Exhibit numbering sheet template

Decide the shape of the identifier first. Numbers for one side and letters for the other is a long-standing convention; a prefixed number such as P-001 is easier to read aloud and harder to mishear across a courtroom. Either works as long as every person and every document uses the same one.

Size the ranges against the production, not against the exhibit list you have today. Count the documents you might conceivably use, double it, and allocate from there. Demonstratives deserve their own range because they arrive late and behave differently from documentary exhibits.

Give deposition exhibits a dedicated range when you intend to carry their original numbers into trial, and record in the Example column exactly how a carried-forward number is written, including the deponent's name. Then send the sheet to everyone who touches a file, including any outside copy or scanning vendor. See deposition exhibits for how that continuity is usually handled.

Several allocation patterns are in common use. A single sequential series across all parties, assigned in the order exhibits are marked, is normal in some courtrooms and the clerk keeps the master. Plaintiff numbers with defense letters is the pattern many practitioners learned first. Multi-party cases often prefix by party initial rather than role, and some judges want joint exhibits numbered first so stipulated documents are handled in one block at the start.

A few courts ask that exhibits be grouped by witness, which changes the arithmetic entirely because the allocation follows the witness order rather than the document set.

Which of these applies to you is a matter of local rules, the pretrial order and the judge's own practice, and it varies by jurisdiction. Confirm before you allocate rather than after, because the cost of being wrong is a renumbering job across the list, the index, the binders and the software.

Exhibit numbers in the app are free text. The default is a simple sequence of 001, 002 and onward, and any scheme you record on this sheet can be typed in instead, including A, B, A-1 or P-12. Set the scheme before you import, because renaming twenty exhibits one at a time is a chore even though the option is there in the context menu.

If you are preparing both sides of a binder set, or a version of the set for a second party, duplicate the trial and work in the copy. The duplicate carries its own exhibits and its own numbering, and the original stays untouched. Exhibit numbers also drive the on-screen labels in presentation mode and the exhibit switcher, so a scheme that reads clearly in the courtroom pays off every time you jump between documents.

One honest limit: the app will not allocate ranges for you and has no numbering report to print. This sheet is a planning document that lives outside the software.