Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

You should follow the local rules, and the judge's rules. Typically, documents should be premarked as exhibits and submitted to the court and the other side in advance of the trial date -- usually on the date of the final status conference.

Good judges issue pre-trial orders that set forth deadlines for matters like exchanging exhibits. Many judges require that the parties meet and confer in advance of the first day of trial, and stipulate to a set of exhibits to the extent there are no evidentiary objections.

If you don't have that, there is no rule that I know of requiring you to exchange copies of exhibits until the first day of trial; you should however also check with the judge's clerk to see how he or she prefers to handle this.