Taking Bulk Actions on More Than 1,000 Files in Advanced Search

Last updated: October 9, 2026

In this article: How to apply bulk actions — such as assigning a reviewer or adding a tag — across more than 1,000 documents at once.

When running a search in Phaselaw, results are capped at 1,000 documents at a time. If your search returns more than 1,000 results, you'll need to apply your bulk action in batches. Here's how to do it efficiently.

How to apply a bulk action across more than 1,000 files

The approach is to apply your action to the first 1,000 results, then use that action as a filter to exclude those documents from your next search — repeating until all documents have been actioned.

Using out of scope as an example:

  1. Run your search in Advanced Search

  2. Click Select All to select the 1,000 results shown

  1. Mark all selected documents as Out of Scope

  2. Re-run the same search, but this time add an additional filter to exclude documents you've already actioned — for example, add a rule where Status is not Out of Scope

  3. Click Select All again and repeat the bulk action on the next batch

  4. Keep repeating until the search returns zero results — at which point all documents have been actioned

Other bulk actions this works for

The same approach works for any bulk action, not just for Out of Scope. For example:

  • Tagging — apply a tag to the first batch, then filter for documents without that tag to find the remainder

  • Assigning a reviewer: assign the first batch, then filter where Reviewer is not [name] to find the rest.