Affidavi / Notes / One shared caption

One caption, the whole record

Assembling motion records

A motion record repeats the same style of cause on its title page, its index, the notice of motion, the supporting affidavit, the draft order and the factum. Six places, one caption — and every one of them is a chance for it to drift.

Where captions go wrong

The parties, the court, the court file number: these should read identically everywhere in the record. Re-keyed by hand across several documents — often under time pressure, sometimes by different people — they don't always. A file number that is right on the notice of motion and transposed on the factum cover is exactly the kind of small, avoidable error that gets noticed at the worst possible moment, and it quietly undermines the impression of care that a well-assembled record is meant to create.

Enter it once

The fix is structural: the caption should be entered once and flow to everything that is generated from it. In Affidavi the matter carries the parties, the court and the file number, and the record takes them from there — the motion record's title page and captioned index, and the Affidavit of Documents' Form 30A, are all headed from the matter, so they cannot disagree with each other. The documents you draft yourself still deserve one read against the title page before the record is bound; the point is that there is now one place where the caption is right, and the record is built from it.

Related: See also: how to prepare an electronic motion record