Trial Bundle

Benefits of Breaking the Habit of Creating Hard-Copy Bundles in 2024

If you want to make a change for you or your company, it’s not too late to make a New Year’s Resolution. As digital has become our new day-to-day, electronic bundles (e-bundles) are one of the online elements that have popularised over the past few years, particularly in the legal sector.  

The use of e-bundles has significantly changed the way legal professionals and law firms prepare and deliver electronic bundles of their files. Although printing hard copy bundles may not be eliminated entirely from the process, why not start 2024 off right by breaking the habit of creating hard-copy bundles when they are not needed? 

Streamline Business Processes 

Whether it’s a bundle or court file, the production and approval of files can be one of the most time-consuming aspects of the process. Sharing digitally for approval will allow each party to view easily without needing to review physical copies at different times, which can increase efficiency.  

Through the automation of time-intensive tasks, Bundledocs can reduce the stages in document preparation such as photocopying and delivery. Streamlining your operations and giving your team the time to focus on what really matters can also aid with employee retention. Streamlining business processes can also lead to improved productivity as employees will spend less time creating and editing manual bundles. 

Increased Collaboration 

Getting started with Bundledocs is extremely easy - all you need is a device and an email address (single sign on is available also). This makes it simple for teams to get set-up and start producing and collaborating on documents. Bundledocs can be used by anyone in any location, which facilitates the hybrid and fully remote working options that have become part of many standard working arrangements.  

Users can also make bundles fully searchable, making reviewing easy for colleagues, third-party editors, or clients. Research shows that organisations that embrace flexibility and the use of technology that supports remote collaboration are more likely to attract and retain employees.  

Sustainability 

Although paper bundles may still be required if a case goes to court, e-bundles can improve the preparation process by eliminating paper when sharing documents internally and externally. The amount of energy and water used in paper production has a significant and damaging impact on the environment, leading to deforestation and air pollution. Paper accounts for approximately 26% of total waste at landfill sites.  

As paper documents must be transported to their destination, digital bundles that utilise cloud storage can also help in reducing carbon emissions. This can also help you to reduce overheads like postage, couriers and DX. 

Heightened Security 

As the number and frequency of global cyber-attacks continues to rise, organisations may feel cautious about sharing files both internally and externally. Our solution is ISO 27001 certified, which is the international standard for information security management systems. This ensures that your documents are always safe and secure.  

Our customers’ information is stored securely using Microsoft SSL encryption, ensuring a secure communication channel exists which prevents any interception of data from third parties across our network and other internet communications. Users generating bundles can simply invite third parties to view bundles that they have created and all exchanges are security restricted. 

Start Using Bundledocs 

Now that you know the benefits, there’s nothing stopping you or your team from getting started with Bundledocs. Our solution is easy to use and setup is simple. If you are still uncertain about making the switch to digital files, get booked in for a free online demo today!  

Get Court Compliant with Bundledocs

The UK Judiciary recently introduced new guidance on the preparation of electronic bundles for court hearings. Up until the pandemic e-bundles had been utilised. However, during 2020 and beyond e-bundles were used extensively as court hearings were held remotely with documents becoming bigger and more demanding. This updated guidance which replaces the previous revision published in May 2020 has been developed to ensure consistency in the creation of e-bundles for the efficient preparation and management of court hearings. 

What does this mean for your firm? The good news is that at Bundledocs we are fully compliant. Here we have laid out some of the main points within the updated guidance and how you can approach creating your e-bundles compliantly: 

Ebundle Creation 

All bundles must now be provided in PDF format – something that our solution does automatically. Within your e-bundle all pages must be digitally numbered by computer-generated numbering, not by hand. Regardless of whether the first page is part of an index, the first page of the bundle must be numbered as one with additional pages following sequentially. If you are required to produce a hard copy of your bundle – the pagination must match the e-bundle.  

With Bundledocs you can manipulate your documents to meet requirements set out by the UK judiciary. If any of the pages in the bundle have been created in landscape orientation, they must appear within the bundle in this format so that they can be read from left to right.  Additionally, you have the option to change the default page view to be 100% to meet guidance set out by the judiciary. 

When it comes to the presentation of your ebundle the resolution should not be greater that 300 dpi to prevent slow scrolling or rendering when your ebundle is being viewed. To avoid excessively large bundles, you can easily adjust the resolution for your ebundle.  

 

Formatting 

All entries in an index must now be hyperlinked to the corresponding document, all sections must be bookmarked for ease of navigation and the bookmark should contain the page number of the document. With Bundledocs you can automatically  generate a customised index and bookmarks, which update each time you generate your bundle. Additionally, all pages with typed text must be subject to OCR, this allows for easier searching for text, highlighting parts of a page, and copying text from the bundle. Our built in OCR functionality means your firm will not have to purchase additional OCR software.  

Pre-Hearing 

E-bundles can be shared with the courts prior to hearings via email or by uploading to a document upload centre – the issue here is that some bundles may be too large to be sent via email. Bundledocs features a secure share functionality where you can share direct to a third party or via outlook. There is also the option to share as an email attachment or via the third parties software. Additionally, you can download you e-bundle and upload directly depending on the requirements set out by the court.  

If new documents need to be added after an e-bundle has been submitted to the judge the judiciary requires that pages are added to the end of a bundle and paginated accordingly. The judge should then be provided with the new bundle and separately the completed revised bundle. Our solution allows you to add additional documents at the last minute while generating a new version with numbering etc. automatically updated. There is also the option to generate your bundle with just the late inserts – rather than the entire bundle which can then be shared.               

We want to help you create e-bundles with complete ease. Get in touch to grab a copy of our court compliant template today.

Electronic Bundles & Document Production Made Easy for Lawyers

Are you looking to improve efficiency within your law firm?

If your firm is spending too much time and money on extracting, creating and sharing manual bundles, we can help. Our secure cloud-based solution ensures that your firm can work efficiently and help to support your overall growth by lowering costs, reducing time spent on creating and editing manual bundles, and enable secure document sharing with anyone, anywhere.

We handle everything from document bundling, document manipulation, redaction and annotations, collaboration, secure file sharing (great for large bundles) and in-built OCR for complete text searchability.

Plus, with even integrate with all leading case and document management solutions to make document production and electronic bundle creation even easier!

Interested to learn more? Watch our new video to understand who we are and how our solution can save you time and money, all while allowing you to collaborate with others from anywhere in the world.

Trial Bundle Preparation Made Easy - Video

A few years back we wrote a post all about trial bundles. We covered everything from what a trial bundle is; what is their purpose and why they’re important. If you didn’t get a chance to check it out, here is it: “Trial Bundles: Everything You Need To Know“. In that post we briefly touched on the steps needed to create a trial bundle. As we know that trial bundle preparation is a struggle for so many, we wanted to create a post to show you the simple way to prepare bundles using Bundledocs. Let’s jump right in…

How to Prepare a Trial Bundle using Bundledocs

(Don’t fancy reading today? Watch our short 2 minute video to see how it works!)

STEP ONE: CREATE & STRUCTURE YOUR TRIAL BUNDLE

To prepare our trial bundle we first need to create the structure. Easily create sections, sub-section and even volumes. You have complete control and can name the sections as you like. Need to make a change? Just double click! Bundledocs even offers the ability to create templates for your trial bundles which will save you even more time.

STEP TWO: ADD & NAME YOUR TRIAL DOCUMENTS 

Now that we've created the structure for our bundle, the next step is to add our trial documents. Using the upload button you can access your documents and upload them into your sections. You can upload documents from anywhere - your local pc, an online storage system (like Dropbox or Box); and we even have integrations with case/document management systems such as iManage, Tikit Partner for Windows, NetDocuments, Dropbox, Actionstep - to name just a few. Discover more about our integration partners.

STEP THREE: CUSTOMISE YOUR TRIAL BUNDLE

Now that we’ve created our sections and added our documents, we’re ready to customise our bundle to make sure it fits our firms house style, meets practice directions etc. There are many ways you can customise your trial bundle, however, if you need any help getting it just right then get in touch with our team.

Here are a few ways you can customise your trial bundle using Bundledocs:

Cover Page: Upload a custom cover page or let Bundledocs generate one for you.

Index Page: The days of manually creating an index page for your trial bundle is over. With a single click your index (or table of contents) page is created for you. It’s even hyperlinked too so you can quickly and easily search your casebook. Click and you're there!

Page or Bates Numbering: Paginating your trial bundle is done instantly. There are a number of ways you can customise it to make sure you get it just right.

STEP Four: DOWNLOAD OR SHARE ELECTRONICALLY

That’s it! When you are ready to complete your trial bundle, simply click the Generate button. Your bundle will be instantly available and can be shared electronically directly from Bundledocs, or downloaded, printed and saved. Do whatever works for you.


Interested to learn more about Bundledocs trial bundle software? We offer a free online demonstration where we take you through exactly how it all works. There’s no obligation and it only lasts about 15 minutes. Otherwise, we can get you setup with a FREE 30 day trial account so give it a try and see if it suits.

Can I Include Audio and Video Files in my Trial Bundle using Bundledocs? - Feature Focus

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THE PREPARATION OF TRIAL BUNDLES HAS NEVER BEEN EASIER. 

If you are tired of wasting time and effort creating trial bundles, then you need Bundledocs. For anyone that has not heard of Bundledocs before, then you're in for a treat.

Bundledocs is your one-stop-shop when it comes to preparing trial bundles or any type of document binder. In short, it makes the whole process quick and easy. Your index is created for you automatically, every page automatically paginated and prepared to the highest quality every time. It has everything you need from the preparation stages right through to delivery. 

Bundledocs is flexible enough to work with you so you can prepare your trial bundle just how you like it. In our recent Questions and Answers post - 'What types of documents does Bundledocs support?' - we explained that Bundledocs now supports all file types. So whether you are working with PDFs, Word, Excel, images, audio or video files, these are all supported and can be included in your trial bundle using our Generate as Source Zip feature. 

 
 

Following on from this, we wanted to highlight our 'Generate as Source Zip' feature and showcase how it can help you. 

  • With it you can upload all file types - including audio and video files.

  • Option to securely share files in their original format.

  • Option to generate your bundle as a zip file. This contains your completed trial bundle as well as all associated documents. Each available in their original format.

  • Option to download the zip file to your desktop or securely share directly from Bundledocs.

Want to give it a try for yourself? We offer a free 30-day trial so get started today. Already a Bundledocs user? Then access your account and grab a copy of our manual. It will take you through just how our 'Generate as Source Zip' feature works.