Acrobat for Legal Professionals

September 23, 2006

Acrobat 8 New Features: Bates Numbering

I like to think of Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional as the “legal release” of Acrobat. Version 8 adds features that are important to the legal industry. Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a look at some of these new legal-specific features.

In this article, we’ll examine the new Bates Numbering feature.

What is Bates Numbering

Law firms and the courts have unique numbering needs when sharing discovery documents. Counsels, opposing counsel and the courts have the need to utilize a common numbering system when referring to documents.

For example, imagine a case involving 350, 2-4 page Word files and a banker’s box containing 5000 pages of printed documents, papers and receipts. How can all the parties easily refer to one of the Word files or a single receipt from the box?

The Bates Company—about 1865—invented an automatic stamping machine that numbered progressively. Each time the machine was pressed down onto a sheet of paper, a rotating wheel incremented by one. Pages were numbered using a six-digit sequence. For example, page 921 in a document set would be 000921. Courts and law firms quickly adopted this system which is commonly referred to as Bates Numbering.

Document sets may also be given a unique set numbers or prefixes which might include a set number, case number, firm name, etc. For example, all receipts might be treated separately and grouped into sets of 500 pages.

To refer to the 1132nd receipt, we might use the prefix:
   Jones Receipts Set 3: 001132

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