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 a prefixed number - e.g. "...the letter I sent him on 25th March 2024: I refer to the letter marked PMJ21". The prefixed number might be an exhibit mark in the form PMJ21 (the 21st document referred to in the statement of Paula Mary Jones) or it might be in the form R12 (the 12th 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 most courts and other tribunals require each mention of a prefixed number in statements to be hyperlinked to the relevant document within the eBundle so that the user, when reading through a statement within the eBundle, can quickly bring up each document referred to.
Hyperlinking manually can be a laborious task particularly if there are many statements and each statement refers to many documents. If you are using the eBrief Ready system it has an automatic hyperlinking feature - you create a spreadsheet cross-referencing document names to exhibit marks and eBrief Ready does the rest.
If you are not using eBrief Ready then it is possible to hyperlink automatically using ordinary PDF software as 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 prefixed number at the beginning of its bookmark. There can be more than one prefixed number in a document's bookmark, each one separated by a single space, if the same document is referred to in more than one statement with different prefixed numbers. Usually you don't want the prefixed numbers to remain in the bookmarks - they are just there temporarily to facilitate automatic hyperlinking and are not needed once there are hyperlinks (and keeping prefixed numbers in bookmarks risks making some bookmarks excessively long so that line wrap affects readability).
The instructions below explain how to hyperlink automatically using PDF X-Change Editor. Other similar PDF software can be used but the detailed instructions will be different for other PDF software.
Ensure that each prefixed number in a bookmark is followed with a single space. If you are using Bundledocs, enter the prefixed numbers in the Custom Text field of each document and specify a Bookmark Description Source Code (Document) starting with @Customtext when generating the eBundle PDF.
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 and 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 of ^\b([A-Z]{2,3})(\d{1,2})\b and tap OK to hyperlink based on the first (or only) prefixed number in each bookmark. Then choose Bookmarks - Find and Replace and in the panel tick Match Case and Use regular expressions. Use a Find What of ^(\b[A-Z]{2,3}\d{1,2}\b)\s(.*) and a Replace with of $2 then tap OK to remove the first prefixed number from each bookmark.
Repeat step 2 as many times as is necessary to process all exhibit marks. For example if some bookmarks have as many as four exhibit marks you need to do step 2 four times to process all the exhibit marks. You can tell that you have done it enough times when you just get the "no changes were made" error message when doing Find/Replace.
Note 1 If some documents are referred to - e.g. in a statement of case - using a prefixed number where the prefix is a single letter - e.g. R1, R2, R3, or A1, A2, A3 etc. - then you can use the same procedure as above but using ([A-Z]{1,3}\d{1,2}) instead of \b([A-Z]{2,3}\d{1,2})
Note 2 You might come across the situation where one statement uses references which are not suitable for automatic hyperlinking. For example a Statement of Case might not have document references in the text but just have a numbered list of the documents referred to at the end. Or a Statement of Case might refer to documents in the text just by a number 1, 2, 3, etc. so that any attempt at automatic hyperlinking based just on a digit would pick up too many random occurrences. 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, automatically add sub-bookmarks named with a prefixed number under the bookmark for the statement in question so that the reader, when reading through the statement in the eBundle, can tap on each sub-bookmark in the bookmarks pane to the left as they read through the statement.
Disclaimer
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.
This page was lasted updated in April 2025. Disclaimer