How much room should a Bates range leave for documents that get replaced or withdrawn later?

Why you should not reserve room, and what to do instead

The question implies that a Bates range should be padded with unused numbers to accommodate future changes, and the short answer is that it should not. Bates numbers are assigned sequentially to pages as produced, and leaving deliberate gaps in anticipation of later changes creates exactly the ambiguity the numbering system exists to prevent. Opposing counsel will ask what happened to the missing numbers, and the honest answer, that nothing ever occupied them, sounds worse than it is. Related: What exactly is Bates numbering and why do law firms rely on it for documents?

The better model is that the range is contiguous at the time of each production, and later changes are handled by convention: replacement pages keep their original number with a suffix or notation, withdrawn documents are replaced by a slip sheet, and new material gets numbers at the end of the last range. Room is created by rule, not by leaving holes. This is how firms and vendors have handled the problem for decades, and it keeps the record readable for anyone who comes to the case later. Related: How can a small legal team batch-stamp thousands of pages without losing a whole day?

Keep reading: What exactly is Bates numbering and why do law firms rely on it for documents?, How do you keep Bates numbering consistent across multiple separate document productions?, When should you apply confidential or privileged watermarks to a batch of documents?. See how PdfStampr helps you bulk pdf stamping and bates numbering.

Replacing a page or document with a corrected version

Corrections happen: a page was scanned crooked, an image was too dark, a redaction was applied to the wrong page, or a document was produced from the wrong version. When the corrected page is a one-for-one replacement, produce it with the same Bates number and a visible indicator that it is a replacement. Common conventions include a suffix such as a letter or the word replacement in the stamp, or a note in the production letter listing each replaced number. The key is that the original number is preserved so citations already made remain valid. Related: Why is it critical to preserve original files when stamping PDFs for a case?

When the corrected document has a different page count, the one-for-one approach breaks. A four-page document replaced by a six-page version cannot fit in four numbers. The usual solution is to produce the replacement with a new range at the end of the current sequence, mark the original range as superseded with slip sheets that point to the new range, and record the mapping in the production letter and the log. This preserves the history: anyone holding the original citation can follow it to the current version.

Withdrawing or clawing back a document

A privilege clawback or a withdrawal of inadvertently produced material means the document has to leave the production, but its numbers have already been used and may have been cited. Do not renumber. Instead, replace each withdrawn page with a slip sheet bearing the original Bates number and a short statement that the document has been withdrawn, with a reference to the clawback notice or privilege log entry. The other side is typically required to destroy or return the original pages, and the slip sheet is what remains in the production set.

Keep an internal record of exactly which images were withdrawn and when, separate from the production set. If the withdrawal is later challenged and the court orders production, you will need to re-produce the same pages with the same numbers, which is only possible if you kept the original stamped images. Store them with the matter's original files, clearly labeled as withdrawn, and never overwrite them with the slip sheets.

Keeping the production log as the source of truth

All of these conventions depend on a log that records every number ever assigned, what it currently points to, and every change. At minimum the log should track, for each Bates number, the document identifier, the production volume and date, the current status (produced, replaced, withdrawn, superseded), and a pointer to any replacement or superseding range. A spreadsheet is enough for small matters; larger matters keep this in the review platform or a vendor database. What does not work is relying on memory and production letters alone. Related: How do you keep Bates numbering consistent across multiple separate document productions?

When a supplemental production goes out, the letter should list replacements, withdrawals, and new ranges explicitly, and the log should be updated the same day. Before sending, reconcile the letter against the log and against the actual files in the volume, so that every number mentioned in the letter corresponds to a real slip sheet or page. That reconciliation is the last chance to catch a replacement that was stamped with the wrong number or a slip sheet that was never generated.