Presenting messages in court

Exhibit labels, cover pages and page numbers for message evidence

Last reviewed 2026-10-17 · 3 official sources cited below

Labeling and numbering won’t win a case, but bad labeling can slow a hearing down and invite objections. Here’s what good practice looks like, with official examples.

Exhibit labels

Courts and lawyers use letters (Exhibit A, B, C), numbers (Exhibit 1, 2, 3), or party-specific schemes (Plaintiff’s Exhibit 1, or in England and Wales the witness’s initials plus a number). Use whatever your court or the other side already uses.

• In England and Wales, PD 32 says the first page of each exhibit should be marked with the exhibit mark referred to in the affidavit (para 11.3). Where an exhibit contains more than one document, a front page should list the documents it contains (para 13.3).
• In California, rule 3.1110(f) requires electronic exhibits to have electronic bookmarks to each exhibit, but not when they are submitted by a self-represented party.

TextExhibits prints your exhibit label large on the cover page and in the header of every page.

What to put on the cover page

• Case caption: court, case title, case number (if you have one).
• Exhibit label.
• What it is: “Transcript of WhatsApp messages between A and B”.
• Source file name, export date, and the file’s SHA-256 hash.
• Message count, date range, participants.
• Filters and redactions applied.

Page numbers

• Number every page, consecutively. California rule 3.1110(c): documents “must be consecutively paginated”, beginning with the first page and using only Arabic numerals.
• Use computer-generated numbering. Family Procedure Rules PD 27A says all pages in an e-bundle “must be numbered by computer-generated numbering, not by hand” (para 11.2(c)).
• “Page X of Y” shows at a glance whether a page is missing. TextExhibits uses it on every page.
• For productions with many documents, use Bates numbers as well.

Bundles have limits

PD 27A sets a default limit of 350 A4 pages for a family e-bundle. If a chat is huge, filter to the relevant period. The cover page records the filter, so it’s transparent.

Sources

1. Civil Procedure Rules, Practice Direction 32 — Evidence (exhibits, paras 11–15) (Ministry of Justice)
2. Family Procedure Rules, Practice Direction 27A — Court bundles (Ministry of Justice)
3. California Rules of Court, rule 3.1110 — General format (Judicial Branch of California)

Sources were opened and checked on 2026-10-17. Laws and rules change; always read the current version.