![]() Even in our personal lives, PDFs are ubiquitous: appliance instruction manuals, new car brochures, bank statements, etc. The PDF format’s great attraction is that it reproduces electronically exactly what a printed document looks like. And it does so across any device – smartphone, iPad, computer, TV, etc. There, the court required the defendant to fully review its production for responsiveness and to uniquely identify every file with a Bates number.By Jeffrey Schoenberger, Affinity ConsultingĪs a legal professional, you have encountered your fair share of PDF files and assumably created more than a few. Some of those file were apparently “a mass of incomprehensible special characters,” as the defendant failed to review those files for responsiveness. 8, 2018), the defendant produced around 575,000 documents in native format, without Bates numbers. However, also unlike Bates numbers, hash values are automatically generated any modification to the underlying file also changes the assigned hash value, making changes easy to spot.Įvolution notwithstanding, courts may take a dim view of litigants that ignore Bates numbering. Unlike Bates numbers, hash values are non-consecutive. To remedy these concerns, some suggest replacing Bates numbers with hash values, unique file name identifiers that are commonly 32 or 40 digits. Similarly, files like Excel spreadsheets aren’t necessarily formatted for or conducive to pagination. For example, the contents of native-format files cannot readily be Bates numbered. Because Bates numbering assumes a page-based printed production, it adds costly steps to ediscovery: scanning, imaging, and then sequentially numbering files that already exist in a usable, identifiable form. Many legal technology companies and ediscovery thought leaders are urging the industry to move away from Bates numbering. Ediscovery software can then auto-paginate that file information, marking each page or image with a unique identifier. With digital files, the standard approach to Bates numbering requires conversion of file information to PDF or TIFF image files. Either way, Bates numbering is essentially a paper-based method, most useful for printed productions or page-based images. It may be purely numeric or alphanumeric. While the original Bates stamps only used numbers (up to a maximum of 9999), there is no set format for Bates numbering. Now that most discovery is not paper-based but instead involves electronically stored information (ESI), Bates numbering is evolving to meet the needs of that media. ![]() This sequential-numbering stamp was used to manually mark each page in a record. ![]() It gained its name from the Bates Automatic Numbering-Machine, patented in the 1890s by Edwin G. Bates numbering is also used in medical and business records, where it may or may not include labels for the date and time of a page’s creation.īates numbering has been used for well over a century. Bates numbers offer a way to specifically identify each individual page of a production.īates numbering - also known as Bates stamping or Bates labeling - is the process of assigning a unique, sequential identification number to each page, file, or image in a voluminous production. While that page may have an “11” in the lower right-hand corner, 782 other pages may be similarly marked. ![]() In a modest 30,000-page ediscovery production, in which 5,000 pages are tables, lawyers and courts need a way to refer to the exact table found on the eleventh page of the defendant’s eighteenth production. ![]()
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