This chapter examines the traditionally developed file-based model of delivering justice embedded within the culture of paper production, materiality and high formalism that exists at different stages of the legal process in the immigration and refugee law contexts. It identified three main features of how the Russian case file mediates the empirical or out-of-court reality for the purpose for the legal process and actually physically constitutes the legal subjects. The hyperbolic reality-mediating function of the case file means that it is rarely contested; the written documents rule supreme and their fact-finding role is taken for granted and valued above all oral statements from the witnesses present in the courtroom. The second feature focuses on the mixture of hyper-formality and informality in how the case files are put together. Documents such as formal reports, notary-certified translations are intertwined in the case file with various memos or affidavits where hand-written inserts by the defendants or the law enforcement agents are to ‘patch up’ initial procedural or fact-finding omissions. The third important trait of the case file is that it cannot be separated from the broader culture of paper production in Russia – at all stages of the legal process: in the grass-root immigration lawyers’ offices, the FMS buildings and, finally, the different courts.