely not court-relevant).
## How the AI proposals are generated
The AI considers each item's:
* **Type** (photograph / correspondence / document / etc.)
* **Description and tags** (what you've written about it)
* **Source classification** (mine / other party / court / professional)
* **Date** (mapped against likely court timeline if known)
* **Content extraction** (for documents, the platform reads the text and identifies legal-relevance signals)
* **Cross-references** (other items already assigned to a stage that connect to this one)
The proposal is a probability distribution across the seven stages. The interface shows the top 1–2 stages and a confidence indicator. You see the AI's reasoning when you hover or click "Why this stage?".
The AI is a proposal-maker, not a decision-maker. It is right most of the time on routine items but it does not understand the specific shape of your matter. Any item you have particular feelings about — sensitive material, family-violence evidence, anything that needs human judgement — should be decided by you, not accepted blindly.
## When to use Stage Review
Three moments where Stage Review pays off:
You've been actively collecting evidence for several weeks. The Portfolio has dozens of new items. Stage Review is the cleanup pass — 20–30 minutes triages what you've gathered.
A first court event or interim hearing is 4–6 weeks out. Run Stage Review focused on items that look like they belong in that stage. The Court Readiness Matrix tells you how prepared you are.
A lawyer's first hour with you is more productive if your evidence is already triaged. Bring the Portfolio + Stage Review state to the consultation.
Once a month, walk through the Skipped items and decide. Skipped-then-forgotten is the most common cause of "wait, did we ever decide where this went?" mid-hearing.
## Resolving Skip → Decided
Items you Skip stay in the Portfolio but don't appear in the Court Readiness Matrix as decided. The Stage Review surface has a **Skipped** filter — switch to it whenever you have 10 minutes spare and walk through the backlog.
The platform never auto-resolves a Skip — that's deliberate. A wrong Accept silently feeds the readiness matrix with bad data. A Skip says clearly: "I haven't decided yet."
## Marking items as resolved
Stage Review writes decisions immediately — there is no "save batch" step. Each Accept / Change / Reject persists the moment you press the key.
When you press `A` (Accept), the item gets the AI's proposed stages and is marked **Resolved**. The Portfolio shows it with a green stage badge. Resolved items still appear in Stage Review when you re-open it (filtered out by default; toggle "Show resolved" to revisit).
## What happens to your decisions
Once an item has resolved stage(s), it appears in:
* **The Court Readiness Matrix** — counted toward the readiness percentage for that stage
* **Stage-specific bundles** — if you create a bundle for "Interim hearing", the platform offers a one-click "Include all evidence assigned to interim-hearing stage"
* **The Master Case File** — high-confidence stage-assigned evidence flows into the Master Case File's evidence matrix
* **The AI assistant** — when you ask the assistant a stage-specific question ("what evidence do I have for the first court event?"), it scopes to items resolved to that stage
## Common patterns
| Pattern | What it usually means |
| ---------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| AI proposes "Pre-action" for almost everything | Your items predate any court action — the matter is still pre-filing. Healthy. |
| AI proposes the same one stage for many items | The AI is anchoring on a tag or date pattern. Spot-check by clicking "Why this stage?" |
| You're rejecting many items | Either the items aren't well-described (re-tagging will help the AI), or you have a lot of personal-context material that isn't court-relevant. Both are normal. |
| AI proposes "Trial" for many items | If your matter isn't trial-bound, this is over-assignment. Walk through with `C` (Change) and reassign to earlier stages. |
## What's next
See your readiness percentage by stage as your Stage Review decisions accumulate.
Better-tagged inputs produce better Stage Review proposals. Tagging strategy guide.
Once items are stage-assigned, bundle creation becomes a one-click operation.
The seven FCFCOA stages, in detail, so you know what each one expects.