Hyperlinked e-briefs: from citation to exhibit page in one click

What a hyperlinked submission is

The ICC Commission’s 2022 report on leveraging technology in arbitration describes e-briefs as briefs with embedded links to the exhibits, testimony and legal authorities they cite, and notes that they have become increasingly common as proceedings went paperless. In the survey behind the report, 57 % of respondents said that before the pandemic they had always, often or sometimes used hyperlinked submissions, e-briefs or e-bundles.

In practice the term covers three set-ups:

• Linked submission plus exhibit files. The memorial or brief is a PDF whose citations open separate exhibit files delivered in a fixed folder structure.
• One combined file. Submission and exhibits are merged into a single PDF with internal links. Easy to deliver, but heavy and slow once there are hundreds of exhibits.
• Hyperlinked index only. No links in the text, but an index whose entries open each document. This is the minimum the English e-bundle guidance requires, and the “consolidated hyperlinked index” ICSID’s model Procedural Order No. 1 asks for at the end of the written phase.

The ICC report uses “e-brief” and “e-bundle” interchangeably. In English court practice an e-bundle is the paginated PDF hearing bundle to which the other hearing documents refer.

Linking citations to exhibit pages

A link is only as good as its target. Each citation should open the page that supports the proposition, not the first page of the exhibit.

Two decisions shape everything else. The first is whether citations refer to the exhibit’s own pages or to bundle pages. Exhibit pages are fixed from the day of filing, which is why arbitration practice cites “C-41, p. 3”; bundle pages exist only once the hearing bundle is compiled, and the Commercial Court Guide asks for chronologies to be cross-referenced to the bundles.

The second is how links address other files. Use relative links (“Exhibits/C-0041-ENG.pdf”), never paths to your own drive or document management system, which break on the tribunal’s computer. ICSID’s model order makes the same point from the other side: for the hyperlinked index to work, the whole case file must sit in one folder and be uploaded as a single ZIP file.

PDF requirements

The English guidance on electronic bundles and the model orders used in arbitration converge on the same technical points:

Page labels

A PDF can carry page labels: the page numbers a viewer displays, independent of the page’s physical position in the file. Labels let an exhibit with a cover sheet show “1” on the first page of the document itself, or let a bundle display “C245”. They help the reader, but they do not replace the computer-generated page numbers the English guidance requires, and not every viewer shows them.

Test the finished file in at least two PDF viewers, one of them on a tablet. Link behaviour and page-label display differ between applications.

What tribunals and courts expect

International arbitration. No institutional rule requires an e-brief. Whether to file one, when, and in what form is commonly fixed in Procedural Order No. 1 or agreed later. ICSID’s model order for the 2022 Rules asks for text-searchable files, a cumulative index with every pleading and, at the end of the written phase, the entire case file with a consolidated hyperlinked index; its Annex A fixes the file names. The ICC report suggests that tribunals weigh cost against benefit before ordering e-briefs: with few documents, linking by hand is cheap; with many, software makes it practical.

English courts. The General Guidance on Electronic Court Bundles of 29 November 2021 applies to court hearings, subject to court-specific guidance and directions: PDF, computer-generated pagination from page 1, a hyperlinked index, bookmarks and OCR. The Commercial Court takes only electronic bundles unless the judge asks for paper, and wants a separate index to all the hearing bundles, hyperlinked if possible. Details are in our guide to court bundle requirements in England.

Building the e-brief: a workable sequence

1. Freeze the exhibit numbering. Every renumbering after linking means re-linking.
2. Fix the folder structure and file names to the procedural order, and zero-pad numbers (C-0041) so files sort in order.
3. OCR every exhibit and authority, and check poor scans by eye.
4. Link from the final text of the submission, to the page of each pinpoint rather than to the document.
5. Add bookmarks to every exhibit and bundle, and a hyperlinked index.
6. Sign last, if a signature is required: later changes to a signed PDF are flagged by readers or invalidate the signature.
7. Test the package as the recipient will receive it, on another computer.

Reply on the Merits-ENG.pdf
Consolidated Hyperlinked Index.pdf
Exhibits/C-0041-ENG.pdf
Authorities/CL-0012-ENG.pdf
Witness Statements/CWS-2 Jones-ENG.pdf

“C-41, p. 3”  opens  Exhibits/C-0041-ENG.pdf, page 3

Checklist before filing

1. Every citation in the text carries a link, and none points to a draft or a withdrawn exhibit.
2. At least one pinpoint per exhibit has been opened and checked, plus every pinpoint into a re-signed statement.
3. All links are relative: no path contains a drive letter, a user name or a document management reference.
4. Every document is text-searchable.
5. Bookmarks name each document (“C-0041 – Board minutes, 12 March 2019”).
6. The index is hyperlinked and matches the file names.
7. File names follow the procedural order, including any language suffix.
8. The package fits the delivery route: justice.gov.uk addresses accept 36Mb of attachments in aggregate; ICSID’s model order notes that the World Bank server does not accept e-mails over 25 MB.
9. Metadata and comments are removed, and redactions remove the text instead of covering it.
10. After unzipping on another computer, the index and a sample of links still work.