Catch the Rejection Before the Clerk Does
A free court filing PDF checker that tests your document against one specific court's published standards: text layer, page size, bookmarks, pagination from the cover, type size, encryption, file size, and unredacted personal identifiers. Your file never leaves this tab.
Quick answer: Clerks reject filings for mechanical defects, not legal ones. The recurring causes are a scanned PDF with no text layer, a password-protected file, pages that are A4 rather than Letter, type below the court's minimum, missing bookmarks, pagination that starts after the cover page, and a file over the size cap. There is no universal court-ready PDF: Texas forbids the embedded fonts that New York's PDF/A requirement demands, so pick your court below first.
Reuse your case details across our tools?
Type the caption once and fill it into the deadline calculator, proof of service, pleading paper, filing packet, and pre-flight checker. Saved on this device only, in this browser. It is never sent to us, and "Forget" deletes it rather than blanking it.
1. Which court is this being filed in?
There is no court-neutral answer to "is this PDF ready to file." Texas standard 3.1(E) says documents may not contain embedded fonts; New York asks for PDF/A, which requires them. The checks below change with your answer here.
Typography and margin rules govern documents you WRITE. An exhibit or appendix volume is a compilation of copies of pre-existing records, whose type size is whatever the originals had, so those rules do not reach it. Tell us which this is and we will stop reporting a scanned tax return as a 5-point-type violation.
2. Add the PDF you are about to file
The file is read in this browser tab and never uploaded. That matters here more than usual: the whole point of the redaction check is that the document may still contain identifiers nobody should see.
Drop a PDF here, or choose one.
Choose a court above to enable this.
The format is only half of it
The filing packet generator gives you the rest for this same court: the portal and how to get access, the filing code to look for, what else goes in the envelope, the fee waiver form, and the submission steps.
You file it, not us. In electronic filing the login is the signature, so only a party or their attorney of record may hold filing credentials. We prepare documents; you review, sign, and submit under your own name.
What a Clerk Actually Bounces Filings Over
Rejections are mechanical. The most common by far is a document with no text layer: someone printed the motion, signed it, scanned it, and filed the scan. Every state standard we track requires text-searchable output, and Texas, Illinois, and New York all say so explicitly. The fix is to sign electronically or to scan and then OCR, but the better fix is to generate the PDF from the word processor and never let it become an image at all.
Second is security settings. A password-protected or permissions-restricted PDF cannot be indexed or stamped, and the Texas standards forbid it in terms: an e-filed document may not contain any security or feature restrictions including password protection or encryption. Filers add security thinking it protects a confidential document, when the actual mechanism for that is a motion to seal.
Third, on appeal, is pagination and bookmarks. California rule 8.74(a)(2) requires page numbering to begin with the cover page as page 1 and continue consecutively in arabic numerals, and rule 8.74(a)(3) requires a bookmark to every heading, subheading, and component: the tables, the verification, the word-count certificate, the proof of service, each exhibit. Standard brief templates violate both by treating the front matter as unnumbered, which is why a brief can be substantively excellent and still come back.
Fourth is size. Florida caps a transmission at 25 MB. Illinois caps a trial-court document at 25 MB with a 50 MB envelope, while allowing 150 MB at the Supreme Court and Appellate Court districts. NYSCEF allows 100 MB per file. The instinct to compress is the wrong one, because heavy downsampling destroys the text layer on scanned pages and trades a size problem for a searchability problem.
Redaction Is the One That Cannot Be Undone
A rejected filing is an inconvenience. A filing that puts an unredacted Social Security number on the public docket is permanent. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2(a) permits only the last four digits of a Social Security or taxpayer number, the year of an individual's birth, a minor's initials, and the last four digits of a financial account number.
California rule 1.201 is the one to read carefully, because of who it puts on the hook: it requires the same partial forms and then states that responsibility for excluding or redacting identifiers rests solely with the parties and their attorneys, and that the court clerk will not review filings for compliance. Nobody downstream catches this for you.
Two mechanical traps. First, a black box is not a redaction: a filled rectangle drawn over text in a PDF viewer hides it visually while leaving the characters in the file, selectable and searchable by anyone who receives it. Redact in the source document and re-export. Second, identifiers hide in attachments more often than in the pleading, because medical records, pay stubs, and bank statements arrive from third parties already carrying them.
What This Tool Will Not Tell You
It will not tell you a document is fine when it could not test it. An encrypted file returns could not test on every content-dependent rule rather than a pass. A scanned page has no measurable type size, so the font-size rule returns the same answer instead of assuming compliance. Those results are counted separately in the summary, and the tool will not describe a document as ready to file while any remain.
It will not claim your document is free of personal identifiers. It reports what it found, and it reports which pages it could not read, because some PDFs use subset-encoded fonts whose characters cannot be decoded outside a viewer. It does not measure the right margin, because that would require font advance widths the file does not reliably expose. And it does not check your word count against your certificate, read your local rules or the judge's standing orders, or verify the first-page layout against California rule 2.111. Those appear on a manual checklist beneath the results with the rule cited, rather than being quietly dropped.
For the half of filing that is not the PDF, the portal and access, the filing code, the cover sheets and fee waiver forms, and the submission steps, use the court filing packet generator.
Filing PDF Questions
Does my PDF get uploaded anywhere?+
No. The entire check runs inside your browser tab. The PDF engine is loaded on demand and the file is read locally; nothing is transmitted to us or to anyone else. That matters more here than on a typical tool, because the point of the redaction check is that the document may still contain a Social Security number or an account number that nobody should see, including us.
Why do the checks change when I change the court?+
Because the rules genuinely conflict. The Texas judicial technology standards say at section 3.1(E) that documents may not contain embedded fonts. New York’s NYSCEF technical requirements ask for PDF/A, which requires every font to be embedded. A federal appellate brief needs 14-point type and one-inch margins under FRAP 32(a); a California Court of Appeal brief needs 13-point and 1 1/2 inch side margins under rule 8.74(b). Any tool that gives one court-neutral verdict on a filing PDF is guessing.
How does it know whether my PDF is text-searchable?+
It reads each page’s content stream and looks for text-drawing operators. A page produced by a word processor issues them; a page produced by a flatbed scanner is a single image and issues none. That distinction is exact rather than statistical, so the tool can tell you specifically which pages have no text layer, which is usually a handful of scanned exhibits inserted into an otherwise typed document.
Can it tell if my pagination starts at the cover page?+
It looks for printed page numbers in the header and footer bands and reports where the number 1 actually appears. If the number 1 shows up on PDF page 4, that is the signature of a cover and tables treated as unnumbered front matter, which violates California rule 8.74(a)(2) and is one of the most common appellate rejection causes. This is presented as evidence with the page cited, not a bare verdict, so you can confirm it yourself in seconds.
Will it catch every unredacted Social Security number?+
No, and the tool says so rather than implying otherwise. It scans for Social Security numbers, payment card numbers, labelled account numbers, and labelled dates of birth, in text it can decode. Some PDFs use subset-encoded fonts whose characters cannot be read back outside a PDF viewer; those pages are reported as unread rather than reported as clean. Anything inside a scanned image is not covered at all, and names and addresses are not covered. A positive finding is reliable; the absence of findings is not a clean bill of health.
Why does it say “could not test” instead of passing something?+
Because a green check we cannot support is worse than no check. If a document is encrypted, its content cannot be inspected, so every content-dependent rule returns could not test rather than a pass. If a page is a scan, there is no type size to measure, so the font-size rule returns the same. The summary counts these separately and the tool refuses to describe a document as ready to file while any remain outstanding.
It flagged my margins but they look right. Why?+
Margins are measured from text drawing origins, which is an approximation. Page numbers printed inside the margin, which some rules expressly allow, will pull the measurement in. That is why margin findings are raised as items to verify rather than as failures. Note also that the right margin is never reported: measuring it would require font advance widths that the file does not always expose, so rather than guess, the tool tells you it did not check it.
Does a black box over text count as redaction?+
No, and this is one of the most damaging misconceptions in electronic filing. Drawing a filled rectangle over text in a PDF viewer hides it visually while leaving the characters in the file, fully selectable and searchable by anyone who receives it. True redaction removes the underlying content. The safest approach is to redact in the source document and re-export, rather than to patch the PDF.
My file is under the size limit. Why the warning?+
The tool warns once a file passes roughly 85 percent of the court’s published ceiling, because filings grow: one more exhibit added the night before the deadline is what pushes a document over. Splitting at a logical boundary, one exhibit per file, is far better than downsampling, which destroys the text layer on scanned pages and can create a searchability violation while fixing a size one.
What does it not check?+
Anything requiring judgment or a document it cannot see. It does not verify your word count against the certificate, confirm that every heading has a bookmark (only that bookmarks exist), read your local rules or the judge’s standing orders, check the first-page layout against California rule 2.111, or tell you whether a document should be filed at all. Those appear on the manual checklist beneath the results, with the rule cited, so nothing is silently dropped.
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