Legal Size Printing in Pakistan: Which Printers Take Legal Paper

Legal paper is the working size of Pakistan's courts, law chambers, notaries, revenue offices and a surprising number of bank and government forms. Yet most printers are sold, and set up, for A4 — so the first legal petition prints with the bottom cut off, or the machine refuses the sheet. This guide covers the sizes involved, which printers genuinely handle legal for printing, double-siding, copying and scanning, and the settings that make it work.

Legal, A4, letter and folio — the sizes people mix up

The folio/legal confusion causes most problems: a ream sold as 'legal' in Saddar may be 13-inch folio, and a driver set to 14-inch Legal will then jam or print short. Measure a sheet once, and use the matching size — most HP drivers list both Legal and 8.5 × 13 (sometimes called Folio or Oficio).

Which printers print legal paper

Nearly every HP LaserJet handles legal from the main tray once the tray is extended — that includes the personal models (P2035, P1606dn, 107a/108a, M211dw), the office machines (M401dn, M402dne, M404dn, P2055dn) and the enterprise range (M507, M608). The catch is capacity and convenience: on a 150-sheet personal tray the legal extension sticks out of the back of the printer, whereas a 250- or 550-sheet office tray swallows legal fully inside. Offices that print legal every day should buy a 250-sheet-tray machine or better. Our legal size printers page lists what is in stock.

Double-sided legal

Automatic duplex on legal is where cheap printers fall down: some duplex units only turn A4 and letter. The office lasers we recommend — M402dne, M404dn, P2055dn, M507, M608 and the M227fdn-class MFPs — duplex legal automatically, which matters for long agreements and petitions. If a printer's duplex unit rejects legal, the driver will fall back to manual duplex and ask you to re-feed the stack. Check the spec sheet line 'automatic duplex media sizes' before buying if two-sided legal is a daily need; the specs guide explains where to find it.

Copying and scanning legal pages

This is the part most buyers miss. The flatbed glass on personal all-in-ones (135/136 series, M141, M1536dnf, M227fdn) is A4/letter size — a legal page will not fit on the glass. To copy or scan legal you need an automatic document feeder rated for 356 mm paper: the M227fdn and M1536dnf feeders take legal, as do the 137fnw and 139fnw. Enterprise MFPs such as the Flow M527 and the E62555/E62665 have both a legal-size glass and a high-speed legal-capable feeder — the right tool for a chamber digitising case files. For pure scanning of case files, the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 and Panasonic KV-S1058Y document scanners take legal in the feeder at 20–65 pages a minute; see the document scanner guide.

Setting up a printer for legal paper

• Extend the tray and move both paper guides so they touch the stack. Loose guides are the top cause of skewed legal pages.
• Tell the printer what is in the tray: on models with a panel, set Tray 2 size to Legal (or 8.5 × 13) so it does not stop with a 'load Legal' prompt on every job.
• Set the page size in the document (Word: Layout → Size → Legal) and in the driver — both. A legal document printed through an A4 driver setting is cut off, not scaled.
• For mixed work, keep A4 in the main tray and feed legal through the multipurpose slot, or add a second tray so both sizes are always loaded.
• Printing a legal document on A4 in a pinch: choose 'Scale to fit' or 'Shrink to page' in the print dialog. Court filings usually need the real size, so this is for drafts only.

Our picks for law chambers and legal-heavy offices

A sole practitioner or small chamber: the M404dn (fast, duplexes legal, cheap 59X toner). A chamber that also copies and scans legal case files: the M227fdn plus a document scanner if volumes are high. A firm printing hundreds of legal pages a day: the M507 or M608 with a 550-sheet tray dedicated to legal, and the Flow M527 for scanning. All are on our office printers page with live prices.