The devil is in the detail when it comes to producing electronic court bundles. Different courts and regions have slight variations in guidelines for areas like formatting, numbering, and hyperlinking.

Below are step-by-step instructions on using pdfDocs Binder to meet the electronic bundle requirements for the UK Supreme Court, including setting the default magnification size to 100%, applying OCR to the entire bundle, and hyperlinking the index page.

1. Add your documents into a pdfDocs Binder Project

The Binder Project is your workspace as you edit the relevant documents. Then, when you're ready to finalize the bundle, press Make Binder.

You have the option to create a new, blank Binder Project or one from a template. PDF binder templates save time and ensure each bundle your firm produces is consistent and professional.

Typically, the pdfDocs administrator at the firm will pre-save templates for standard documents, including electronic court bundles, to a company server, so they're accessible to everyone.

The UK Supreme Court requires the bundle to be a single PDF. When presented with the option to create a Single or Multiple PDF Binder, choose Single PDF Binder. 

2. The documents within the bundle need to be numbered in ascending order. Original page numbers will be ignored – only the bundle page number will be referred to.

To set this numbering style, first press Binder Options. Number the pages in ascending order by pressing the Numbering Sets tab. Choose the Starting Number – we suggest 1 – and select the format as 1,2,3.

3. Index pages and authorities are to be included in the bundle's numbering as they are considered part of the single PDF.

To set this numbering according to the UK Supreme Court requirements, press Binder Options and navigate to the Numbering Sets tab. Next, select the Cover Page as the starting position. Select Never for Restart Page Numbers.

Note: Some other Courts suggest starting the numbering from the first page of the first document and exclude the Cover Page and index. To do this, simply select Document instead of Cover Page from the Starting Position drop-down.

4. The default page view size for every page of the bundle must be set at 100%.

This can be set within Binder Options. Simply press on the Initial View tab and set the Magnification to 100%.

5. Any text on the bundle's pages must be part of a text layer so that it can be selected and highlighted.

Scanned documents and other image file types often lack a text layer. In pdfDocs, you can add text to the page using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology by pressing Recognize Text on the toolbar.

Then, to meet this Court requirement, choose On All Pages from the drop-down. Under Recognition Templates, choose PDF – General Use. This will apply OCR technology to all pages in the document and ensure text is selectable and searchable.

6. Bookmarks should clearly indicate which document they refer to – preferably by having the same name or title as the document – and display the relevant page numbers.

Bookmarks will be created automatically when you press Make Binder. However, to comply with the Court's guidelines, you must edit the bookmarks and manually add the relevant page numbers.

7. To prevent delays when scrolling through the bundle pages, reduce the bundle's resolution to 200 or 300 DPI.

To reduce the resolution of the bundle, press the Edit tab and then the Optimize PDF button. Here, you can customize your options by deselecting Optimize images only if there is a reduction in size. Then, set the DPI to 300 min, 301 max.

8. The index page must be hyperlinked to the pages or documents they refer to.

The index page hyperlinks will be created automatically when you press Make Binder.

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