Every page produced in litigation gets a name it will keep for the life of the case: ACME-000417. When a deposition refers to it, a brief cites it, or a judge asks for it, that label is how everyone finds the same page. That is Bates numbering, and it has rules that ordinary page numbering does not.
The rules
- Unique. No two pages in a production share a number. Ever.
- Sequential and continuous. Numbers increase by one, page by page, through every document in the production — and through every batch. The second production picks up exactly where the first stopped.
- Prefixed. A short code identifies the producing party or the matter: ACME, DEF, SMITH-. Agreed with the other side before anything is stamped.
- Zero-padded. ACME-000417, not ACME-417, so numbers sort correctly as text and the format never changes as the count grows. Six digits is conventional.
- On every page. Including cover sheets, blanks and the backs of two-sided scans if they were produced.
- Legible and out of the way. Usually the bottom-right corner, small, in a margin the content does not use.
Break continuity — restart at 1 for a new batch, skip a range, produce a duplicate — and the production is challenged. The rules exist because the labels are evidence.
Doing it on your own machine
Discovery documents are, by definition, the ones with the highest stakes for confidentiality: privileged communications, personal data, trade secrets. Uploading them to a stamping website means a third party holds an unredacted copy of a production, however briefly.
Header, footer & Bates numbers applies the stamps inside your browser. The document is read into memory, the labels are drawn into each page’s content, and the result is saved locally — nothing is transmitted.
What the tool gives you
- A prefix and six digits. You type the prefix; the number after it is zero-padded to six digits, as in ACME-000417, and a number that outgrows six digits is printed in full.
- One continuous run. Every file you add together is numbered in the order you add them, and the result reports the first and last number.
- A fixed place. The bottom right of every page, in 9-point type about 13 mm in from the edge of the visible page. Position and size are not settings. If you write {bates} into the Header or Footer box, the number goes inside that centred line instead.
- Tokens for the page number and the running number: with the Bates prefix set to ACME-, a footer of {bates} reads ACME-000001, alongside a header of Page {page} of {pages}. {date} and {filename} work too.
Two constraints worth knowing: a prefix outside English and Western European letters is drawn as a picture, so it prints but cannot be searched; and the stamp is placed relative to the visible page area, so on a scan whose page box starts off the corner the margin is measured from where the page actually shows.
Step by step for a scanned production
- Prepare the scans. Auto crop removes scanner borders, but it leaves only about 2 mm around the content, while the stamp sits about 13 mm in from the corner. On a trimmed page the number can land on the last line of text, so trim only if you will check the corner of every page.
- OCR with OCR PDF if the production must be searchable — most protocols require it.
- Open Header, footer & Bates numbers and add every file of the production together, in order. Under Bates numbering, enter the agreed prefix. Numbering always starts at 000001.
- Every page gets a number, so take out a privilege log or cover sheet that must not be stamped before you start.
- Preview the first, a middle and the last page. Confirm the number sequence reads correctly and does not overlap content.
- Save. Record the range — first and last number, and the batch — in your production log.
- Protect PDF if the production is delivered encrypted, or Flatten first if it carries annotations.
The Prepare a scanned contract for filing workflow runs this sequence — trim, recognise, number, protect — passing the file between tools without re-selecting it.
Checks before you produce
- First page, last page: does the number match the log?
- Any page where the stamp collides with content? The position and size are fixed, so the stamp cannot be moved off it. Note those pages and check what your protocol allows.
- Total pages equals last number minus first number plus one? If not, something was skipped or doubled.