Sonoma County trial document templates
Not legal advice. Rules attested September 29, 2026; last full pass August 17, 2026. Verify every date yourself. Read the full disclaimer
Each verified rule carries its own date on the methodology page, all of them September 29, 2026: the date the maintaining attorney last attested it. The last full pass, signed off on August 17, 2026, checked the rules against their official sources (the code, the California Rules of Court, or for court holidays the Judicial Council calendar), with the exceptions listed on the about page. Rules still awaiting sign-off are listed on the methodology page as not yet verified. 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.
6 documents, 14 required sections, taken from Superior Court of California, County of Sonoma's own published rules and read September 14, 2026. 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
Every document below comes out on California pleading paper, 28 numbered lines down the left, with this court's own required sections already placed as headings. Take the Word version to draft in and the PDF to print. Fill in your details once and they carry across every template on the site.
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.
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- Settlement Conference Statement
- Pretrial Documents
- Proposed Jury Instructions and Verdict Forms Delivered to the Judge
- Trial Brief
- Opposition to Motion in Limine
- Additional Proposed Jury Instructions on Questions of Law Arising from the Evidence
What each document has to carry
Settlement Conference Statement
Prepared by each party. Served only, no later than five court days before the date set for the settlement conference. Applies to civil cases in which the assigned judge sets a mandatory settlement conference. Sonoma County Super. Ct. Local Rule 4.6, second paragraph
- First page identifying block and pre-conference settlement notice
- The date of the settlement conference, typed on the first page of the statement
- The time of the settlement conference, typed on the first page of the statement
- The location of the settlement conference, typed on the first page of the statement
- Notice to the pro tem panelist if the case settles before the conference
- Notice to the appropriate settlement conference coordinator if the case settles before the conference
Pretrial Documents
Prepared by each party, except the witness list, the estimate of the length of the trial and the neutral statement of the case, which the rule makes joint. Filed and served, with endorsed copies delivered to the chambers of the assigned judge, by 3:30 p.m. on the sixth court day before trial, or as otherwise ordered by the court. Applies to all civil trials. Sonoma County Super. Ct. Local Rule 4.10(D)
- Proposed voir dire questions
- Any proposed voir dire questions the party requests the judge to ask prospective jurors
- Proposed jury questionnaire
- Any proposed jury questionnaire
- Joint witness list
- All witnesses to be called
- Alphabetical order
- An indication of which party intends to call each witness
- Any anticipated issue concerning a witness that might require the court's attention, including scheduling problems, health issues, security, and interpreter needs
- Joint estimate of the length of the trial
- A joint estimate of the length of the trial
- Joint neutral statement of the case to be read to the jury
- A joint neutral statement of the case to be read to the jury
- Motions in limine
- All motions in limine
- Deposition testimony designations for unavailable witnesses
- Identification of all deposition testimony the party intends to offer in evidence on the ground that the witness is unavailable to testify at trial
- Designation by witness
- Designation by date or volume
- Designation by pages and lines
- List of requested CACI instructions by number
- All requested California Civil Jury Instructions (CACI) by number
- Numerical order
- Titles
- List of proposed CACI and special jury instructions with wording
- All proposed CACI jury instructions
- All special jury instructions
- All proposed wording
- Proposed verdict forms
- All proposed verdict forms
- Signed Trial Orders of the Court
- Signed copies of the Trial Orders of the Court
- Those provisions to which the parties have stipulated
Proposed Jury Instructions and Verdict Forms Delivered to the Judge
Prepared by each party. Lodged and served, six court days before the first day of trial, and in every event before the first witness is sworn. Applies to jury trials only. Sonoma County Super. Ct. Local Rule 4.10(G)(1)
- Contents of the packet delivered to the judge
- All proposed jury instructions on all applicable law disclosed by the pleadings
- All proposed verdict forms
- Format and assembly of the packet
- Printed in black ink
- Each proposed instruction on a separate piece of paper
- No identification of the requesting party or any party or counsel in the case on the instruction
- Assembled in a packet with a face sheet listing every requested instruction and who requested it
Trial Brief
Prepared by each party. Filed and served, with an endorsed filed copy delivered to the assigned judge, by 3:30 p.m. six court days before trial, if one is submitted at all. Applies to all civil trials, encouraged but not required. Sonoma County Super. Ct. Local Rule 4.10(F)
The rule cited above requires this document and does not say what goes in it. That is the rule's silence, not a gap here. Your department's order is where the contents will be.
Opposition to Motion in Limine
Prepared by each party. Filed and served, with an endorsed filed copy delivered to the assigned judge, by 3:30 p.m. three court days before trial. Applies to any case in which a motion in limine has been filed. Sonoma County Super. Ct. Local Rule 4.10(D)(6)
The rule cited above requires this document and does not say what goes in it. That is the rule's silence, not a gap here. Your department's order is where the contents will be.
Additional Proposed Jury Instructions on Questions of Law Arising from the Evidence
Prepared by each party. Lodged and served, before closing argument begins. Applies to jury trials only, and only for questions of law that were not disclosed by the pleadings. Sonoma County Super. Ct. Local Rule 4.10(G)(2)
The rule cited above requires this document and does not say what goes in it. That is the rule's silence, not a gap here. Your department's order is where the contents will be.
Start with the joint documents
One of these is prepared jointly: Pretrial Documents. 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
These run off the trial date itself. The county rules set no conference for them to run off, so count each deadline back from trial. The full rule list for Sonoma 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.
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