Glossary
Trial exhibit
Trial exhibit
A trial exhibit is an item a party intends to use at trial, which has been placed on that party's exhibit list, given a number under the numbering scheme the case is using, and disclosed to the other side under the pretrial order. The label describes a stage and a process, not a kind of document: the same invoice can be a deposition exhibit in March and a trial exhibit in October.
What separates a trial exhibit from other exhibits is mostly the disclosure machinery around it. Exchange deadlines, objection deadlines, the form of the list and whether it is filed all come from the pretrial order, the local rules or the judge's own practice, and all of them vary by court and jurisdiction. Some courts require exhibits to be pre-marked; others mark them as they are used. Read your order rather than reasoning from the last case.
Example
Jones Contracting produced invoice No. 4471 in discovery as JONES000512 to JONES000513. Counsel used it at the deposition of Maria Vela, where the reporter marked it Vela Exhibit 4. Eight months later it went onto the plaintiff's pretrial exhibit list as Exhibit 005, described as Invoice No. 4471, Jones Contracting, 2025-06-30, with Maria Vela named as the sponsoring witness. At that point it became a trial exhibit: numbered, listed, exchanged and ready to be offered.
Practical context
Trial exhibits behave like a set rather than a pile. They are numbered as a block, exchanged as a block, copied as a block for the bench and the witness, and loaded onto whatever will display them. Work done on one document out of sequence tends to be work done twice.
The usual rhythm is to freeze the list, finalize one PDF per exhibit, then prepare copies and presentation together. How to prepare exhibits for trial covers the substance and the prep timeline covers the calendar.
In Exhibit Room
A trial in Exhibit Room is a container with a case name, an optional case number, court and parties, holding the exhibit set for that matter. Trials can be renamed, duplicated and searched, which makes it practical to keep a separate trial for a second party's set or for a hearing that uses a subset.
When the set is final, export the whole trial, including its PDFs and annotations, to a single .exhibitroom file and open it on a second computer. A license covers two computers, so the spare machine can hold a working copy; see trial backup and transfer.
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