In litigation, a paper copy of a document filed with the court that the filing party sends directly to the judge's chambers. The judge's individual rules, the court's local rules, and the court's e-filing or Case Management and Electronic Case Filing (CM/ECF) rules typically set out whether a filing party must submit courtesy copies to chambers and, if so:

Counsel typically must stamp the words "Courtesy Copy" on the face of each document sent to chambers.

Attorneys also use the term courtesy copy when they send copies of court-filed documents to the other parties in the case in addition to the actual service copy. For example, as a courtesy, a moving party may email a set of its motion papers to opposing counsel after electronically filing and serving the papers through the court's e-filing system.