How to Build an Exhibit Package: Bates Numbers, a Clickable Index & Filing Preflight

What's actually different here

A genuine zero-upload, browser-only mode for merging and Bates-numbering exhibits isn't a new idea — Exhibit Flow, E-Ring Binder, and Final Exhibits 2 all market local-only processing too. If you've looked at exhibit software before, "your files never leave your browser" on its own won't tell you much you didn't already expect.

What none of those tools do is offer that local mode alongside a genuinely full-featured server mode, in the same wizard, with divider pages, a case caption, a clickable index, a CSV exhibit log, and an integrated Filing Preflight check for things like embedded JavaScript, suspected unapplied redactions, and leftover metadata. You pick per filing, not per product. Sensitive documents you'd rather not upload anywhere go through Local Mode; the same wizard builds a complete, indexed filing package the moment you actually need one.

This post walks the real workflow end to end, with real screenshots and a real Filing Preflight finding, so you can see exactly what you'd be sending a client or a court before you try it yourself.

Step 1: Add and Arrange Your Exhibits

Upload every document that belongs in the production. Each one gets a color-coded row you can drag to reorder — that order becomes the merge order, the Bates sequence, and (in Full Mode) the order exhibits appear in the index. Pick a label style — letters (A, B, C…) or numbers (1, 2, 3…) — and give each exhibit an optional friendly name like "Employment Agreement" or "Invoice — August 2024." Duplicate labels get flagged immediately, before you can move on.

Reordering works the same way on mobile — drag handles, or the same label and friendly-name fields, just stacked for a narrow screen.

Step 2: Choose Local or Full Mode — Honestly

This is the one decision in the wizard that matters most, so it gets its own full step with no "recommended" badge on either option. Both build a real, complete exhibit package. The difference is where the work happens — and what that location does and doesn't let you build.

Neither option is a watered-down version of the other. Local Mode's merged, Bates-numbered PDF is a real, finished result on its own — it's just a smaller result, not a crippled one. The rest of this walkthrough covers both paths, since the wizard genuinely branches at this step.

Step 3: Bates Number the Package

Bates numbering works the same way in both modes: a prefix, a digit count, a starting number, and a position. Six digits (000001) is the de facto standard for most productions — bump it up for a very large one.

Step 4: Divider Pages and the Clickable Exhibit Index — Full Mode Only

This step is where Full Mode diverges most visibly from Local Mode. Local Mode's engine only merges, reorders, and Bates-numbers — that's a boundary of what can run entirely client-side, not a feature PDFCourt is holding back. Choose Full Mode and this step turns on two independent options.

Step 5: Build and Download

The build summary recaps every choice you made before you commit — exhibit count, mode, the Bates range, and whichever Full Mode extras you turned on — so there's nothing to guess about what you're about to get.

Local Mode's result

The file lives only in this browser tab — refreshing or navigating away clears it, since it was never uploaded anywhere to begin with. Download it before you go.

Full Mode's result

Full Mode returns a zip: the combined, stamped, indexed PDF, plus exhibit_log.csv — a plain spreadsheet with one row per exhibit, columns for Exhibit label, Friendly name, Page count, Start page in combined doc, Bates begin, and Bates end. That last pair is what most people actually want for a cover email or a filing certificate — the exact Bates range each exhibit occupies, without opening the PDF and counting.

Files uploaded for Full Mode are deleted automatically after processing (the wizard shows a 1-hour deletion window in this screenshot) — download the zip before it expires.

Step 6: What a Real Filing Preflight Finding Looks Like

Filing Preflight is opt-in, shown as a single checkbox during the Extras step in Full Mode, and it runs on your original exhibit files — not the combined output — once per file. The wizard shows its exact scope and limits before you turn it on:

Every finding is tagged one of three ways, and the report shows all three, not just the bad news:

Here's a real example of the kind of thing it flags — the redaction check specifically, one of the checks that doesn't exist anywhere else in PDFCourt's tools. If it finds an opaque shape covering text that's still selectable underneath (the classic "drew a black box in Acrobat, never actually removed the text" mistake), the finding reads almost exactly like this:

Notice what it doesn't say: it doesn't say the redaction failed, and it doesn't say the document is unsafe to file. It says what it found — text underneath a box on a specific page — and leaves the judgment call to you, which is exactly the wording discipline used everywhere else in this feature.

How This Compares to Other Exhibit Tools

Local-only, browser-based merging and Bates numbering is already common ground in this category — Exhibit Flow, E-Ring Binder, and Final Exhibits 2 all offer it. The comparison that actually matters is what's available once you need more than that.

Frequently Asked Questions

One wizard, two honest modes