Glossary
Exhibit number
Exhibit number
An exhibit number is the identifier that belongs to one exhibit for the life of a proceeding. Despite the name it need not be a number: letters, prefixed numbers such as P-001 or D-14, and compound forms such as A-1 for a subpart are all in ordinary use. What matters is that it is unique within the proceeding and that every list, binder, transcript and screen uses the same form of it.
Who assigns it varies. Parties often allocate their own ranges by agreement or under a pretrial order, and in some courtrooms the clerk assigns numbers in the order exhibits are marked. Conventions also vary by jurisdiction, with numbers for the plaintiff and letters for the defendant being one long-standing pattern among several. Once a number has appeared in a letter, a deposition or a filing, changing it costs more than living with it.
Example
Smith v. Jones allocated ranges before anyone renamed a file: 001 to 199 for plaintiff documents with the prefix P, 200 to 299 for plaintiff demonstratives as PD, 300 to 499 for defendant documents as D, and 550 to 599 for joint exhibits as J. The repair estimate from Cedar Ridge Restoration became P-007, written as 007 on the list and read aloud as Plaintiff's 007. The gaps in each range meant that a late supplemental estimate could be added as P-009 without touching anything already exchanged.
Practical context
Numbering is the cheapest thing to get right early and one of the most expensive to change late. It determines the sort order of your folders, the tab order of the binders, the order a witness sees documents, and how quickly anybody can find Exhibit 006 while a judge waits.
Two habits help: pad numbers so they sort correctly as text, and leave gaps. The reasoning is in how to number trial exhibits, and the allocation itself belongs on an exhibit numbering sheet.
In Exhibit Room
The exhibit number is a field on every exhibit in the app. The default is a plain sequence beginning at 001, and any scheme can be typed in instead, including A, B, A-1 or P-12, so the software does not push you toward a particular convention.
The number is what appears on screen in presentation mode, unless you hide the overlay in Settings, and it is what you type into the exhibit switcher to jump straight to a document. Numbers can be changed later from the context menu, but doing so one exhibit at a time is slow, so set the scheme before importing. See keyboard navigation for the switcher.
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