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Court Bundle Requirements: A Practical Checklist

A jurisdiction-neutral checklist for lawyers, paralegals, and law clerks

Whether it's called a motion record, hearing bundle, appeal book, or trial bundle, the courts of most common-law jurisdictions want the same things from a compiled set of documents: order, pagination, navigation, and completeness. This checklist covers the requirements that appear again and again across Canadian, UK, US, and Australian practice directions — use it alongside the specific rules of your court.

1. Structure and order

Cover page: court, file number, parties/style of cause, name of the bundle, hearing date, and who filed it;
Index / table of contents immediately after the cover;
Documents in the order your rules prescribe (originating document first, then evidence, then supporting material is the most common pattern);
Chronological order within categories unless the rules say otherwise;
A tab or divider for each document, matching the index.

2. Pagination

Pages numbered consecutively through the whole bundle, including exhibits and dividers where required;
Index page references that match both the printed number and the PDF page position;
If the bundle changes after service, re-paginate and re-serve — never file a bundle whose index no longer matches its contents.

3. Electronic format

A single, text-searchable PDF (OCR any scanned documents);
Bookmarks for each tab/document, and ideally a hyperlinked index;
Portrait orientation with rotated pages corrected;
Within the court's file-size limit — split into volumes if necessary, with volume numbers on the covers and a master index in volume one;
File named per the court's naming convention (typically document type, party, and date).

4. Content hygiene

Every document referred to in your argument is actually in the bundle;
Duplicates removed — one copy of each document, cross-referenced if needed;
Redactions applied properly (actual redaction, not black highlighting over selectable text);
Personal identifiers removed or redacted where privacy rules require;
Exhibits described in the index by nature and date, not just letter.

5. Service and filing

Serve and file within your rule's timeline — bundles are usually due days before the hearing, not on the day;
The served version and the filed version must be identical;
Where the court uses a hearing platform (such as Case Center in Ontario or CE-file in England & Wales), upload in the format and naming style its guidance requires;
Keep a copy of exactly what was filed, with its index, for the hearing.

The five-minute test: hand your bundle to someone who has never seen the file and ask them to find one specific exhibit. If it takes more than a few clicks — using only the index — a judge under time pressure will have the same experience.

Why this matters

Registrars reject non-compliant bundles, and judges notice compliant ones. A clean, navigable bundle doesn't win your motion — but a broken one costs you credibility before anyone reads a word of argument, and a rejected filing can cost you a hearing date.

Skip the manual formatting

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Related guides

This guide is general information for legal professionals, not legal advice. Court rules and practice directions change — always confirm the current requirements of the court you are filing in before you file.