Legal stationery / blue backing

I permit comments on this weblog, and sometimes a comment appears on a really old post. I’m not sure what to do about this cry for help in a comment to an entry on June 11:

Does anyone know where I can buy blue backing in Los Angeles? My e-mail address is …

I have omitted the email address to avoid it getting harvested, but it’s under that entry.

Now, however, at least I know what blue backing is, after asking someone who worked for a lawyer in California.

It’s a sheet of thin card slightly larger than a brief (old BE pleading) that California local rules require the brief to be attached to. For more information read on (but I haven’t found an email address to order it at – any office supplies store should do). Colour is not necessarily blue. Structure of card allows room for personal taste. It’s laid under a document for the court (brief/pleading) so that it projects by 2 cm at the bottom. The upper edge is folded forward and the whole thing is stapled or bound in some way at the top – but without punching holes, which would be felt to be unaesthetic.The problems of local rules are described in an article by Debra A. Geiler on the PLRI website:

Los Angeles requires blue backing. Los Angeles Superior Court Rule 9.2(f) requires that every “Attorney Generated Document” shall be attached to a “blue back” which serves as a document tab. This seems to be a good rule. It makes identification of documents very easy and in a court as large as Los Angeles maybe this rule does indeed serve a truly local condition.

And from a very nice article on the everyday trials and tribulations of filing for divorce in California by someone seemingly called Davis – I think this is an orphaned site so it may be worth downloading more before it vanishes but more details on the Send me a Buck Page:

You’d think in the State of California there would be one rule for all Courts – WRONG. Some localities have added some of their own. A particularly STUPID LOCAL RULE for LA County is that each filing must have BLUE BACKING, which means that a piece of light blue paper must be stapled over the top half inch of the paperwork, folded over the top and come down beyond the papers about an inch on the bottom and have typed what the papers are for. i.e., ‘ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE regarding Modification of Child Support’…
Some Counties have a STUPID LOCAL RULE that certain papers must be a certain color – INCOME & EXPENSE papers must be green, ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE pink or some such nonesense.
Sorry, but you’re going to have to check with your local Court to see what STUPID LOCAL RULES they favor…

2 thoughts on “Legal stationery / blue backing

  1. I am in San Diego and I am trying to find out how the blue backing paper looks and where can I get it??? Which stationary store?? Please HELP I need to file Amended complaint with LA Central District Court.

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