Bates numbering, explained

If you've been told to "Bates-stamp the production" and nodded while opening a search engine, this is the short version of everything the instruction assumes you know. If you already know it and just need the job done, the free Bates numbering tool stamps a PDF in your browser without uploading it anywhere.

What it is

Bates numbering gives every page of a set of documents a unique, sequential identifier, typically a party prefix plus a zero-padded number, like ABC000001, ABC000002, and so on across the entire production. Once stamped, "see ABC000147" identifies exactly one page in the case, forever, regardless of how the documents are later reordered, split, or excerpted. The name comes from Edwin G. Bates' 1890s rotary numbering machine; the ink stamp is gone, the convention survived the move to PDFs intact.

Anatomy of a Bates number

• The prefix identifies the producing party or matter: ABC, SMITH, DEF-HR. Keep it short and stable across the whole case.
• The number is sequential and zero-padded to a fixed width, conventionally six digits. Padding makes numbers sort correctly and cite cleanly; 000147, never 147.
• A suffix is optional, used for confidentiality designations (-CONF) or versioning. Most productions don't need one.

Some examples of what that looks like in practice:

• ABC000001: the common shape, a three-letter party prefix and six digits.
• SMITH-000042: a hyphen after the prefix, which reads more easily aloud and in citations.
• DEF-HR0000317: a prefix narrowed to a source or custodian, useful when one party produces from several systems.
• ABC000198-CONF: the same number carrying a confidentiality designation.

Any of these is fine. Pick one shape and hold it for the whole case, because the width of the number is what makes the set sort correctly.

"Bates" or "bate"? Stamping, numbering, or labeling?

Bates, with the s. It's a surname, so bate stamp and bate numbering are misspellings. Common ones, and nobody will misunderstand you, but the s is correct.

Bates stamping, Bates numbering and Bates labeling all name the same operation. Stamping is the older and more physical word, and it survives in litigation-support usage; numbering is what most software calls the feature. Strictly, a Bates number is the identifier and a Bates label is the mark printed on the page, but in practice the two are used interchangeably and no one will correct you.

The practical rules

• One number per page, never reused. Even blank pages get numbers. If a document is produced twice, it gets a new range; the old number is never reassigned.
• The sequence continues across batches. If your first production ended at ABC000250, the next begins at ABC000251. Track your last-used number; continuing a range is a standard feature of stamping tools.
• Placement is bottom-right by convention. Courts don't mandate it, but reviewers expect it, and stamps must not obscure content.
• Stamp copies, not originals. The Bates-stamped set is the production set; keep the unstamped originals.

Bates numbers vs. page numbers

Page numbers restart with every document and describe position: "page 3 of 12." Bates numbers never restart and describe identity: "this exact page, in this case." A 40-document production has forty "page 1"s but exactly one ABC000147. If you just need ordinary pagination, that's a different tool.

A note on confidentiality

Discovery productions and privileged correspondence need stamping constantly, and they are the last documents to hand to an unknown server. Fortunately the operation is purely mechanical. Nothing about it requires someone else's computer, so for sensitive material there's no reason not to Bates-stamp the PDF on your own machine: set the prefix, digit width and starting number, and the file never leaves the browser.