When a witness is making and signing their statement, they will have in front of them a copy of each document they refer to in the statement. They will identify the document by description and usually also by an exhibit mark - a prefixed number - e.g. "...the letter I sent him on 25th March 2024: I refer to the letter marked PMJ6". The exhibit mark might be in the form PMJ6 (the 6th exhibit referred to in the statement of Paula Mary Jones) or in some documents, such as a Statement of Case, there might be a reference in the form Resp8 (the 8th document listed in the Respondent's statement of case). As a consequence of seeking to avoid duplication in the eventual eBundle, and of seeking to place a single copy of each document in its logical position, a copy of each document referred to in a statement will not immediately follow the statement in the eBundle: a single copy will be in the appropriate position in a chronological section elsewhere within the eBundle. So there is a need for document references in statements to be hyperlinked so that the user of an eBundle will be able to easily go to each referenced document as they read through each paragraph of a statement. The guidelines for many courts and some other tribunals stipulate that there should be such hyperlinks in the eBundle.
Inserting hyperlinks manually can be a laborious task particularly if there are many statements and each statement refers to many documents. I am told (October 2025) that an automatic hyperlinking feature is planned for the Litigation Ready system but as of now (or if you are not using Litigation Ready or a system with similar facilities) then it is possible to instead hyperlink automatically using the "create links from bookmarks" feature in ordinary PDF software. Not all PDF software has this facility. PDF X-Change Editor does, but Foxit PDF Editor and Adobe Acrobat, for example, do not. How to create hyperlinks automatically using PDF X-Change Editor is explained below.
In order to be able to hyperlink automatically you need to ensure that each document within the eBundle which is referred to in any statement has its exhibit mark or other reference in its bookmark. There can be more than one exhibit mark/reference in a document's bookmark, each one separated by spaces, if the same document is referred to in more than one statement with different exhibit marks/references.
Ensure that each exhibit mark appears in a bookmark. You can do this by adding exhibit marks to the document name before in whatever document management system you are using to generate the eBundle. If you are using the Bundledocs system, or another system which has options to customise the fields shown in bookmarks, another way of achieving this is to enter exhibit marks/references in another field of each document (such as the Custom Text field in Bundledocs) and specify that that field should be included in bookmarks.
Choose Bookmarks - Create Links and in the panel select Use Bookmarks... all bookmarks, untick Create links on top of others tick Match only full words
Choose a page range which just includes witness statements - not any other documents nor any index pages in the eBundle.
Enter a Match Text Pattern. This should match the format of the exhibit marks used so, for example, if all exhibit marks are in the usual format of three capital letters followed by a number you could use ([A-Z][A-Z][A-Z]\d+)\s
Tap OK.
Note You might come across the situation where one statement uses references which are not suitable for automatic hyperlinking. For example an exhibit might have contained multiple documents. In this situation although the above procedure will not add hyperlinks in that particular statement, you can, as a second best, after doing the above procedure to add hyperlinks to other statements, use an alternative method for the statements in question so that the reader, when reading through the statement in the eBundle, can use the Find function to locate documents referred to as they read through the statement.
It is common for documents accompanying a Statement of Case to be referred to in the statement with just a number and that means that each side's statement of case will be using the same numbers to refer to different documents. In order to ensure that the hyperlinks being added to a statement of case link to the right documents the bookmark of each referred-to document needs to include an identifier for the referring statement as well as the number. For example if the Applicant's statement of case uses numbers to refer to documents then the documents referred to could have in their bookmarks:
App-1
App-2
App-3
etc.
And the bookmarks of documents referred to in the Respondent's statement of case could have Resp-1 Resp-2 Resp-3 etc. in their bookmarks.
If a statement of case refers to document just by number there is the potential problem of document numbers being confused with other numbers which happen to be mentioned in paragraphs of the statement of case, such as in dates, so anything which can identify when a number in the text is a document number and when it isn't is useful. Those drafting statements of case normally do add some identifying feature in the text. For example document numbers are sometimes distinguished by being preceded by an abbreviation such as Ref followed by a single space followed by the number and in this case Ref should be reflected in bookmarks as well e.g. App-Ref 2 (where Ref is separated from 2 by a single space). Another method a statement of case might use would be to have numbers within brackets when referring to documents e.g. [1] [2] [3] etc. or (1) (2) (3) etc. in which case bookmarks can formatted to take account of this - e.g. App-[1] App-[2] App-[3] etc.
Choose Bookmarks - Create Links and in the panel select Use Bookmarks... all bookmarks, untick Create links on top of others tick Match only full words
Choose a page range which just includes the pages of the Applicant's statement of case - not any other documents nor any index pages in the eBundle.
Enter a Match Text Pattern of App-(\w+)\s or, if brackets are used or, if numbers are prefixed by an abbreviation such as Ref, patterns like the following may be appropriate App-(\(\w+\))\s or App-(\[\w+\])\s or App-(Ref \w+)\s
Tap OK and hyperlinks will be added to the document numbers in the text.
Check whether document numbers in the list at the end of the statement of case have also been hyperlinked. Often the brackets or prefix used in the text to distinguish document numbers is not used in the list because the list typically has headed columns. So it may be necessary to do another Create Links operation just for the page or pages containing the list using a match text pattern which targets just bare numbers. For example if you used App-(\[\w+\])\s for the text of the statement of case you could use App-\[(\d+)\]\s for the list at the bottom. This may mean that some dates and other numbers on the list page may also be hyperlinked but you can then delete the superfluous hyperlinks using Home - Add/Edit Links.
Repeat the above process for the Respondent's statement of case using a match text pattern of e.g. Resp-(\w+)\s and a page range which includes the pages of the Respondent's statement of case only.
Note Using a prefix naming convention such as Resp-1 Resp-2 etc. for documents referred to in the Respondent's statement of case) is normally suitable and unambiguous but not always. For example you might have a situation where two legal cases are being heard together so that each litigant is the Applicant in one case and the Respondent in the other case. In such situations, in order to provide clarity, you may need to use a longer prefix which more explicitly identifies the type and author of the referring document. For example:-
JJS-App-(3) for a document referred to as 3 within the Applicant's statement of case of litigant John James Smith
PMB-Resp-[R7] for a document referred to as R7 within the Respondent's statement of case of litigant Paul Martin Baker
PMB-App-A5 for a document referred to as A5 within the Applicant's statement of case of litigant Paul Martin Baker
JJS-Resp-26 for a document referred to as 26 within the Respondent's statement of case of litigant John James Smith
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This information page is designed to be used only by clients of John Antell who have entered into an agreement for the provision of legal services. The information in it is necessarily of a general nature and will not be applicable to every case: it is intended to be used only in conjunction with more specific advice to the individual client about the individual case. This information page should not be used by, or relied on, by anyone else.
The information on this page about specific computer techniques is provided for information purposes only. Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that the information is accurate and up to date at the time it was written but no responsibility for its accuracy, or for any consequences of relying on it, is assumed by me. You should satisfy yourself, before using any of the techniques, software or services described, that the techniques are appropriate for your purposes and that the software or service is reliable.
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