Cecilia Q&A

Cecilia Q&A can answer natural language questions to get factual answers about the documents in your Ediscovery database.  Q&A uses generative AI and DISCO’s proprietary search and natural language processing technologies to help you quickly understand the facts contained within documents and ultimately find relevant evidence faster. Cecilia Q&A includes unlimited access to Cecilia doc summaries and Cecilia Q&A (single-doc). 

Cecilia Q&A is available for US and EU-hosted Ediscovery databases.

Use of Cecilia Q&A is subject to the supplementary terms at https://csdisco.com/legal/ai-supplementary-terms.

 

Cecilia Q&A and Role Permissions

1. Access to Cecilia Q&A via Custom Roles can be controlled in Feature Permissions. To grant access to the feature, make sure that all of the following are checked on under Review Team > Roles > Feature Permissions > EXPLORE:
   • Cecilia AI
   • Search & Review > Active Review 
   • Search & Review > ECA
     

Admin and Reviewer roles will always have Cecilia Q&A enabled, while Restricted Reviewers do not.

Note: If a custom role is limited in which documents and/or data space that they can view by an Admin, and Cecilia Q&A is enabled for this custom role, Cecilia Q&A will only take into consideration the documents that the custom role has at least View-access to when generating its response!

Ask Cecilia fact questions about the documents in your database

1. Open Cecilia Q&A by clicking this button on the top right corner of your DISCO Ediscovery database, underneath the search bar:
   
   
   
2. Ask Cecilia Q&A questions by typing them into this box and pressing Enter or clicking the “Send” button:
   
   
   
3. Cecilia Q&A is best at answering fact questions about the documents in your database. Open-ended investigative questions or specific factual questions are best, such as:
   
   • Where/what/who was [custodian]? 
   • Why did [event] happen?
   • What were key events during [date range]?
   • What did [custodian] do?
   • Is there evidence of [x]?
   • Was [custodian] involved with [event/action/etc.]?
   • What is a [legal concept/phrase/term/acronym/etc.]?
4. Cecilia Q&A is not designed as a replacement for search or filters, so we do not recommend asking questions like this:
   • Command Lines
     1. Show me all documents between [dd/mm/yyyy] and [dd/mm/yyyy].
     2. Show me all documents till [dd/mm/yyyy] date.
     3. Show me all documents containing “George Washington”
   • Aggregations
     
     1. How many contracts are in this database?
     2. How many documents are associated with [custodian]?
     3. Show me all documents related to accounting fraud. (Better: Did [entity] commit accounting fraud?)
     4. Show me all tax returns from the year 2017. (Better: Did [entity] file taxes in 2017?)
     5. Summarize this document
5. Cecilia is primarily optimized and designed to work with English-language documents. If you want to ensure that Cecilia is able to search against foreign language documents, this will require the English-translated text to be appended to the Text tab via overlay. This will ensure that the English-translated text of these foreign language documents is indexed by Cecilia Q&A.
6. Cecilia Q&A uses prior conversation context to answer follow-up questions. Starting 9/22/2025, questions asked in Cecilia Q&A databases allow users to ask follow-up questions without having to restate references to prior questions in your thread. For example, you would be able to ask the following question chain without having to restate "Ken Lay" each time:

   • Who was Ken Lay?

   • Was he the CEO of Enron?

   • Did he commit fraud?

   • Was he involved with Raptor?"

7. In order to force reset Cecilia Q&A's awareness/knowledge of prior questions and answers when answering subsequent questions (eg. if you would like to pursue a new line of questioning, etc.), you can reset Cecilia Q&A's memory by clicking the "..." button at the top of the interface and then clicking "Clear memory". Note: Clearing the chat history will also clear Cecilia's memory.
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Ask Cecilia questions about specific documents

Cecilia Q&A can focus to a subset of documents using the power of search. Use this feature to get insights into documents that match your criteria, such as those tagged Hot, a particular custodian, and much more. You can scope Cecilia Q&A to any amount of documents in your database.

In order to scope to a particular document set:

1. Enter your query into the search bar and submit the search.

2. Click the arrow picker next to Scoped to all documents and select Scoped to search manually.

3. Click Set current search as scope in order to scope Cecilia’s answer to only the documents returned by your search query. Cecilia Q&A will display the number of documents that are set in scope in parentheses.

4. Enter your question into the “Ask Cecilia” text box. Cecilia Q&A will now base its answer only on the documents set in your search scope above.

5. You can easily switch between scoping to all of the documents in your database and your search scope by clicking the arrow below the “Ask Cecilia” text box and selecting your desired scope state.

6. You can also submit to search the scope states associated with your previously asked questions by clicking the button in the top right area of a question.

 

 

Review the cited sources to evaluate Cecilia Q&A's answers

1. Cecilia Q&A cites its sources when it answers a question. You can review the documents on which its answer was based on to determine its accuracy.
2. Cecilia Q&A will cite the sources that it uses 1) inline in the answer and 2) towards the bottom of the answer.
   • The sources used inline in the answer will also be collected towards the bottom of the answer in the "Direct sources" section. Sources that Cecilia doesn't directly use in the answer but still thinks are still relevant will be collected in the "Related excerpts" section.
     
     
     
     
     
3. To add all the Direct sources or Related excerpts cited by Cecilia Q&A to your search bar, click the magnifying glass on the bottom right of the answer. 
   
   
   
4. To open only the Direct sources or Related excerpts for a particular answer, click the applicable dropdown. When expanded, Direct sources will appear in the order that they are numbered in Cecilia's answer. When expanded, Relevant excerpts will appear ranked in priority order from most to least relevant. 
   
   
   
   
5. An excerpt of the text of the document is listed followed by a link to the document (e.g., “From Document ID 95638”). Where multiple documents have the same excerpt, they are listed together as one document (e.g., “Excerpt from 5 documents”).

6. Click one or more excerpts to add the cited documents to your search bar. 

• Note: If an underlying document text has OCR errors, the excerpts that Cecilia cites will reflect those errors.

7. Remember to clear your search from the search bar once you are done evaluating the sources.

 

Jump to the relevant excerpt when reviewing cited sources

1. After adding some cited sources to your search bar, click Search to perform the search. Cited documents may be in either the Active Review or ECA data space, so make sure both are selected to see all results.
   
   
2. Cecilia Q&A's excerpt will appear as a highlighted document hit in the document.
   
3. To jump directly to the excerpt, use the Jumper in the top right of the document viewer. 
   • Note: You can unselect everything except “Search hits”, then click “>” to skip directly to the Cecilia Q&A excerpt.
     

Bookmark messages in Cecilia Q&A

1. Bookmark messages in Cecilia Q&A in order to save important messages for later reference. Simply click the ‘bookmark’ icon within a Cecilia Q&A message
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2. Filter your Cecilia Q&A feed by "Bookmarked messages" in order to quickly find what you need
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3. The new export flow also allows you to export only your bookmarked messages
   
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Quickly copy an answer from Cecilia Q&A

1. To quickly copy a Cecilia Q&A question and answer to your clipboard – with or without the full citations – for formatted use in emails, briefs, memos, and more, click the following copy button at the bottom of an answer
   
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2. Clicking the copy button will expose two options: Copy with citations and Copy without citations
   • Copy with citations will copy a Cecilia Q&A question and answer along with the full underlying text of the citations used for the response from the underlying documents – including both Direct sources and Related excerpts – to the clipboard. Search URL's for the underlying citations for both Direct sources and Related excerpts are also included
   • Copy without citations will only copy a Cecilia Q&A question and answer to the clipboard. Search URL's for the underlying citations for only Direct sources are also included

Export or clear chat data from Cecilia Q&A

1. To download chat data from Cecilia Q&A, click the “...” to the right of Cecilia’s pane and click “Export chat data”.
   • You can export chat data “With excerpts,” which will also include links to cited documents. 
   • Export chat data “Without excerpts” to download a transcript of just questions and answers without excerpts or document links. 
     
     
     

2. Cecilia Q&A saves the last 100 questions you have asked along with the answers. Therefore, you can export up to 100 answers to 100 questions.
   
   
3. To clear chat data from Cecilia Q&A, click the “...” to the right of Cecilia Q&A's pane and choose “Clear chat history”, then confirm that you want to delete.
   • Once cleared, the history is permanently removed from the chat interface.
     

Leave feedback to help us improve Cecilia Q&A!

1. Clicking the “...” at the bottom of an answer allows you to rate Cecilia’s response. This provides us with valuable feedback to improve Cecilia Q&A.
   
   
2. You can also leave feedback relative to the feature by clicking the “Leave feedback” text in the bottom right corner.