Rule 7A:7.Filing Format and Procedure.

Rule 7A:7 sets the physical format for paper filed in General District Court. Outside of electronically filed cases, pleadings, motions, briefs, and other documents filed under the Rules or Virginia statutes must be 8-1/2 by 11 inches, and typed material must be double-spaced except for quotations. That size and spacing rule does not apply to tables, charts, plats, photographs, and similar material that cannot reasonably be reproduced on standard paper.

A paper that does not comply is not turned away. Rule 7A:7(b) directs the clerk or judge to accept it, but they may require the party to redo it in the correct format and substitute the corrected version for the one originally filed. Counsel must certify that the substituted paper is identical in content to the paper first filed, so reformatting cannot become a way to change what was submitted.

Rule 7A:7(c) covers General District Courts that have adopted electronic filing under Rule 1:17. Any proceeding can become an Electronically Filed Case with the consent of every party, and once it does, pleadings, motions, notices, and other instruments generally follow Rule 1:17’s electronic formatting, service, and filing requirements instead of the paper-based ones.

Some documents still need a paper original preserved even in an Electronically Filed Case. When a sworn or verified pleading, a contract or deed, a prenuptial or settlement agreement, a check or other negotiable instrument, a handwritten statement or waiver in a criminal case, a signed criminal-case form, or a document that cannot be converted into a clear electronic image gets filed, the filing party must tell the clerk that the original has to be kept. That list protects documents whose evidentiary value depends on the physical original, even as the rest of the case moves electronically.