FoliohMy Attorney Asked for a Timeline of Events — Now What?
Take a breath. This request is good news: it means your attorney is preparing properly. It's also a billable-hours fork in the road. Hand over a clean timeline and your attorney starts working on strategy. Hand over a shoebox and your attorney — at $250 to $450 an hour — starts doing data entry.
Here's how to build the timeline they actually want, even if your case has been going on for years and you've documented nothing until today.
What they mean by "timeline"
A dated list of events that matter to the case, in chronological order, written in neutral language, each with its source. Not a narrative essay. Not a feelings journal. A sequence: date, event, proof.
Your attorney will use it to spot patterns, prepare questions, draft filings, and decide what evidence to chase. The faster they can scan it, the more of your retainer goes to lawyering.
Reconstructing the past
Start with anchors: court filings, the children's school calendar, holidays, medical appointments. Then mine your own records — text threads, email, photos (their timestamps are gold), bank statements, co-parenting app exports. Each artifact pins an event to a date.
Work backwards month by month. Mark anything you're unsure of as approximate rather than guessing precisely — a timeline with honest uncertainty is credible; one with confident wrong dates is a liability.
The format that works
One event per entry. Date, then two or three factual sentences, then the source. "14 March 2026 — Scheduled 6:00 PM exchange; other parent arrived 7:40 PM. Source: text thread, screenshot attached." That's it. Do that two hundred times and you have the most valuable document in your case file.
- Date first, unambiguous (14 March 2026, not 03/14)
- Facts only — what a camera would have seen
- Source attached or referenced for every entry
- Approximate dates marked as approximate
- No adjectives about character, ever
Keep it alive
The reconstruction is the hard part; maintenance is two minutes a day. Log events as they happen from now on, attach proof while you have it, and your timeline never goes stale. When your attorney asks for an update before the next hearing, you export — you don't rebuild.
Folioh exists for exactly this loop: capture an event in about a minute, attach the files, and the chronology and exhibit packet stay current on their own. The timeline your attorney asked for becomes a byproduct of keeping the record.
The attorney who asked for a timeline just told you exactly how to save money on your own case. Build it once, keep it current, and every future request — for a filing, a hearing, a mediation — is already answered.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Admissibility and procedure vary by jurisdiction; your attorney's guidance controls.