Exhibit List

• Author: Leonard H. Bucklin
• Pages: 143-156

9. Exhibit List

The Exhibit List section will be constantly used. That is why the tab divider for the

Exhibit List is placed behind the sheets you will ordinarily have open when examining a

witness. Do not file the exhibits themselves here. This is a list, not the exhibits.

Before trial, the purpose of the exhibit list is to organize your thinking as to:

(1) what exhibits you will need to bring to the deposition or trial to use,

(2) what exhibits the other parties will have available for use, and

(3) where the battles will be on admission of exhibits.

At trial, the form serves as:

(1) your index to exhibits, so you can quickly find a particular exhibit, whether

it is in the boxes behind your counsel table or in the stack on top of the clerk’s

desk, or refer to an exhibit by number without a break in your stride of words.

Those abilities will make you stand out as better prepared than most attorneys.

(2) your cross-reference between deposition exhibit numbers and trial exhibit

numbers. You may be the only person able to state for the record and help the

judge and jury by helpfully telling them that what was referred to in the video

deposition to be played to them as “Exhibit 63” is not the trial exhibit 63, but

rather the “trial exhibit number 84, which I am holding here. May I show it to

the jury, judge?”

(3) your checklist of items that were actually offered, and which were actually

received into evidence. As an item is offered, check it off as offered. If an item

is received, check it off as received.

§9.1 Avoiding Omissions

Malpractice rears its ugly head if you brought a necessary exhibit to court but over-

looked offering it into evidence. The provided exhibit list form prevents sins of omission.

Review the form list behind the “Exhibit List” tab before you announce to the court

that you have rested. It is effective in front of the jury to state to the court before resting:

“I need a minute to look at the checklist of items received into evidence, your honor.”

Then announce to the court, “We have everything to prove our case into evidence and

can stop now. The plaintiff/defendant John Smith rests.”

(Rev. 5, 7/09)

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