Print Shop Mail Suite V7 Cracker. Bates numbering has been a staple process for legal professionals for many years now. Originally, Bates numbers were affixed to paper documents using a handheld stamping machine created by the Bates Manufacturing Company.

The process was noisy and prone to error: it was easy to miss a page, which then required the stamper to go back and create a special intervening number. The process was noisy and prone to error: it was easy to miss a page, which then required the stamper to go back and create a special intervening number. More recently, the Bates stamp was supplanted by word processing methods, using macros, that generated a series of Bates labels that could then be peeled off and stuck to the pages of a document. This method was less noisy but still tedious and error prone. The fastest and most reliable way to put Bates numbers on documents is to scan the documents and then let a computer handle the task. You need Adobe Acrobat software, which costs between $300 and $420. However, a paralegal will cost you much more, and not do the job as quickly or as reliably.

May 12, 2017. Adobe Acrobat DC Pro, and many more programs. Best backup apps for Windows and Mac Microsoft Office and top. Boxoft PDF Bates Numbering is a simple and professional PDF. Bates stamping and numbering software for Adobe PDF. Pdf Bates Stamp Software. Free download of Bates Numbering. Oct 11, 2011. Legal notices. Legal notices. For legal notices, see Services and downloads. Tools >Action Wizard. Advanced >Document Processing >Bates. Tools >Pages >Edit Page Design >Bates Numbering.

So, assuming you have Adobe Acrobat (Standard, Professional, or DC versions), you’re ready to go. How to Add Bates-Numbers Using Adobe Acrobat First and most important: make a copy of the PDF(s) before you start to do Bates stamping (in other words, always work on a copy of your key files in case you make a mistake).

Next, from the sub-menu on the right side, select as follows: Tools >Pages >Bates Numbering >Add Bates Numbering. You’ll be asked to designate the files or folders that you want to perform the operation on, and then you’ll get a dialog box (shown in the screenshot below) from which you can make several choices, beginning with font style, font size, font color, and placement of the Bates numbers.

Acrobat defaults to an Arial, 8-point, black font. In his excellent book,, Matthew Butterick recommends avoiding Arial because it’s hard to read (the 8-point size is too small). He recommends a 12-point font, preferably something like Franklin Gothic Medium. Choosing a red or orange font ensures that the Bates number will stand out.

Those are the choices shown in the screenshot above, in numbers 1, 2, and 3. After you choose the font and its size and color, you need to specify where you want the Bates number to appear.

Most lawyers seem to prefer the lower right-hand side of the page. If that’s your preference, click in the Right Footer Text box (4 above) and then click Insert Bates Number (5), which will cause a small dialog box to pop up, allowing you to choose the number of digits you want your Bates numbers to have. You will also be allowed to specify the start number, a prefix (such as PL for plaintiff), and a suffix if you like.

Before you click OK, you might want to do one more thing, especially if the PDFs you’re stamping have images or other content in the area where the stamps will go. In that situation, the Bates numbers might not be visible, and that would be bad.

To avoid that problem, click on the blue link that says Appearance Options, and you’ll get the following pop-up box: Select the option checked in the screenshot above. Then click OK, and you’re almost ready. If you like this setting and intend to use it again in the future, you’ll want to save it by clicking Save Settings at the top of the Bates Numbering dialog box and then give the style a name, as shown below. Click OK to save the setting and then click OK to perform the Bates numbering. The process is pretty quick, even if you have hundreds of pages in the PDF. If you want to preserve the old file, you can save the Bates-stamped version as a new file.

Deleting Bates Numbers If you made a mistake or later want to remove the Bates numbers, you can reverse the process quickly by selecting Tools >Pages >Bates Numbering >Remove. Caveat: obviously, you can only remove Bates numbers that you’ve added. If you receive documents with Bates numbers put in by someone else, you can’t use this process to eliminate those numbers. To learn more about using PDFs to streamline your law practice, check out my ABA-published book,. Filed Under:,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Tagged With:,,,. Adobe’s is not the only PDF software able to add Bates numbering.

I use Foxit PhantomPDF Business (their most expensive version, at $129), which is a close match in terms of features for Acrobat Pro, and is also a much faster program. It does everything I need, including doing OCR on scanned documents to make their text searchable and copyable, which is particularly useful on documents received from opposing counsel.

For Bates-numbering, it works very similarly to Acrobat, complete with the ability to shrink the original document so the Bates-numbering doesn’t obscure anything. It’s found under “Organize Bates numbering” and its shrink command is found on the setup page under the link formed by the words “Appearance Options.” It can even print the numbers at an angle if you wish. This is the exact process I used for bates stamping a long series of documents for Document Production for a particular case. Reply To Defence Template For Letter. It took a long time for me because (aside from a build up of exhaustion from frequently working late) the long list of pdf files (scanned by client corporation’s employee) were horribly labeled with various styles of short hand, misspellings, and differing placement of dates, names of corresponding entities in the Index Chart, and what that particular document was about. I had to go in and manually ensure each document started with the correct corresponding entity listed on the Notice of Deposit Index Chart before I could start bate stamping (a few were even mislabeled in that regard). The fledgling attorney working the case had no comprehension that bate stamping is not fast and easy in situations like this especially when the parties are corporations with LOTS of documents to produce.

I’ve used Acrobat XI Pro to bates stamp and it works well, with a few caveats. It will not bates stamp electronic PDFs ( I have not used it with scans) if the files are secured in any way. It does give you an error message, but does not include the errors in its log feature. I had to resort to copying and pasting each error message with the problem file as it popped up into a list and then go and handle those files another way. If if encounters a file that is secured, it stops and waits for you to click something before moving to the next file.

This is a pain if you load up a bunch of files to be stamped and then walk away, hoping it will finish while you do something else. This can be tedious and prone to errors if you have a lot of files and/or lots of errors. If you are not 100% accurate in removing the error files from what you intend to use or turn over to the opposing side, you can end up with non bates stamped files in your folders. Lastly, and this one creates a lot of extra work, if you make an error and want to remove bates stamps, you remove by files and not folders. This means that if you want to remove a bunch of errors in various folders and sub folders, you have to drill down to the file level. You can not select an entire folder to remove bates stamps. VERY time consuming.

The work around is to not have your files in lots of folders, if you can avoid it. Wish Adobe would add the ability to remove bates stamps at the folder level.