Summary

When preparing an electronic bundle, careful consideration should be taken with the structure as this determines how efficient the bundle will be and therefore impacts the effectiveness of the benefits of using an electronic system.

We've set out below our best practice guidance on the overall structure, bundle, tab and page number values to maximise efficiencies on the platform. 

Our Solution Operations team would be happy to discuss the best way to structure your bundle in line with any bespoke requirements.  

Overall Structure

The bundle structure is comprised of two elements, the folder system and the document pagination. In our experience, the greatest efficiencies are achieved when both elements are kept as simple as possible. 

  1. Folder System - All documents will be housed in a folder structure, based on the Bundle values assigned. Folders and subfolders can be used for grouping and categorising the documents as required. 
    1. For example, documents can simply be housed in a top level folder, Bundle A - Pleadings, Bundle B - Witness Statements etc. Further subfolders can be used to group the documents, Bundle B - Witness Statements/B1 - Claimant and Bundle B - Witness Statements/B2 - Defendant.
    2. Whilst we can generally implement folder structures as needed, we would advise avoiding overly complex / deep subfolders structures as this requires more clicks from the user to navigate through.
  2. Document Pagination - Parties would need to use the document pagination when referencing for the purposes of displaying documents in the hearing room (and can also be used for hyperlinking). It should therefore be kept as simple as possible to yield the greatest efficiencies from our system. 
    1. Our standard and recommended approach is to format pagination as Bundle/Tab/Page, with all documents paginated internally (each document starting at page 1). The pagination stamp is generated from the metadata applied to the documents and is automatically applied to the bottom right of each page upon upload.

Bundle Values

As the bundle values generally indicate where the documents should be housed, they can be applied in various ways inline with the folder structures. We've set out a couple of popular and effective approaches below: 

  1. Document Type Split - Group documents within a bundle based on type.  
    1. For example, all witness statements can be grouped in bundle C, further divided into two sub-folders with the bundle value applied as C1 for the claimant documents and C2 for the defendant documents.
  2. Bundle Management Split - Divide a large bundle into smaller, more manageable sub-folders. We generally recommend volumizing bundles which contain over 1,000 documents into sub-bundles of around 500 documents to allow for optimal performance on the platform. 
    1. For example, if a chronological bundle (bundle D) consists of 2,000 documents, it can be split into four sub-bundles D1 to D4, with each having their own sub-folder.

Tab Values

As the tab value indicates the order of the documents, each document should be assigned a numerical value.

Tab values should be kept as simple as possible to ensure the overall pagination value is easy to use, the first document within each bundle or sub-bundle should start at 1 and increase sequentially throughout the folder. 

We'd advise using numerically suffixed tabs only when inserting new documents into an existing bundle. If you did have a need for grouping related documents or keeping translations with the original language documents, please contact the Solution Operations team for further guidance tailored to your requirements. 

More information on tab values for inserts can be found here.

Page Numbering

As the page numbers indicate the physical PDF page, they are automatically assigned and restart from 1 within each document.

Page numbers should be kept as simple as possible to allow for efficient referencing and whilst historically, page numbers have run sequentially across a bundle to assist with navigating hard copy bundles, we'd suggest this is no longer required in an electronic hearing bundle given that the tab value acts as the sequential numbering element of the pagination. 

If the parties did need to produce hardcopies, we'd be happy to advise on how these can be structured and we can facilitate their production.

More information on page numbering can be found here.