Print Exhibit Stickers and a Court-Ready Exhibit List, Free

An exhibit label (or exhibit sticker) is the small marker attached to a document, photograph, or physical object to give it a permanent identity in a legal proceeding: Exhibit 1, Exhibit A, Plaintiff's Exhibit 12. Once a document is marked, everyone, the witnesses, the attorneys, the court reporter, and eventually the judge and jury, refers to it by that designation, and the transcript records it that way forever. Marking exhibits sounds like clerical trivia until an unmarked or double-marked document derails an examination or muddies the appellate record.

You need exhibit labels any time evidence changes hands on the record: depositions, arbitration hearings, evidentiary motions, administrative hearings, and trial. Law firms buy pre-printed rolls of stickers; this page replaces them for anyone who would rather print exactly the range needed tonight, whether that is Plaintiff's Exhibits 1 through 40 for tomorrow's deposition or Defense Exhibits A through AD for a bench trial. If the underlying documents still need to be drafted, our legal document drafting services handle that side of trial preparation.

The companion document is the exhibit list, the table each party files identifying every exhibit it may offer. The list is not paperwork for its own sake: it is how the courtroom deputy tracks what has been identified and what has actually been admitted, and it is the index an appellate court uses to find the evidence later. The second half of the generator above builds it under your case caption, with blank rows you can fill in by hand as trial unfolds.

Deposition exhibit labels are applied as the testimony happens: the examining attorney hands a document to the court reporter, asks that it be marked as the next exhibit, and the reporter attaches the sticker and notes it in the record. Two numbering systems dominate. The older habit starts fresh with each witness, often prefixing the deponent's name (Smith Exhibit 1, Jones Exhibit 1). The modern preference in document-heavy litigation is a single continuous sequence for the entire case, so a document marked Exhibit 47 at the first deposition is still Exhibit 47 at the last one and at trial. The continuous system exists because the alternative produces five different documents that are each "Exhibit 3", which is exactly as confusing in a transcript as it sounds. If you are the party noticing the deposition, you choose the exhibits and bring the stickers; our deposition notice generator drafts the notice that gets the witness in the chair.

Trial exhibit labels are assigned in advance, not on the fly. The parties exchange exhibit lists before trial, resolve objections, and arrive with every document pre-marked. In federal civil cases this exchange is mandatory: Rule 26(a)(3) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires each party to identify every document or other exhibit it may offer, generally at least 30 days before trial unless the court sets a different schedule. State practice varies, but nearly every trial judge imposes the same discipline through a pretrial order. Exhibits marked at deposition usually keep their deposition numbers at trial when the case has used a continuous sequence, which is one more argument for adopting it early.

The label itself carries only the designation, and optionally the case caption and a date line. It never carries page numbers: page-level control of a document production is the job of Bates stamping, which runs a separate sequence across every page produced in discovery. If you need that, use our Bates numbering tool alongside this one; the two systems coexist on the same document, sticker on the first page, Bates number on every page.

The classic convention, still followed in many state courts, gives the plaintiff numbers and the defense letters: Plaintiff's Exhibit 1 faces Defendant's Exhibit A. Letters run A through Z and then double up (AA, AB, AC), which this generator handles automatically. Other courts prefer party-prefixed numbers for both sides (Plaintiff's Exhibit 1, Defendant's Exhibit 1), and busy federal courtrooms often assign block ranges instead, plaintiff taking 1 to 99 and defense 100 and up, so that every exhibit in the case has a unique number with no prefix needed. Exhibits both sides intend to use are commonly marked as Joint Exhibits in their own sequence.

None of these conventions is law. The controlling documents are your judge's standing order, the local rules, and the final pretrial order, and they beat any tradition. The practical rule is simpler: find out what your courtroom expects before you print, mark everything one way, and never reuse a designation after an exhibit is withdrawn. The party prefix menu in the generator covers the common forms, including Petitioner and Respondent for family and administrative matters and Government for criminal and agency practice.

These printable exhibit stickers are drawn to the two label geometries you can buy in any office supply store. The 30-per-sheet layout uses the standard 1 x 2-5/8 inch grid (3 columns by 10 rows on US Letter), and the 10-per-sheet layout uses the 2 x 4 inch grid (2 columns by 5 rows); both match the die-cut dimensions of the label sheets sold under many brands in those two sizes, so the PDF prints straight onto stock you already have. The small size fits the corner of a page without covering text. The large size gives a deposition sticker room for the case caption plus the DATE and BY lines the court reporter completes when marking. The third option, a 12-per-page cut-out grid with dashed trim lines, needs no special stock at all: print on cardstock or full-sheet adhesive paper and cut.

Color is a signal, not a requirement. Stationery makers have long sold yellow exhibit stickers for plaintiffs and blue for defendants, and many courtrooms are used to reading exhibits that way, but no general rule requires it; white with a black border is always safe. Placement is likewise convention: bottom right corner of the first page, positioned so the sticker never obscures text, signatures, or Bates numbers. Documents produced in discovery keep their Bates numbers when they become exhibits, so leave both markings legible. When a case settles instead of going to trial, the same document discipline pays off in the demand phase; our demand letter generator builds that document for free as well.

An exhibit list template has five working columns for a reason. Exhibit No. and Description identify the document; Date anchors it in the timeline; and the last two columns record its legal status as trial happens. Identified means the exhibit was marked and used with a witness; Admitted means the judge received it into evidence over or without objection. The difference is everything: an identified-but-not-admitted document is not evidence, the jury generally never sees it in deliberations, and an appellate court will not consider it. The clerk keeps the official version of this ledger, but trial teams keep their own copy current line by line, which is what the blank-rows option in the generator is for.

The list also does quiet work before trial ever starts. Exchanging exhibit lists forces both sides to commit to their evidence, surfaces authenticity and hearsay objections early enough to brief them, and lets parties stipulate to admission of the uncontested exhibits so trial time is spent on the contested ones. A tidy list next to a well-drafted pleading is the baseline of trial readiness; if you are building the case file from the beginning, start from our civil complaint template or the answer to a complaint template.

When the exhibit set runs to banker's boxes rather than a binder, marking and indexing becomes real work: deposition designations, objections charts, witness binders, and an exhibit database that agrees with the pretrial order. That is the point where firms and pro se litigants hand it to us. Our litigation support services cover exhibit preparation and indexing, and our deposition summary services turn the transcripts those exhibits came from into page-line summaries you can actually use.