PDF requirements for e-filing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

What the court requires

CM/ECF will not accept a single PDF over 10 MB. A filing can have at most 10 attachments, each 10 MB or less. An appendix usually has to be split into parts. If you would need more than 10 attachments, or one part cannot get under 10 MB, the court's guidance says to submit the entire appendix as one PDF on CD or DVD instead.

The 2nd Circuit hears appeals from federal courts in New York, Connecticut, Vermont.

Common reasons filings are rejected

• A joint appendix was uploaded as one PDF over 10 MB.
• The appendix was split into more than 10 attachments.
• One part of a split appendix is still over 10 MB, usually because of high-resolution color scans.
• The PDF is password-protected or has security restrictions, so the court's system can't open it.

Questions about the 2nd Circuit's PDF rules

What is the maximum PDF file size for the 2nd Circuit?

10 MB per PDF. A filing can include at most 10 attachments.

What should I do if my PDF is too large for the 2nd Circuit?

Split it into consecutive parts that are each under 10 MB, never cutting a page in half, and file the first part as the main document and the rest as attachments named in order (for example "Exhibit A, Part 2 of 3"). For scanned documents, re-scanning in black and white at 300 dpi often shrinks the file enough to avoid splitting. Docket Prime can split the file for you in your browser.

Does the 2nd Circuit require text-searchable PDFs?

The published rules we found don't require it. Documents saved directly from a word processor are searchable and much smaller than scans; for paper documents, OCR adds searchable text.

What page size does the 2nd Circuit accept?

Letter size (8.5 × 11 inches) is expected. Legal-size or A4 pages may print badly or be refused, so resize them to letter.