Bates-Stamping Documents the easy way

Whenever I see a set of documents that has been bates-stamped by hand, I cringe.  The only place that one should be able to see that kind of thing is in a museum.  And, yet amazingly, you can see it any day of the week in a typical law practice.  What's so bad about bates-stamping documents by hand?

First, it's mind-numbingly tedious work.  Which means that the poor paralegal that has been assigned to do it is probably going to make a mistake.  Most importantly, it takes a really long time to do it by hand.  Frankly, if I was a corporate client I would add a section to my standard terms of representation stating that I refuse to pay for paralegal time associated with bates-stamping.

Let's say you have 1,000 documents to bates-stamp.  I seriously doubt that any paralegal could finish the task in less than 4 hours.  It would probably take at least a day, maybe more.  But to scan those documents would only take about an hour, maybe two hours if you had a really slow scanner.  Once you've scanned the documents it takes about 30 seconds to bates-stamp them using Acrobat 8.0.   

Using a computer to bates-stamp ensures that you don't miss any pages.  And you can tell Acrobat to shrink the borders of the page and apply the bates-stamp in the resulting white area.  This guarantees that the bates-number on every page is visible.  Also you can add text before or after the bates number, (e.g. as "2nd Production - No. 000345").  Finally, if you realize you made a mistake and included some pages that should not have been bates-stamped, you can remove the bates-stamping and start over.

So all you have to do is scan the documents first.  And this is a good thing.  Because, as an added bonus, you have not only bates-stamped your documents, but now you have them in digital form.  Then if you want to make the documents searchable (and, trust me, you want to do this) you can OCR them first.   Let me emphasize this point: OCR before you bates-stamp the documents.  Otherwise, for reasons I won't get into, you won't be able to OCR the documents later (but, as I said, you can remove the bates-stamping, OCR, and then bates again). 

In short, there's a smart way to bates-stamp documents, and a really stupid way. Why anyone would want to make someone bates-stamp documents by hand is beyond me.  Frankly, I think it should be considered a form of cruel and unusual punishment.  Apparently, though, it's not all that unusual. 

And that is really sad.

Comments

[Jeffrey Rennie]

Easy Bates is another tool for Bates stamping PDFs and TIFs. If you need additional features like renaming the files as you stamp them, printing labels for the originals, or instant undo, then you'll find them in Easy Bates, but not in Acrobat. It also runs 10 times faster than Acrobat.

[foo]

You state: "The only place that one should be able to see that kind of thing is in a museum. "

Obviously you lack familiarity the practice of many attorneys. The large firm environment that you take for granted does not apply to hundreds of thousands of small firms and individual practitioners.

I Bates stamped some documents last week. There were 100 pages. Manually Bates stamping 100 pages makes a lot of sense when you don't have a high speed scanner or scanning them would be an additional step in and of itself.

I have never had to Bates stamp 1000 pages as you suggested.

[Ernie]

Foo: I don't lack familiarity with the practice of many attorneys. I have worked for a court and I have worked in a medium sized law firm. I have worked inside of corporate law environments and large firm environments. And for the past two years I have worked completely on my own.

If you had familiarity with scanning you know that it is so easy and quick that it's not a major additional step, but rather an opportunity to make life easier. I don't know how long it takes you to manually stamp 100 pages, but I am completely confident that I can do it faster with my basic desktop Fujitsu Scansnap (cost approx $400). Scanning would take about 10 minutes at most, and bates-stamping would take about 10 seconds. Then I wouldn't have to keep the paper, which I don't. My solo practice is devoid of paper, except for those pieces of paper that are absolutely necessary. And guess what? Not very much paper is absolutely necessary. That's something that it took me awhile to realize. Now that I realize it, I have become keenly aware of how few attorneys are aware of this.

Doesn't matter if they are in large firms or small firms. This is a pervasive perception. Very few lawyers are familiar with how much better life is when you get rid of paper. Looks like you are like most other lawyers, which is fine if you like safety in numbers. But if you want to do things optimally you sometimes have to separate yourself from the crowd.

[H Smith]

Someone said:

My solo practice is devoid of paper, except for those pieces of paper that are absolutely necessary. And guess what? Not very much paper is absolutely necessary.

What kind of law practice doesn't involve "much paper [that] is absolutely necessary?"
Sounds like something I would like to get into.

[C. Burke]

Thank you! I'm having so much fun with this!

[Karel Kearl]

Is Bates stamping a legal requirement or simply a method of filing?

Does it take a paralegal to do it or could a file clerk do it?

[Martin Crossman]

Yes it is nice to turn over bates stamping to software and there are times when this works. However, an all important link is missed by doing this. You can not attest that the image is a true copy of the paper document. By stamping the bates number on the document and then scanning it this link is established. You can also ensure the stamp is placed in a location where it does not overlap on important information.

This was an important step in establishing the chain of possession that allowed for the use of images in criminal antitrust cases in Canada.

[Mike Burnett]

I have 97,000 documents that I need to Bates Stamp. I have Acrobat 9 Standard. All of the files are already scanned and I have them on CD. Can I Bates Stamp them with Acrobat and if so, how?

[Deirdre Sours]

We bates stamp manually as well as electronically. Some clients even ask us to print the labesl for them so they can bates stamp their documents manually. I believe is has a lot to do with what people are comfortable with and used to. In this age of cutting edge technology, there are still a lot of people that don't have a computer or a cell... See!