Attaching large documents to a docket entry can be a tedious and frustrating process. To assist you, the court has created a new event called Additional Attachments to Main Document. The following procedure will assist you in filing attachments with fewer mistakes and upload failures.

Before we begin, here are some important facts to consider:

1. If you are scanning documents, make sure your scanner is set to 200 DPI. Resolutions higher than 200 DPI will only increase your file size and will not add value to the scanned image. A typical page of typed text scanned at 200 DPI will yield a 30 kilobyte PDF file. 1024 kilobytes equals 1 megabyte. A complex page with graphics and text will yield a larger PDF file of around 136 kilobytes.

2. ECF will not accept a PDF document that is greater than five megabytes in size. A 166 page document scanned at 200 dpi is about 5 megabytes in size. You will receive an error during the upload process and you will have to start over. Please check your file sizes before you begin. An efficient scan of your original document will save you hours of work.

3. You can attach several documents to a single docket entry. The sum of the complete entry may be greater than five megabytes but the individual PDF documents must be less than five megabytes. The first line in figure 1 below represents three attachments to a docket entry. Each attachment is less than five megabytes and the sum of their file sizes equals 7.3 megabytes. This entry will be accepted by ECF. The second line also contains three attachments and the sum of their file sizes equals 7.3 megabytes but this entry will be rejected because the file size of attachment No. 2 is greater than 5 megabytes.

4. This event was created to assist with the filing of large attachments. Do not use this event to submit a proposed order if you forgot to attach it to a previously filed motion. If you need to send a forgotten proposed order, contact the Clerk's Office in the appropriate division. They will instruct you to email or fax the Proposed Order to them.

5. LOCAL RULE CV-7 states that proposed orders should not include a date or signature block.

Additional Attachments to Main Document Procedure

(You can use this procedure for any docket entry that requires attachments. For this example, we will look at Motion for Summary Judgment.)

Let's say you have a Motion for Summary Judgment and you have the following attachments:

1. Your Proposed Order for Summary Judgment (without the date or signature block)
2. Exhibit 1 - Affidavit
3. Exhibit 2 - Excerpts from Deposition, Pages 1 & 7
4. Exhibit 3 - Graphs from Domestic Services Inc.
5. Exhibit 4 - Population Index from USPW 1994
6. Exhibit 5 - Deposition from Surprise Witness
7. Exhibit 6 - Excerpts from Deposition - Pages 2 & 6
8. Exhibit 7 - More Graphs from Domestic Services Inc.
9. Exhibit 8 - My Grocery List

If all of your attachments are small, you could docket the Motion for Summary Judgment and attach your proposed motion, all eight exhibits and go about the rest of your day. However, in real life, exhibit 3 is almost 5 megabytes and so is exhibit 4. Exhibits 7 and 8 are as thick as the Houston phone directory. You must break up this list or the system will probably time-out. The system will time-out if an upload takes longer than one hour.

So what do you do? Docket two events. The first event is the regular Motion for Summary Judgment. The second event is Additional Attachments to Main Document.

In a nutshell, you will docket Motion for Summary Judgment and attach your proposed order and first set of exhibits. You will then docket Additional Attachments to Main Document and attach the rest of your exhibits. If you have more exhibits, you will docket Additional Attachments to Main Document again. More exhibits? Docket Additional Attachments to Main Document again. You can docket Additional Attachments to Main Document as many times as you need to to file all of your exhibits. To avoid being timed out, remember the one hour time limit to upload files, attach no more than 4 or 5 large attachments to a single docket entry. The larger the attachments, the longer it takes to upload your files.

Step 1. Log into CM/ECF using your login and password.
Step 2. Click on the Civil button at the top of the CM/ECF screen. (Figure 2)
Step 3. Click on Motions (Figure 2)

Figure 2

Step 4. Select Summary Judgment (Figure 3)

Figure 3

Step 5. Enter your case number (Figure 4)

Figure 4

Step 6. Select the filer ( Figure 5)

Figure 5

Step 7. Browse and select your motion PDF file and click the Attachments to Document: Yes button (Figure 6)

Figure 6

Step 8. Your first attachment should be your proposed order. The first step on this screen is to browse for your proposed order pdf. The second step is to select 'Text of Proposed Order' and the third step is to click 'Add to List'. (Figure 7)

Figure 7

Step 9. The next attachment should be an index of the attachments that are associated with this event. Don't include your proposed order as one of the attachments. This index should only include the attachments that are part of this docket entry which is Motion for Summary Judgment. (Figure 8) You will need to create another index of attachments when you docket Additional Attachments to Main Document later. This index will assist you, other attorneys and the court quickly locate documents in the docket entry.

Figure 8

Please note that exhibits 5 - 9 are not listed in this index. That is because they are not part of this docket entry, "Motion for Summary Judgment". Exhibits 5 -9 will be part of the next docket entry "Additional Attachments to Main Document.". Exhibits 5-9 are really a part of your motion, but they need to be added later. Confused and want to jump ahead? Take a peek at figure 25 and you will see that the Additional Attachments to Main Document reference your motion.

Let's continue with the example.

Complete the following steps as shown in Figure 9:

1) Browse to the index pdf.
2) Type "Index" in the Description field.
3) Click "Add to List"

Figure 9

Step 10. Wonderful, you've finished attaching your proposed order and the index. Now all you have to do is attach each exhibit listed in your index as shown in Figure 10.
1) Browse to your attachment
2) Type "Exhibit 1" in the description field
3) Click the Add to List Button

Figure 10

Step 11. Repeat this step for the rest of your attachments. Make sure you change the description for each one. The next exhibit will be labeled Exhibit 2. See Figure 11.
1) Browse to your attachment
2) Type "Exhibit 2" in the description field
3) Click the Add to List Button

Figure 11

Step 12. Repeat step 11 for each exhibit. Don't forget to change the description number for each attachment. i.e. Exhibit 3, Exhibit 4 etc.
Step 13. The following figures, 12, 13 & 14 show the screens that you will see when you finish docketing this event.

Figure 12

Figure 13

Figure 14

Step 14. The first docket entry, Motion for Summary Judgment is finished. Figure 15 illustrates how it will appear on the docket sheet. You can see how important it is to place a good description of the attachments in the description field. You can see that attachment 1 is the Text of Proposed Order, attachment 2 is the index of the exhibits, and the rest are exhibits 1 - 4.

Figure 15

Step 15. You still have four more exhibits that you need to attach to the motion of summary judgment. You will now docket Additional Attachments to Main Document. The main document in this example is the motion for summary judgment. It is document number 13 in this case. The document number is displayed in the first column of the docket sheet. See figure 15 above.

Step 16. Click on the Civil link at the top of the CM/ECF menu. This will display the Civil Events menu. Click on the Other Documents link under the subtitle Other Filings. (see figure 16)

Figure 16

Step 17. Select Additional Attachments to Main Document. (see figure 17)

Figure 17

Step 18. You will be prompted for the case number. (see figure 18)

Figure 18

Step 19. Your main document for this event will be the index of exhibits you will be attaching with this docket entry. Do not attach the same index you created for the last docket entry. For this example, it will list exhibits 5 - 8. (see figure 19). Browse to your index and attach it to your entry. (see figure 20)

Figure 19

Figure 20

Step 20. Begin attaching your exhibits. Just as you did in the previous docket entry, make sure you type a good description in the description field. Click Add to List to continue. (see figure 21)

Figure 21

Step 21. Repeat step 20 until all of the exhibits for this docket entry are added. Don't forget to change your description for each exhibit. (see figure 22). After you've finished adding your attachments, click the Next button.

Figure 22

Step 21. You should be viewing the screen shown in figure 23. Click the Refer to existing event(s) check box and then click the Next button.

Figure 23

Step 22. Click on the original document that these attachments are referencing. (see figure 24) and click the Next button.

Figure 24

Step 23. Great! You finished docketing Additional Attachments to Main Document. Figure 25 shows what the docket sheet will look like. If you have more documents that need to be attached to the original motion for summary judgment, go back to step 15 and docket Additional Attachments to Main Document again. You will need to attach a new index with the list of exhibits that will be part of this new entry. Repeat steps 15 -22 for each set of attachments that are a part of your original motion until all of your attachments are added.

Figure 25