Using PDFs for presentations -

Reader Keith Cartwright is interested in any tips that can better help him "with Acrobat in presentation mode." He is in the trial support business and uses only PDFs while displaying exhibits in trial.  If you have some worthwhile tips please feel free to leave a comment.

While we are waiting for comments to come in let me say that now is a good time to remind people of the wonderful book by David Masters: The Lawyer's Guide to Using Adobe Acrobat, which we have previously touted here.  The new Second Edition covers Acrobat 7.0.

Comments

[Mark Zuniga]

(1) well organized bookmarks [ctrl + b] that are nested under major headings make it easy to shift between documents and issues and the jury understands what you're doing
(2) Every document needs to have OCR so that the computer "reads" the text as well as the image. I would do a paper capture for any document so that I have the option to highlight important passages if the court will let me. I've also noticed that a paper capture will straighten the wording of any document that was slightly skewed in the copying process.

[Dave Fishel]

There's a really cool site dealing with "rich PDFs" that may be of interest. Have a look at BC Pictures' eDocuments page -- http://www.bcpictures.com/pages/richmediaebrochures.html

Follow the links and you can find out about creating these amazing interactive PDFs, and also download some samples. Caveat: the files are big (they contain color photos, movies, etc.). You *do* have broadband internet, right?

~~Dave

[Matt Davis]

Bravo!

We've been touting PDF as the presentation format of choice as well.

Some other benefits PDF's offer....

1) No "recreating the wheel" -- materials already in pdf format can be used without any additional cost.

2) No "Tech Wizard" required to run the show. Even attorneys know how to navigate in Acrobat.

3) Most Importantly....YOU CAN LEAVE THEM WITH THE JUDGE FOR LATER REVIEW. No compatability issues!

Matt Davis