Are your documents in the right format?

  • Unitised Individual PDFs - Each document provided to Opus 2 should be a standalone document e.g. an email and two attachments should be sent as three separate documents, two different reports should be sent as two individual PDFs even if they have been referenced as one exhibit.
  • Native Files - Any documents which cannot be converted to PDF should be provided in their native format e.g. Excel files, audio files, CAD drawings. If any of the files are in excess of 2GB per file, please speak to us so that we can run through some further considerations with you
  • OCR'd Optimised PDFs - All PDF files should have Optical Character Recognition (OCR) run over them so that the text can be highlighted and is fully searchable. Files should also be saved as optimised PDFs to ensure that they will load as efficiently as possible on the platform. Please speak to a member of the team about the cost and time implications if you cannot provide your documents in this format.
  • De-duplicated - We recommend only uploading a single version of each document to the platform to ensure that notes are only made on a single version of the document. This ensures your team are working on the same document and also that any references are made to the same version, enabling you to fully utilise our hyperlinking functionality.


How do you provide an index / load file?

  • Indices / load files should be provided in Excel format. The names of the files you are providing (both PDFs and natives) must match the name in the filename column exactly. We then ask that you fill in the document name, bundle and tab columns as a minimum.
  • You can then populate as much or as little further information as you wish. Further metadata fields that could be included are date (in the format 'DD/MM/YYY' or 'DD/MM/YYYY hh:mm'), document ID and sender/recipient information for emails.
  • Further information on preparing your documents and guidance on load files can be found here.


How do you paginate an electronic bundle?

  • Standard pagination is formatted as Bundle/Tab/Page and is assigned to each document upon upload.
  • For electronic bundles, each document is paginated internally (with each document restarting at page 1) so sequential page numbers are not necessary when documents have a unique bundle and sequential tab reference. e.g. A/1/1-5, A/2/1-6, A/3/1-3 instead of A/1/1-5, A/2/6-11, A/3/12-14.
  • If a hard copy bundle already exists and is being relied upon, please speak to us about the implications for the electronic bundle and the further information we may require.


Other considerations

  • It will take us about a day to set up your workspaces after all signed proposal(s) have been returned and we can provide a completion estimate based on document count and upon receipt of a sample load file.
  • Are there any confidentiality restrictions that we need to be aware of? This may impact the structure of the bundle so please let us know if this should be considered at the outset.
  • Do you have any foreign language documents? Please speak to us about how you can pair up the translation and original document, as well as how OCR works for foreign language documents.
  • How are your references to supporting exhibits currently formatted? Please see our referencing guide here.