Orange County trial document templates
Not legal advice. Rules checked against the code on August 20, 2026. Verify every date yourself. Read the full disclaimer
Core CCP rules were checked against Westlaw (via CoCounsel legal research) on August 20, 2026. County local rules are paraphrased summaries. Individual department and judge standing orders are included only where the court publishes them and we have read the document, so assume your own department has requirements beyond what you see here. Verify every date against the operative code sections, your court’s rules and your department’s own order before relying on it. Using this site creates no attorney-client relationship.
9 documents, 25 required sections, taken from Superior Court of California, County of Orange’s own published rules and read 2026-09-14. Each one downloads as California pleading paper with this court’s required sections already placed, so the document cannot silently omit one.
A blank template is easy to find anywhere. What is hard to find is which sections this court requires inside the document, because that lives in a local rule nobody indexes. Every heading below is cited to the subdivision it came from, and the rule’s own sentence prints beside it in the reference sheet so you can check your work.
Download these as templates
The reference sheet below carries everything this court requires, each rule quoted from its own text and cited to the subdivision. The pleading paper templates are temporarily down while the line numbering is rebuilt, because the rail did not line up with the body text and a pleading whose lines cannot be cited is worse than no template at all.
Your details optional, blanks print as ruled lines
These stay in this browser. They are not sent anywhere, and the file is built on this machine, so a case name never reaches our server.
- Settlement Conference Statement
- Settlement Demand
- Response to Settlement Demand
- Motions in Limine
- Statement of Compliance
- Joint Trial Notebook
- Joint Exhibit Notebooks
- Notebook of Opposed Motions in Limine
- Pretrial Conference Brief/Statement
What each document has to carry
Settlement Conference Statement
Prepared jointly. Lodged, no later than five court days before the mandatory settlement conference. Applies to all civil cases set for a mandatory settlement conference. OCSC Rule 316(B)
- Settlement Conference Statement on the form adopted by the court
- A Settlement Conference Statement in the form adopted by the court
- Execution by all parties
- Lodging with the Clerk's Office no later than five court days before the mandatory settlement conference
Settlement Demand
Prepared by plaintiff. Served only, at least 5 days before the mandatory settlement conference. Applies to all civil cases set for a mandatory settlement conference. OCSC Rule 316(F)(1)(b)
- Written settlement demand served before the conference
- A settlement demand served on all defendants and cross-defendants
- Proof of service attached to the demand
Response to Settlement Demand
Prepared by defendant. Served only, no more than five days after receipt of the settlement demand. Applies to all civil cases set for a mandatory settlement conference. OCSC Rule 316(F)(2)(c)
- Written response to the settlement demand
- A response to the settlement demand served on plaintiff and cross-complainant
- Proof of service attached to the response
Motions in Limine
Prepared by each party. Filed, exchanged at the Issue Conference at least 14 days before the date set for trial, then filed no later than noon on the Wednesday before trial. Applies to all civil cases over $35,000 set for trial. OCSC Rule 317(A)(6)
- All motions in limine, exchanged at the Issue Conference
- All motions in limine a party intends to bring, exchanged at the Issue Conference
- Filing of the exchanged motions no later than noon of the Wednesday before trial
Statement of Compliance
Prepared jointly. Filed, no later than noon on the Wednesday before trial. Applies to all civil cases over $35,000 set for trial. OCSC Rule 317(A)(8)
- Statement of Compliance executed by all counsel and self-represented parties
- A Statement of Compliance on local form L-0081
- The signature of every counsel of record and every self-represented party
- Filing with the court clerk in the department of the judge to whom the case has been assigned for trial
- Filing no later than noon of the Wednesday before the date set for trial
- Stipulations of fact and of exhibit admissibility or foundation
- Stipulations to all facts amenable to stipulation
- Stipulations to the admission of and/or foundation for as many of the trial exhibits as possible
- Joint Statement of the Case to be read to prospective jurors
- A Joint Statement of the Case to be read to prospective jurors
- Joint Witness List
- Each witness, excluding impeachment and rebuttal witnesses
- A brief description of who each witness is
- A time estimate for the direct examination of each witness
- A time estimate for the cross-examination of each witness
- Joint List of Controverted Issues
- Every issue to be determined by the Court rather than by a jury
- Any issue on which the parties fail to all agree it is uncontroverted, listed as controverted
- Proposed voir dire questions for the Court
- Any proposed voir dire questions for the Court to include in its voir dire
Joint Trial Notebook
Prepared jointly. Delivered to the clerk, by noon on the Wednesday before trial. Applies to all civil cases over $35,000 set for trial. OCSC Rule 317(B)
- Table of Contents
- Table of Contents
- Copies of the operative pleadings
- The operative complaint
- Answers
- Cross-complaints, if any
- Answers to cross-complaints
- Joint Statement of the Case
- Joint Statement of the Case
- Joint Witness List
- The Joint Witness List with the information set forth in Rule 317A(4)
- Two separate courtesy copies of the Joint Witness List for the Clerk
- Stipulations
- Stipulations of fact
- Stipulations on exhibit admissibility and/or foundation
- Stipulations as to anything else relevant to the trial
- Joint List of Controverted Issues
- Joint List of Controverted Issues, as set forth in Rule 317A(5)
- Joint Exhibit List
- Joint Exhibit List
- A column for indicating whether each exhibit has been marked
- A column for indicating whether each exhibit has been entered
- Two separate courtesy copies of the Joint Exhibit List for the Clerk
- Proposed Jury Instructions
- All stipulated instructions
- Non-stipulated instructions proposed by each party
- All proposed special instructions
- A separate courtesy copy provided separately to the Court
- Proposed Verdict Forms
- Proposed Verdict Forms
- Trial briefs
- Any trial briefs
- Proposed voir dire questions
- Any proposed voir dire questions for the Court to include in its voir dire
- Motions in limine, with oppositions and replies
- Any motions in limine exchanged at the issue conference
- All then-filed oppositions
- All then-filed replies
Joint Exhibit Notebooks
Prepared jointly. Brought to the conference, on the date set for trial. Applies to all civil cases over $35,000 set for trial. OCSC Rule 317(C)(1)
- Two complete sets of exhibit notebooks brought on the trial date
- Two complete sets of Joint Exhibit Notebooks
- No notebook exceeding 3 inches
- An original set for the witness, pre-marked with Court Exhibit tags
- One set for the Court
- A discrete number on each exhibit
- Exhibit numbering that matches the Joint Exhibit List
Notebook of Opposed Motions in Limine
Prepared jointly. Brought to the conference, on the date set for trial. Applies to all civil cases over $35,000 set for trial where a motion in limine is opposed. OCSC Rule 317(C)(2)
- Separate notebook of opposed motions in limine
- A separate notebook containing all opposed motions in limine
- All documents relevant to each motion grouped together
- Each group ordered motion, then opposition, then any reply
Pretrial Conference Brief/Statement
Prepared by each party. Brought to the conference, brought to the pretrial conference, if the court sets one. Applies to limited civil cases of $35,000 and under. OCSC Rule 332(C)
- Material facts and damages
- The material facts
- The damages
Start with the joint documents
5 of these are prepared jointly: Settlement Conference Statement; Statement of Compliance; Joint Trial Notebook; Joint Exhibit Notebooks; Notebook of Opposed Motions in Limine. A joint document needs a meet and confer before it can be filed, so it sets the real deadline even though the filing date is the same as everything else.
When each one is due
Most of these do not run off the trial date. They run off the issue conference (ocsc local rule 317(a)). orange county does not use the phrase "final status conference" or "trial readiness conference" anywhere in its civil rules. a discretionary "pre-trial conference" may be added or substituted by the assigned judicial officer, and complex civil departments schedule a "pre-trial conference" separately., which the court sets, and counting back from trial instead is the commonest way one gets missed. The full rule list for Orange County carries every rule with its quoted text, and the trial countdown calculator computes the statewide CCP chain.
How these were built
Every rule was researched from the court’s own published text, then checked a second time by a reader told to assume a rule had been invented. Grouping those rules into the documents a court actually wants was a further pass, and an adversarial check corrected it: the commonest error was a document whose contents the first pass left empty while the rule enumerated them. Templates are generated in your browser, so nothing you type is sent anywhere. See methodology.
Related: All courts with templates · Orange trial binder rules · Trial countdown calculator