Lamination is the process of making a "sandwich" of several layers of material and bonding them together with an adhesive to form a finished product. Document pages are sometimes laminated between films or sheets of plastic to preserve them and protect them from rough handling. There are indications that people have been attempting some type of lamination of documents for centuries. The method of sealing the plastic to a document page depends on the composition of the laminating material. Cellulose acetate, cellulose diacetate, vinyl, polyester, and combinations of polyester and polyethylene are some of the materials that have been used for document lamination. The laminated documents encountered by the document examiner usually are credit cards, licenses, etc. When such documents are the subject of a case, they must be carefully scrutinized. Less often the examiner will be confronted with wills, notes, contracts, and other legal documents that have been laminated. This paper discusses how to address the various problems associated with the examination of laminated documents. These are the identification of laminating material, deciding whether or not to attempt the separation of a laminated document, and examination limitations imposed when laminated documents are not separated. 7 references