Loading documents to a Document Management system

Introduction

If there is a civil legal dispute which has resulted, or may result, in litigation, you can use a document management system such as Bundledocs or eBrief Ready to store copies of relevant documents which you may find on your computer or phone, or in your paper files, or elsewhere. The system provides a convenient repository for the document copies and allows lists of documents and indexed eBundles of documents to be produced as required.

The document management system will have a number of options which you can set to make it work the way you want it to. You will want dates to appear in the usual British format, rather than the North American format, for example. See here for typical options used with the Bundledocs system, for example. See here for typical options used with the eBrief Ready system.

Then to load a document to the bundle, sign on to the system (which you should be able to do from any device - phone, tablet or computer), tap on the case, tap the Add Documents (or equivalent) button and navigate to the document to be uploaded. Alternatively you may be able to simply drag and drop the document into the system.

Columns

When you first display a list of documents in the system there should be a Document Date column and a Document Description (or Document Name) column which you need to ensure are filled in correctly.

Document Date column

The system often sets the Document Date column for a document automatically using, for example, date-taken metadata in a jpg photo or the date/time metadata in an email but there are some document types where an electronic "original" does not exist (e.g. paper documents which you are only now scanning in where the original is paper not electronic) and in these cases you may have to type in the date of the original document as shown in the document itself. This is explained further below where it applies.

For documents such as deeds or letters there will just be a date but for timed documents such as JPG photos the time will need to be shown. Some systems include time in an extended date field. If you are using a system which does not specifically cater for time you can add the time of a timed document at the start of its Document Description.   

Generally dates are best displayed in this format 15 Sep 1956 so choose this if you have the option. 

Document Description column    

The Document Description you type in should be concise but should be sufficient, with the Document Date, to enable anyone to identify the document as shown in the example below.

Loading Paper Documents

To load a paper (or card) document, scan it in as a PDF with a descriptive name including date like this

Letter Smith to Jones 21 Sep 2020.pdf

and load the PDF by tapping the Add Documents button.

Note: always use a three letter short form for the month as shown in the example above, rather than e.g. 21 Sept 2020 or 21 September 2020,  so that the system will automatically recognise the date, and fill in the Document Date column.  

If a document is bound - e.g. a report -  and you can only scan one page of the document at a time, your scanner software should allow you to combine several scans into a single PDF which you can then load. Before loading, open the PDF and check that all pages are the right way up: if any are not, rotate them until they are and save. If your scanner software does not allow you to combine scans in a single PDF you can produce a PDF for each scan and then merge the PDFs into a single multi-page PDF using standard PDF software (e.g. PDF X-Change Editor) before loading. This should be done before loading. Don't use any "merge" facility which your document management system may have (why?).

If the paper document is a letter with documents enclosed you should scan in the letter and each attached document as separate PDFs. Load the letter PDF first, then load the enclosed documents immediately afterwards. In some systems you can load the enclosed documents as sub-documents like this:

21 Sep 2020         Letter Smith to Jones   

If the system you are using does not allow sub-documents you can load the documents like this:

  Document Date                          Document Description 

21 Sep 2020         Letter Smith to Jones   

If the document is a card photo see here for more detailed instructions.

Loading JPG Photos 

To load JPG photos, you sign on to the system using the phone where the photos are and load the JPGs by tapping the Add Documents button. See here for more detailed instructions. 

Loading Emails

Download the emails to your device as EML or MSG files then load those EML/MSG files as illustrated in the video below.

The video above shows emails being downloaded from Gmail on the web. If you are using a different email system then there may be other ways of downloading emails. 

When subsequently loading you need to ensure that the system shows the time as well as the date for each email. This may involve temporarily setting some option.

For each email you have loaded you need to edit the Document Description to include the word Email, the sender and perhaps the first recipient name and/or the Subject as shown in the example below.

If any of the emails you are loading have attachments, they may appear in the document management system just as pages within the overall email document, or, alternatively, they mighty appear in the document management system as sub-documents like this:- 

If they do appear as sub-documents you don't need to (and generally should not) edit the filenames in the Document Description for attachments: just leave them with the names they had when they were sent by email - Letter and Contract in the above example - so that they continue to match the names of attachments as stated in the header of the email message. 

Loading Instant Messages

Systems for sending instant messages - e.g. SMS text messages or WhatsApp messages - typically do not have any facility to download individual messages (unlike email messages which can each be downloaded as individual EML or MSG files) but you can scroll to a message on your phone screen and take a screenshot. 

The method used to take a screenshot on a device depends on what model it is but on iPhones it is usually pressing the home button and power button at the same time. On Android devices it is often pressing the volume down button and power button at the same time. The screenshot takes a JPG or PNG image of what the phone's screen is displaying at the time. You can capture more than one screen's worth of text by, when taking the screenshot, pressing the "scroll down" button.

Note that if a particular text message is quite long, the messaging app you are using might initially just display the first 10 lines, for example, followed by ...Read More. In this case, of course, you need to tap on "Read more" so that the entire message is displayed before doing a screenshot.

If you are capturing more than about 5 or 6 landscape screen's worth of messages (less if captured in portrait) the type will become too small to easily read if fitted into a single A4 page so you then need to convert the JPG or PNG file to a multi-page PDF. To do this, send the image file to a computer, open the image file with a PDF program (such as PDF X-Change Editor) and "print it" to a multi-page PDF specifying the Tile All Pages option with an Overlap of, say, 1 cm.  Specify a Page Zoom sufficiently high so that most of the width of A4 is used.  Specify a filename which includes the date and time of the first and last message the PDF contains e.g. Messages between Smith and Jones 13 Jun 2023 13.51 to 18.41 

It is important that the text of the messages is sufficiently large to be clearly read, but not enormous, so you may need to experiment to get it right. If you turn your phone to the horizontal position before taking the screenshot you will end up specifying a lower Page Zoom to fit it to the width of A4 and so the text characters will be smaller, for example. 

Some messaging apps show the time and date on the first message of each day but for subsequent messages, later on in the day, only show the time. In this case you might need to capture the first message of the day, even if it is not itself relevant, in order to be able to demonstrate the date of those messages which show only the time. 

Some messaging apps display the date of recent messages as "Today", "Yesterday", "Tuesday", "Monday", etc. and only display the full date for messages over 7 days old. In this case, if you want to capture messages less than a week old, you would need to wait until they are over a week old in order to capture the full date.

Load the PDF by tapping the Add Documents button.

Note: as well as allowing text messages to be sent, most messaging services allow files to be sent which usually appear as thumbnails (which can be tapped to download the file). It will usually be necessary to load the file separately using whatever method is appropriate for the file type.

Loading Documents obtained from Public Sources

You may be able to obtain some relevant documents to load from public sources

Loading Other Documents

There are some particular things to bear in mind about loading certain document types from your phone, tablet or computer.

Checking the documents' descriptions once you have loaded them

Check the Document Description and amend as necessary for each document you have loaded. 

When checking the Document Description of a document you will probably need to view the contents of the document. When typing in the Document Description, the objective is that the description should be concise but should be sufficient (in combination with the Document Date) to enable anyone to identify the document.

So, as an example, in the case of an email a concise description would indicate that the document is an email and give the names of the sender and recipient:

If there is only one person with the surname Smith and only one person with the surname Jones you can shorten the Document Description to Email Smith to Jones, but don't use just initials - Email JS to PJ - as the  Document Description you enter is the name which will eventually be seen by the judge (in the Hearing Bundle), if there are legal proceedings, and needs to be readily understandable. If the sender or recipient is a company with a long name such as The Blue Arrow Company (United Kingdom) Limited you can abbreviate this to e.g. Blue Arrow but don't use just initials unless, perhaps, the initials are very well known such as M&S or BT.

Check dates as well   

It is worth checking, at the same time as you check the Document Description for each document, both the Document Date and that the time is included where appropriate - e.g. for JPG photos. It is sometimes the case that only the month and year of a document is known (e.g. a Google Street View image) and in that case only month and year should be shown.

Sort into date order

Invariably chronological order is the best way of organising documents in a section. The system you are using may do this automatically or you may need to tap a button to do this).

Consider using a bookmarked PDF bundle to double check

When you think each document has the correct date and description you might want to go through all the documents in sequence to do a double-check. The quickest way to do this might be to generate a PDF bundle of documents  bookmarked with the date and description of each document and use that to do the checking, clicking on each bookmark in sequence.

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 June 2025. Disclaimer