The Case File

The clerk's one-page sheet

Print this page. Everything below it is the reasoning; this is the desk. The first column gives the tab and the sub-tabs it covers (M1–M9, firm records F; section 2); the second is the standard tab (1–15) that sets the clip and who is told; every clock here is an abbreviation of section 7, which is the authority.

1. The idea: a brown folder, three questions

A workers' compensation case file has always been an accordion folder with labeled tabs. Every piece of paper goes behind exactly one tab; the due items are clipped to the document; anyone can pick the file up and know where things are. The case file is that folder, and nothing more — incoming mail is only the most frequent way a document reaches it. For every document there are three questions:

Everything else — how the document is read, matched to its case, named, filed, verified — is procedure in service of those three answers. A piece that cannot be answered goes in the pocket (section 9) for a person; nobody guesses. Two words are used throughout: the queue is everything that has entered and is not yet filed; the pocket is the part of the queue the procedure could not finish, each piece with its reason.

Edition 2.0 adds what the folder always implied. Filing a document answers the three questions; it does not answer what do we do about it? That is an action (section 12) — offered when the document is filed, decided by the attorney, started by a person. And no two firms keep the folder alike: each firm's differences from this page — its tabs and names, its people, its earlier dates, its extra notices — are recorded as its policies and procedures (section 10) and applied through a rule for each kind of document (section 11). The clocks' law is never among the things a firm may change.

2. The folder: nine tabs over the fifteen

Edition 1.9 put fifteen tabs across the front of the folder. They were right about what goes together and how each kind of paper is clipped and reported, and edition 2.0 keeps every one of them. What changes is what the clerk sees first. The folder now opens on nine tabs, each named in the term of art the bar already uses for that part of a case — the applicant, compensability, medical treatment, UR and IMR, med-legal, the WCAB, settlement, indemnity and costs, correspondence — and the fifteen become the standard tabs beneath them: the sources of the sub-tabs, and the unit on which every clock, every "told" and every TYPE code in this standard is still defined.

The authorities in the second column say what the term of art means, so that a firm and a reader agree on what belongs behind the tab; they are not clocks (section 7 is). LC 3600(a) (liability "for any injury … arising out of and in the course of the employment"); LC 4600(a), (d) and 8 CCR 9785(a) (treatment the employer provides; the predesignated personal physician; the primary treating physician); LC 4610, 4610.5 (utilization review; independent medical review); LC 4062, 4062.2 (objection to a treating physician's determination; the panel); LC 4903 (the liens the Appeals Board may allow); LC 5814 (the increase for unreasonable delay or refusal). Each was checked on 2026-10-06 (section 20).

Codes and identifiers

Each of the nine tabs has a code, in the order the tabs stand across the folder: M1 Applicant, M2 Compensability, M3 Medical Treatment, M4 UR / IMR, M5 Med-Legal, M6 WCAB, M7 Settlement, M8 Indemnity & Costs, M9 Correspondence. A sub-tab's code is its tab's code and its place within that tab — M4.1 is the first sub-tab of M4 · UR / IMR, M6.13 the thirteenth of M6 · WCAB. Firm records are F, and their sub-tabs F.1, F.2, F.3. The pocket has no code: nothing is filed in it. The codes this page prints — in the clerk's sheet, the sub-tab table, the examples and Appendix A — are those of the standard's own order, the baseline a firm starts from.

So a firm that moves Deferrals & delays above UR determinations sees it as M4.1 from then on; every rule, filing and note that pointed to it still points to it, because each points to its identifier, not to "M4.2". A code printed on a page or written in a note is a reading aid for the day it was written; the identifier is the reference. A tab or sub-tab a firm adds gets an identifier the same way and takes its code from where the firm puts it.

The fifteen standard tabs: what goes behind each, what is clipped, who is told

The fifteen are unchanged in substance from edition 1.9, with the additions this edition makes marked in their rows. "Told" names a role; the firm's own people fill the roles (decision D5, section 18). "Produces" is the artifact the tab leaves behind besides the filed document. The first column gives the nine-tab home of each, and the sub-tabs it fills.

The sub-tabs

Each of the nine tabs is divided into sub-tabs — the dividers inside one section of the brown folder. A sub-tab is drawn from one standard tab, and the table below says which; that is how a document filed under a sub-tab is still clipped and reported exactly as edition 1.9 says. Three rules hold whatever the firm does with them:

The baseline: sixty-two sub-tabs across the nine tabs, and three under firm records, each with its code in the standard's order — the codes a firm's folder starts from and renumbers when the firm reorders (the identity rule, above). The number beside each is how many document kinds of the document list (Appendix A) sit under it; gap area marks a sub-tab that places work edition 1.9 had no divider for, and named area a sub-tab that gathers pointers to documents filed elsewhere.

The gap areas, placed

Five kinds of paper arrive on real files that edition 1.9 named nowhere, and four kinds of money work had no divider. Each is placed under one of the nine tabs; none needs a tab of its own. Each is filed as CORR unless its kind has a code of its own, and none carries a clock of its own in this edition beyond those section 7 already states.

Firm records: outside the nine tabs

Not everything about a file is a document of the case. A firm keeps its own working records about the file: an attorney's memo or initial file review, an internal case note, an e-service or e-filing confirmation, a fax confirmation, a saved EAMS or insurance-coverage search, a calendar invitation, a combined PDF the case system assembled, and the record of the file's retention and destruction. Edition 1.9 gave them no home, so they were filed as correspondence and, by CORR's rule, behind standard tab 4 — where they buried the letters.

Three sub-tabs hold the firm records: Made by the firm (a produced case report or chronology; the EAMS document cover and separator sheets), Notes & saved items (internal notes, an email saved to the case, calendar invitations, search results) and Transmission & system records (e-service, e-filing and fax confirmations; the system's combined PDF; the retention and destruction record). An email saved to the case is correspondence, not a firm record — it carries CORR — and a transmission confirmation is not a proof of service (a proof of service is POS, filed beside what it served).

The spine: the index, the chronology, and the original

A brown folder had three things that were not behind any tab: the index on the inside cover, the chronology a clerk kept beside it, and the knowledge of where the original of each paper actually was. The case file keeps all three — but none of them is a document a person maintains by hand. Each is derived from the file, because a hand-kept index is a second record, and a second record drifts.

What the filing note carries

The diary note written at step 9 is the file's narrative, and the spine is read from it. One note per filing, and it carries, in this order (nine lines in 2.0; 1.9 had seven):

3. Processing a document, step by step

This is the whole procedure. It is the same by hand and by machine; this page is enough for either.

1. Received: open the scan and check it is one document. Made or produced: one document by construction — go to step 2. A scan that changes letterhead, claimant, or date mid-way is two documents: it goes to the pocket, a person confirms the page where the second begins, the scan is cut there, and each part re-enters at this step as its own piece. Never file a two-document scan as one.
2. Read the document's own date. The date printed on the letter, report, or order — not the scan date, not the fax header, not a date of birth. A made document's date is the date it is signed or sent, never its draft date. If a received document carries no date, it is a pocket item.
3. Identify the case. Read the claimant's name, the claim number, the ADJ number, the date of injury, the employer, the carrier, the defense. Then, in this order:
   • An exact name, one case. The name on the document is exactly a client's name (a compound surname counts as exact) and that client has exactly one case: file it there — even with no other identifier on the document, and even where one disagrees. Every identifier that is missing or disagrees is written in the note as a finding (line 9: "Matched on: name only"; "the date of injury on the letter differs from the file").
   • Several cases, or a similar name. A client with more than one case, or a name that is close but not exact, is decided from the cases' facts — claim number, ADJ number, date of injury, employer, body part, carrier, defense — and checked: the fact relied on must be on the document, on the chosen case, and not on the others. A short name, a nickname, a near spelling or initials alone need a claim number, ADJ number or date of injury to file. Where the facts do not decide, it is a pocket item.
   • Two of the client's cases named. A document that itself names two of the client's cases (two ADJ numbers) is filed on each, each with its own note.
   • A possible new injury. A date of injury and claim number that match none of the client's cases: the document is filed on the client's case, and intake is asked whether to open a new one (section 12).
   • Closed cases count as cases; a closed case is matched exactly as an open one (section 9).
   A made or produced document knows its case; for it this step is a check, not a search. Filings made on a name alone are sampled each week (section 15).
4. Answer question 1 — the tab. Decide the TYPE code (section 5) from what the document is, never from its filename. The TYPE code decides the standard tab — or, for the few codes that list several, narrows it to those, and the row's own choice rule picks among them — and the document's kind (Appendix A) its tab and sub-tab among the nine.
5. Name it to the standard (section 4): YYYY-MM-DD_TYPE_Source_Descriptor_fNNNNN.ext. The name says what it is, from whom, when, and which file it belongs to.
6. Check the case before filing. Is the same document already there — same name, the same bytes under another name, or (a person's call) the same document in another scan — a mail copy and a fax copy never share bytes? File once. A second copy of the same letter is a note on the first filing ("second copy received by fax on …"), never a second filing and never a second clock.
7. File it to the case under its tab and sub-tab (in the case system: with the tag that belongs to that tab — section 17).
8. Answer question 2 — the clip. If the tab carries a clock, compute it from the date the clock runs from (section 7), create the calendar event or task, and write the due date on the filing note. Add the tasks and entries the firm's rule for the document adds (section 11).
9. Answer question 3 — who is told. Write one diary note on the case naming the filed document and the role that must see it; the case system notifies that person. Tell nobody where the tab says nobody — unless the firm's policies and procedures record an additional notice (section 10).
10. Produce the artifact the tab calls for: the IMR packet, the objection task, the contact update, the rating. An artifact that is itself a document (a packet, a rating) re-enters at step 2 as a made piece and is filed under the grammar. Offer the actions the firm's rule lists for the document (section 12); a person starts each one, and the attorney decides those that are decisions.
11. Verify. Open the case: the document is there under its name, the note is there, the event or task is there. Only then is the piece done. A piece that fails any step stays in the queue with the reason.

Processing time per piece by hand (not drafting or assembly time): two to five minutes where no clock is clipped (Tab 11 and the cover); ten to twenty everywhere else, where a clock or an artifact is produced.

4. The Document Naming Standard

Every filed document is named by this standard's grammar. One grammar, no exceptions but the departures a firm's policies and procedures record (section 10; decision D1) — and no filing name exists before filing: a received scan keeps its scanner name and the firm's draft its working name until the three questions are answered.

YYYY-MM-DD_TYPE_Source_Descriptor[_vNN][_pNNofNN]_fNNNNN.ext

A document the firm makes — from working name to filed name

A draft is not in the case file. It lives in the firm's drafting space under whatever working name its author gave it, and it enters the file at one event — the made event: the moment it is sent, filed with the Board, or signed. That event gives it its date and its filing name; nothing before it is filed.

Length and content

• Target 80 characters; hard maximum 120 (a common case-system display-name limit). The file number counts against both; where a name would run past the maximum the Descriptor is shortened — the file number is never dropped.
• Never in a name: the client's name (the case is the client), a claim number, an ADJ number, a Social Security number, the words "copy", "duplicate", "draft", "FINAL", "scan", or a person's staff name (a draft is an unsigned document; a later version is _vNN). Those belong in the filing note. The firm's file number (_fNNNNN) is the single exception, and the reason it is one is that it identifies the file, not the person: it is the firm's own index number, it discloses nothing about the injured worker, and it is what keeps a name meaningful once the document is outside the case system.
• Providers and carriers are named in the Source — that is what makes a med-legal report findable.
• A pattern's length limit applies to the name it produces, tokens filled.
• Two documents of the same date, TYPE and Source on one case that differ in kind get different Descriptors (Surgery vs Medication). If nothing distinguishes them, the second is _v02 — and a person confirms it is not the same document twice.

Patterns and tokens

A firm's rule (section 11) writes a document's name as a pattern of tokens. The standard's grammar, as a pattern, is:

{date}_{type}_{source}_{descriptor}[_v{nn}][_p{nn}of{nn}]_f{file}.{ext}

5. The TYPE vocabulary and its EAMS identity

The legal standard behind the names is EAMS — the DWC/WCAB electronic filing system's document types and titles, which EAMS validates on e-filing and JET filing. In an ADJ case a filer may use only four document types — LEGAL DOCS, LIENS AND BILLS, MEDICAL DOCS, MISC — and the title is selected from DWC's Document Titles List, never typed: a title not on the list is not accepted, and a document with no matching title is filed as MISC · CORRESPONDENCE-OTHER (8 CCR 10205.12(b)(3); EAMS e-form filers' guide, incorporated by 8 CCR 10206). A letter to the judge that needs immediate attention is filed under TYPED OR WRITTEN LETTER (it generates a judge task) — a CORR at Tab 2 with that title; ordinary CORRESPONDENCE-OTHER does not. Titles marked Board-issued are generated by the court; a filer may not use AWARD, ORDER or NOTICE OF INTENT. Each TYPE code below pairs with its EAMS document type and title, and where one exists, the DWC or WCAB form number as printed on the form. The pairing is why the same name works for the folder, the case system, and the Board. Checked 2026-08-28 against DWC's own title lists, guides and the forms themselves — section 20 names each. The Tab column gives the standard tab (1–15).

Gaps that remain, marked so they are added rather than improvised: med-legal scheduling paper (today QME/AME + Descriptor); money items (today BENEFITS/CORR + Descriptor); the judge's Report & Recommendation (today ORDER + Descriptor); a rating letter and an MSA (today CORR + Descriptor); the firm's demographics sheet, a chronology and a system-generated report (today CORR + Descriptor). Adding ML-SCHED, PAYMENT, RR, RATING, MSA, DEMO, CHRONO and REPORT is a change to the standard; a filing never improvises it. Edition 2.0 adopted UR-DEFER and UR-DELAY from this list, and FIRM-RECORD from the document list. It considered and did not adopt DISCOVERY (written discovery is CORR at tab 12, as the CORR row says — conflict K12), CLAIM (the claim form is BENEFITS at tab 1, as section 7's own table files it) and RECORDS (non-medical records obtained stay MEDREC, whose meaning includes records returned on subpoena).

6. Naming examples for every tab

All names below are fictional — Dr. Jane Roe as the treating physician, Dr. John Doe as the panel QME, Dr. Richard Roe as the AME, Applicant as the party, generic institutions, and f10482 as the firm's file number. In real filing the actual doctor and carrier go in the Source. Dates within a tab are consistent with each other; the tabs are independent illustrations, not one case. Rows are the fifteen standard tabs; beside each name is the sub-tab it is filed under (section 2).

7. The clocks

Every clipped item says which date it runs from. Section numbers are cited plainly for the attorney to verify; nothing here quotes statutory text, and every deadline is computed in California time. Tab numbers here are the fifteen standard tabs. A period in days excludes the day it runs from and includes the last; for an act under the Appeals Board's rules, a last day on a weekend or a day the Board's offices are closed moves to the next business day (8 CCR 10600(a)–(b); section 11 says how a rule computes it).

Clocks the firm's own documents start

A document the firm makes is filed under the same grammar and the same tab as anything received — and most of them start a clock rather than answer one. The clerk clips these the day the document goes out, from its sent or filed date; where the period is another party's or the Board's, the clip is a follow-up, not a deadline of the firm's.

What the firm makes is dated by its sent or filed date (section 4). The clip records that date beside the due date, so a follow-up can show what was sent and when without opening the document.

8. Rules that hold across every tab

The IMR packet — how Tab 8 becomes Tab 9

A UR denial or modification (Tab 8) is not only filed; it is appealed, and the appeal is a single document assembled from three tabs and the cover. The clerk builds it in this order and combines it into one PDF — one attachment, never several; that is a submission requirement of the review organization, not a preference.

8a. Rules from the Appeals Board's en banc decisions

These are rules the Workers' Compensation Appeals Board has stated en banc — binding on every panel and every judge (8 CCR 10325) — that bear on what a clerk does with a document, or on what the person told about it decides. Each is cited to the decision that states it, for counsel to confirm against the opinion. Legal information, not advice. In the law layer's terms (section 13) every row here is binding; a significant panel decision "involve[s] an issue of general interest to the workers' compensation community but [is] not binding precedent" (8 CCR 10325(b)) and would be labelled persuasive.

The rows in section 7 that are not en banc law — the UR/IMR clocks, the claim-denial presumption, the § 4062 objection, the strike statute — rest on the Labor Code and WCAB rules cited beside them.

9. The pocket: what a person decides

The pocket holds every piece the procedure could not finish, each with the reason. The reasons are few, and each has one answer:

A pocket that holds more than about one piece in twenty means a tab or a rule is wrong, not that the documents are unusual.

Closing and retention: what the tabs become when the case ends

A case closes when the last clock has run — the award is paid, the appeal window has passed, the liens are resolved — or when the firm withdraws or the client leaves. The file does not close with it. Documents keep arriving on closed cases, and some of them still carry a clock; a closed case is a status on the cover, not a reason to stop answering the three questions.

The retention period itself is the firm's rule and the bar's, not this standard's; the standard only requires that the period be clipped, that the longer period govern, and that destruction be a recorded act.

10. Policies & Procedures: what a firm may change, and what it may not

No two firms keep the folder the same way, and the standard does not ask them to. It asks that every difference be recorded. That record is the firm's Policies & Procedures: its policies — the decisions the firm has made about how it works, such as "UR denials and modifications are acted on within 5 days of receipt" — and its procedures — how each kind of document is handled, which is that document's rule (section 11). Together they are a versioned list of every way the firm's folder and rules differ from this page, each difference approved by an attorney of the firm, each one visible beside the standard's own line. The standard is the base; the firm's policies and procedures are laid over it; the rule for each document is what results. A firm that has recorded no policy and no procedure of its own follows the standard exactly.

Firm overrides

An override is a policy or procedure of the firm that changes what the standard would do with a document — never its law. Each records:

Two worked examples, fictional:

11. The rule for each document

Sections 2 through 9 say what the standard does with each kind of document. A firm's practice adds to it — its tags, its people, its earlier dates, its client letters. Edition 2.0 makes that addition a rule — the firm's procedure for the document, in the sense of section 10: one per document kind in the document list (Appendix A), written in a fixed format, so that any person or any conforming system reads the same rule the same way. The rule is what a clerk follows at steps 5 through 10 of the procedure. Where a firm has written nothing, the rule is the standard's line for that document and nothing more.

What a rule holds

A rule may be set on a tab or a sub-tab as well as on a document. A document's rule is the tab's, then the sub-tab's, then its own, each level adding to the one above. The firm's own lines may be replaced at a lower level; the standard's clips are never replaced, only added to.

The date rule

Every calendar entry and task carries one date rule, in this grammar:

date-rule   =  n  unit  ( "after" | "before" )  anchor
            |  "on"  anchor
unit        =  "days" | "business days" | "weeks" | "months"
n           =  0, 1, 2, …          (0 days after = the same day)
anchor      =  one of the anchors below

Who

A task or entry is for a role — the attorney, the case manager, the paralegal, bookkeeping — or for the case team (every role on the case) or the whole team (everyone in the firm who works the case). The firm's policies and procedures bind roles to people (decision D5). A person is named only there, never in the standard; and a task goes to a person, never to a shared login that cannot say who did the work (section 14).

The rule, machine-readable

A conforming system exchanges a rule in this form. The field names are normative; the values below are a fictional firm's rule for a UR denial or modification. Order of keys is free; unknown keys are kept, not dropped. Every id is a permanent identifier (section 2, the identity rule); every shown is the code and label for display, recomputed on export and never read as a reference.

{
  "standard": "AAI-STD 1", "edition": "2.0",
  "policies_procedures": { "version": 12, "status": "published",
                "published": "2026-10-06", "approved_by": { "role": "attorney", "person": "p-01" } },
  "document": {
    "id": "d-7f3k2q", "name": "UR denial or modification", "short": "ur-denial",
    "type": ["UR-DENIAL", "UR-MOD"],
    "tab":    { "id": "t-4c9e1a", "shown": "M4 UR / IMR" },
    "subtab": { "id": "s-2b81d0", "shown": "M4.1 UR determinations" },
    "standard_tab": 8,
    "file_name": "{date}_{type}_{source}_{descriptor}_f{file}",
    "tags": ["UR & IMR"],
    "calendar": [
      { "id": "c-91a4", "title": "IMR request: last day (10 if a formulary dispute — the attorney says)",
        "who": "case-team",
        "rule": { "n": 30, "unit": "days", "dir": "after", "anchor": "served" },
        "exception": { "n": 10, "when": "formulary dispute" },
        "authority": ["LC 4610.5(h)(1)", "8 CCR 9792.10.1"], "source": "standard" } ],
    "tasks": [
      { "id": "k-5e07", "title": "Decide on IMR for what was not certified",
        "who": "attorney",
        "rule": { "n": 5, "unit": "days", "dir": "after", "anchor": "received" },
        "authority": [], "basis": "firm practice", "source": "firm",
        "override": { "direction": "stricter", "of": "c-91a4",
                      "approved_by": { "role": "attorney", "person": "p-01" },
                      "approved": "2026-10-01", "reason": "act on every denial within a week" } } ],
    "told": { "roles": ["case-manager", "attorney"], "by": ["note", "email"] },
    "actions": ["imr-application", "notify-client"],
    "law": [
      { "cite": "LC 4610.5(f), (h)(1)–(3)", "kind": "statute",    "weight": "binding" },
      { "cite": "8 CCR 9792.10.1",          "kind": "regulation", "weight": "binding" },
      { "cite": "LC 4610(l)–(m)",           "kind": "statute",    "weight": "binding" } ]
  }
}

The same rule, as a person reads it:

Draft, publish, history, restore

12. Actions: what the firm does next

Filing a document answers the three questions. It does not answer the fourth, which is the reason the firm exists: what do we do about it? An action is the standard's name for the answer — a named chain of steps, owned by roles, ending in something produced: a packet, an objection, a petition, a letter to the client. The chains are the case book's (the procedure the firm works from, one chain per thing that happens in a case); this section fixes how an action is written down, offered and recorded, so that the file says what was done and who decided it.

What an action holds

A worked action: the IMR application

From the case book's chain "Treatment is refused" (a UR-DENIAL or UR-MOD, standard tab 8). Posture: they moved. Earliest move: open. Deadline: the IMR request, 30 days from service on the employee (10 for a formulary dispute) — LC 4610.5(h)(1).

Telling the client

One firm's thirty days of incoming mail showed that the first thing staff did about a document, far more often than making a task, was to call the client. The standard therefore makes client communication an action of its own, with its "how" written in the rule:

The actions this edition names

The firm may add its own. Each cites the law it rests on; where the case book or this standard marks a period unverified, the action says so.

13. The law layer

Every clip in this standard names its authority, and edition 2.0 extends that to everything a rule says: each document in the list, each line of each rule, each action names the statute, regulation or decision it rests on — or says plainly that it rests on none. That is what lets the file answer the question that matters when the law moves: what in our folder depends on this?

How an authority is labelled

Each citation carries the date it was last checked against the primary text, and where (section 20 is that record for this page).

The law index

A conforming system keeps, for every authority, the list of documents, rule lines and actions that cite it. It is derived from the rules — like the spine's index, it is a view, never a second list kept by hand. It is how a change to one section of the Labor Code, or a new en banc decision, finds every place in the firm's folder it touches.

When the law changes

A new en banc decision, a significant panel decision, an amended statute or regulation, a new DWC form: each is handled the same way, and nothing in the firm's folder changes until an attorney says so.

1. Identify. The change, its source, its effective date, and whether it is binding or persuasive.
2. Find what it touches. Through the law index: every document, rule line and action citing the authority changed — and, for a new decision, every one citing the provisions it construes.
3. Propose. A draft (section 11) with each proposed change beside the line it replaces, quoting the new authority, and saying what the change would do to clips already made.
4. An attorney decides. Approves, changes or declines each proposal — and the decision is recorded with who and when. A declined proposal stays in the history with its reason.
5. Publish. As a new version, effective from the date the law takes effect (not the date of publication, where they differ).
6. Re-check what is running. Clips made before the change are listed for a person; none is moved silently (section 11).
7. The standard itself. A change that alters this page's own text is a new edition or an erratum, recorded in section 19 with its evidence.

A worked case from edition 1.9: the Board's 60 days to act on reconsideration from transmission of the case, added to LC 5909 with a July 1, 2026 sunset by Stats. 2024, ch. 52 and re-enacted without one by SB 171 (Stats. 2026, ch. 83), effective July 13, 2026 — one statute, one row of section 7, two en banc decisions construing it, and the documents (petitions and the judge's Report & Recommendation) whose clips it governs.

Where to watch, informatively: the Appeals Board's en banc list and its significant panel decisions; the Legislature's code pages for the Labor Code; Title 8 of the Code of Regulations; the Division of Workers' Compensation's forms and announcements.

14. Attorney control and audit

A case file kept by rules is still the attorney's file. These principles say what that means for any system that keeps it, whatever it is built from.

15. Measuring the folder

Once a week, from the queue and the cases: how many pieces went behind each tab; how many landed in the pocket and why; how many clocks were clipped and how many were met; how long a piece took from entry to proof. The tabs that stay empty for a quarter are proposed for merger in the next version of the standard; the pocket reasons that recur become rules; a clock missed twice becomes a louder clip. The folder is a belief until it is measured.

Two measures are new in 2.0. Name-only filings (section 3, step 3) are sampled each week, and a person confirms or corrects each one sampled; a correction is made on the record (section 14). And for every task a rule makes: was it worked? A rule whose tasks are not worked is changed — in one firm's thirty days of mail, staff completed 62 percent of the tasks they made themselves and 4 percent of those a tool made for them automatically, and 70 percent of incoming documents drew no follow-up at all. A task nobody works is not a safeguard; it hides the ones that are.

16. Conformance: where it runs

A case-keeping system — or a clerk with a brown folder — conforms to edition 2.0 when it: (1) files every document to a place that maps to exactly one standard tab, or to firm records; (2) names it to the grammar, or to the pattern the firm's procedure records; (3) clips every clock of section 7 from the date the clock runs from; (4) tells the roles section 2 names, and records every notice the firm adds; (5) keeps the pocket, each piece with its reason; (6) proves every step on the case before calling it done; (7) keeps the firm's policies and procedures, their versions and its law index as sections 10 to 14 describe; (8) gives every tab, sub-tab and document a permanent identifier and an explicit order value, references each only by its identifier, and shows the codes as display order only (section 2, the identity rule); and (9) says which edition it follows. What a particular system writes, and how it proves it, belong to its own documentation, not to this standard. Conformance is measured by section 15.

Informative. Brown Folder, a case-folder application for California applicant firms, is a reference implementation of this edition. The standard does not depend on it.

17. How the case system carries it

Automated processing is held to exactly this page and to the same outcomes as a clerk: the same four checks before filing, the same pocket, the same proof read back from the case, the same note. A person approves every send and every pocket decision, and an attorney of the firm approves every rule.

18. Conflicts settled in this edition, and decisions for the editor

Before this edition was drafted, every source of filing practice the standard touches was set side by side — this page (1.9), the case book and its earliest-move companion, a rules engine built to 1.9, two firms' working rules, and one firm's thirty days of incoming mail — and nineteen places were found where they disagree. Each is settled below, or put to the editor. Decided means the operator of this standard has ruled and the text follows the ruling. Settled means the evidence decides it and the text says why. Decision for the editor means the text carries the best-supported answer, marked, with the other options beside it, until the editor approves one.

19. What changed from edition 1.9

Every change, with its reason. "The study" is one California applicant firm's incoming mail over thirty days (409 incoming documents, 266 of them followed for the work that came after), reported in aggregate only. Edition 1.9 remains published at /1.9.

Open after this edition (teiku): decisions D1–D6 (section 18); the remaining vocabulary gaps (ML-SCHED, PAYMENT, RR, RATING, MSA, DEMO, CHRONO, REPORT); non-medical records obtained still carry MEDREC (a RECORDS code was considered and not proposed); the reporter page for Dubon.

20. Verification record

Every citation carried from edition 1.9 was checked on 2026-08-28 against the primary text — the Labor Code, Code of Civil Procedure and Evidence Code at leginfo.legislature.ca.gov; Title 8 of the California Code of Regulations at dir.ca.gov/t8; the Appeals Board's en banc decisions; and, for the vocabulary, DWC's EAMS Document Titles List (Rev. 11/2017), the "Document type and document titles for ADJ cases" sheet (Rev. 9/2010), the EAMS e-form filers' guide (Rev. 2013-12, incorporated by 8 CCR 10206), the EAMS OCR handbook (Rev. 7/2012) and the form numbers printed on the DWC forms themselves. Nothing here rests on a secondary summary except two reporter page numbers, marked in the table. Counsel confirms before relying; legal information, not advice.

Every citation edition 2.0 adds or changes was checked on 2026-10-06, as the first three rows say. The Division of Workers' Compensation's and the Appeals Board's own pages (dir.ca.gov) were read directly. The Legislature's code pages (leginfo.legislature.ca.gov) refused automated reading that day, so the Labor Code sections were read from california.public.law's copy of the code; they are marked so, and counsel confirms them against the official text.

The Document Titles List is dated 2017 and the e-form guide 2013; no newer official list was found. Where the 2010 and 2017 lists disagree, the 2017 list governs here. If DWC republishes the list, section 5 is re-checked against it — a title is a fact about EAMS, not about this folder. The clocks that are not statutory periods (a supplemental request, a written-discovery response, a reply-by date, the award-payment check) say so and name who sets the date — the attorney, or for a reply-by date the case manager.

Appendix A. The document list

Normative. Every document kind this edition knows, under its tab, with its place (its sub-tab, by code in the standard's order — section 2; in a firm's folder the place is held by identifier, and the code follows the firm's order), its short name (the {document} token, section 4), its TYPE code (section 5), its standard tab (which sets its clocks and who is told, sections 2 and 7) and its variants — what its Descriptor distinguishes. "clock:" marks a clip of the kind's own; "act:" a response owed or someone told. 142 kinds: the 136 of the document list (v4) under the codes v5 assigned them, with UR-DEFER and UR-DELAY taking the deferral and the delay (section 5), and six gap-area kinds new in 2.0 (marked new).

How duplicates were resolved, so the list stays one list: a document gets its own entry only when the firm handles it differently — a different tab, a different clock, a different person told or a different response owed; everything else is a variant of one entry, under a real shared base name, and a close call stays separate. Each entry is one TYPE; where a kind could take two codes, the code the standard names for it decides (section 5), and a kind with no code of its own is CORR on the tab of its subject (decision D6).

M1 · Applicant

M2 · Compensability

M3 · Medical Treatment

M4 · UR / IMR

M5 · Med-Legal

M6 · WCAB

M7 · Settlement

M8 · Indemnity & Costs

M9 · Correspondence

F · Firm records

Not documents of a case

The firm's own blank forms and administration, never filed to a case: case-system administration (agreements, merge-field guides, test templates); blank civil complaint and answer forms; Labor Commissioner forms; letterhead, envelopes, labels and fax cover sheets; personal property receipts; probate forms; prospective-client letters; blank Social Security disability forms. The same paper received on a client's case is a document of that case (M6.13 Civil & other agencies; M8.4 Offsets).

Every clock, rule and EAMS title in this standard was checked against the primary text on 28 August 2026, and every one added or changed in edition 2.0 on 6 October 2026, as section 20 records; en banc rules are cited to the Appeals Board decisions that state them. Every name, doctor and party in the examples is fictional. Section numbers are cited for verification by counsel and are not legal advice.