Northern District of Texas Blog

Here are five practice tips that may be of use in the New Year:

1. When drafting documents, electronically highlight any areas that need to be filled in later.  Don’t just leave them blank with a “______.”  We’ve seen several filings with Courts or discovery responses that have “______” in them and it’s because nobody proofread the “final” document.  It’s much less likely that someone will file or serve a document with highlights in it because even a quick review of the document shows that the document is not final.
2. Don’t only send important documents (e.g., letters) to opposing counsel by e-mail.  If the document is important, also send it by fax, FedEx/UPS, and/or certified mail, return receipt requested.  You’ll want to be able to prove that opposing counsel received it.  Also, materials cannot be served by e-mail under the Federal Rules (see Fed. R. Civ. P. 5(b)(2)(E)) unless opposing counsel consented in writing to e-mail service.
3. When electronically filing documents with the Court or serving discovery responses on opposing counsel, etc., print the document to pdf.  Don’t print out the document to hard copy and then scan it.  Printing to pdf, instead of printing out a hard copy of the document and then scanning it, has several advantages, including that the printed-to-pdf document (i) looks cleaner, (ii) takes up less space (some scans can take up to 10MB or more of space), and (iii) is text searchable.
4. Don’t “reply all” to an e-mail without making sure everyone who will be receiving your response is an intended recipient.  We’ve seen opposing counsel in a number of occasions hit “reply” and send us e-mails that were meant for their internal teams.
5. Spend the 10 minutes it takes to learn how to scan (or photocopy) a document and send a fax.  There’s a good chance that your support staff won’t always be around when you need them.