Trials are won on evidence and preparing exhibits for presentation in court is absolutely crucial if you’re dedicated to having your client prevail during trial. This makes understanding how to prepare exhibits for court integral to the success of your case. Here’s our guide to understanding the best practices for how to label exhibits for trial, building an effective exhibit list, and everything else you need to know about preparing exhibits for court.
Exhibit preparation requires a four-pronged approach to ensure your exhibits will be beneficial for proving the facts of the case you’re trying:
First, you need to review whether the evidence you want to submit to the court is relevant to the case. You’re not doing your client any favors by trying to submit exhibits that don’t pertain to the matter at hand.
Next, you need to determine whether you can authenticate the evidence. Bringing forth false evidence is even worse than bringing forward irrelevant evidence.
Next, lay ensure the evidence is admissible. There are many different logistical issues that could arise while introducing an exhibit. It’s important to lay a foundation for admissibility.
Finally, ensure that you have everything you need to present the exhibit effectively. If you’re admitting a video into evidence, you need to ensure the court has access to a monitor well before the trial.
Next on the list of things you must do if you want to present your evidence effectively is to ensure your exhibits are organized properly. You are likely to have a large amount of physical evidence in the form of emails, photos, and documents, and other physical objects. You may also have text messages, audio, and other related evidence as well.
However, it’s unlikely that you will exhibit every single piece of evidence you have, either due to admissibility or relevancy issues. You need to therefore organize all this potential evidence and prepare it for court in the case the decision is made to use it; you can use exhibit labels to accomplish this. For videos, you’ll need to ensure you copy them to prevent loss or damage to the original and you will also likely need to have a transcript made of the parts that will be used as evidence.
Once you have gathered and documented all the exhibits you intend to submit into evidence, you need to also create a master exhibit list. This list should include important information about each exhibit such as the source, the author, the type of the exhibit, and the date as well. Your exhibit list should also include a short description of each piece of evidence.
If you’re having trouble designing a master exhibit list yourself, there are excellent resources available to you from federal and state courts across the country. One such resource, from the US District Court for the District of Columbia, can be found here. However, you should always check with the clerk of court to ensure the exhibit list you create meets with any requirements of the specific court you’re working with.
Creating a master exhibit list and ensuring you use exhibit labels properly on all your evidence is crucial. However, there are other things you need to do to prepare your exhibits for court – and one of them is to ensure you make multiple copies of each exhibit.
At a minimum, you need three copies. One remains with your firm to be used as a reference during the trial, two copies will be presented to the opposing counsel, and the original will be submitted as the exhibit itself. Keep these copies organized and labeled in appropriate folders to make it easy to present them at trial.
When it comes to electronic evidence, there are a few different approaches that you may be required to take. In some cases, courts allow you to file exhibits electronically, either with the complaint or while filing a motion. There are e-filing standards that courts use across the country to accept electronic evidence, such as digital video, audio, or scanned documents.
However, many courts may still want hard copies of electronic documents to be presented into evidence at trial. In this case, you will have to print these documents in order to introduce them as evidence. Always ensure that you print a sufficient number of copies of these documents as well.
Keeping your exhibits organized for trial is obviously important. However, there are other ways to stay organized above and beyond preparing exhibits for court by using exhibit labels and exhibit lists. You should also create detailed notes that help you present these exhibits in court in an organized manner.
A good quick reference guide, or “cheat sheet”, so to speak, is a list of the issues of the case that will be brought up at the trial. Each issue should be matched with the evidence, and the exhibits, that they will need to address each issue. Use your master exhibit list index to double-check your sheet to ensure that everything is listed correctly and accurately.
When it comes to the day of the trial, being prepared well ahead of time will lead to presenting evidence clearly and easily. As long as you have organized your exhibits carefully, labeled them correctly, and then categorized them in a master exhibit list for easy reference, you will be able to present your evidence successfully.
Remember to include all the additional supplies you need for presenting and organizing what you have. File packets, dividers, folders, and other office supplies may not seem like an important component of a trial, but they can easily make or break your case if you end up disorganized. Keep all of these strategies in mind and you will be able to prepare and present exhibits for court successfully and effectively each and every time.
Nov 15th 2021 Melissa Q.