Preparing a Book of Authorities BC: A Print-Ready Guide for Court of Appeal Filings

Most Books of Authorities look finished when they arrive for print.

But then a few small things show up right away. A case was added after the page numbers were set. Tabs were still being revised. The Table of Contents no longer matches the final file.

That’s usually where the stress starts.

Not because the legal work is wrong. Just because the book wasn’t fully production-ready yet.

If you're putting together a Book of Authorities for the BC Court of Appeal, here are the details worth checking before you send it to print.

Start with the authorities you actually cited

A Book of Authorities should include the authorities referred to in the factum.

One thing that catches people off guard is that it’s not enough to pull just the excerpt you want to rely on. The book should include the full authority, not only selected passages or headnotes.

From a print standpoint, that matters because partial inserts and last-minute additions often cause pagination issues later.

Lock your page numbering before anything gets printed

Page numbering sounds simple, but it’s one of the easiest ways for a book to unravel.

Pages need to be numbered sequentially, placed at the top centre, and the Table of Contents has to match that numbering exactly.

This is where things often go sideways:

• a case gets added after numbering

• authorities are rearranged late

• one revised document shifts everything behind it

Once the book is printed and comb-bound, fixing that usually means going backward, not forward.

Build the Table of Contents from the final version

The Table of Contents should come from the final, locked file.

Not the near-final version. Not the version before one more case was added.

If the page numbers in the TOC don’t match the actual book, the problem usually isn’t discovered until someone is checking the set right before filing. That’s not the moment anyone wants surprises.

A clean TOC makes the whole job easier to verify before binding.

Tabs are a bigger deal than they seem

Each authority needs to be separated with tabs.

That sounds straightforward, but tabs are one of those details that become messy fast when the file is still changing. If the authority order shifts, the tabs shift. If case names are shortened one way in the factum and another way in the book, it creates confusion.

Best practice is to make sure:

• The tab order matches the Table of Contents

• The tab wording is final

• No one is still moving authorities around once tabbing starts

It saves a lot of rework.

Don’t highlight or underline the text

This one surprises people.

For a Book of Authorities, text should not be highlighted or underlined. If attention needs to be drawn to a paragraph, black vertical lines in the margin can be used instead.

It’s a small rule, but it’s one of those formatting details that’s easy to miss if someone is marking up the book quickly before print.

Confirm the physical format before production starts

Before sending the file out, it helps to confirm the physical specs are already settled.

That includes:

• Cerlox plastic comb binding

• a maximum of 500 pages per volume

• a full Table of Contents in each volume

• volume numbering on the cover if there’s more than one

• sequential page numbering continuing across volumes

Cover colour matters too:

• Joint book: grey

• Appellant: buff

• Respondent: green

These are easy details to manage early. They’re much more annoying once production has already started.

Don’t forget you’re producing multiple finished sets

For filing and service, you’ll need five copies.

That means five complete sets with covers, tabs, pagination, and binding all matching.

So if one detail changes late, it doesn’t affect one book. It affects all of them.

That’s usually the part people underestimate.

A quick check before you send it to print

Before you hand off your Book of Authorities, make sure:

• the authorities match what’s cited in the factum

• the file includes full authorities, not just excerpts

• pagination is final

• the Table of Contents matches the final numbering

• tab order is locked

• volumes are planned properly

• the correct cover colour has been chosen

When those pieces are settled early, the printing part is usually smooth.

It’s when the file still feels “almost done” that things start to drag.