PDF for Lawyers

Paperless depositions

I don't use paper in depositions.  If I'm taking the deposition I cheerfully agree to have the deposition held in my opponent's office, asking him or her to make sure to have the case documents available and organized by bates-number.   If you can't count on an attorney to have lots of paper what can you count on?

I have my deposition notes set up in an outline on my computer.  When I get to a place that calls for me to talk about a certain document I inform my opposing counsel what the document bates-number is, and ask him to show it to the witness.  I have all the documents bookmarked in Acrobat.  It takes me about 3 seconds to get to the document, and I make good use of the time it takes my opponent to pull the document and show it to the witness.  I have notes superimposed on the PDF and I examine those and get ready to frame my questions.  At the end of the deposition I don't offer any documents as exhibits.  If opposing counsel asks me why I'm not doing that I tell him that the bates-numbers (which I announced on the record before starting my questions about each document) constitute sufficient reference.

If I'm attending a deposition it's even easier.  When a document is offered I ask what the bates-number is and I just pull it up, much more quickly than if I were to wait for it to be handed over.  Plus I have my PDF notes superimposed on my copy which helps me quickly figure out the relevance of the document to my theory of the case.   And of course I can add more notes on the fly if I want to.  I also bookmark the document and indent it under a main bookmark labelled for the deposition in question.  So when the deposition is over I have a listing of all the documents that were referenced in that meeting.

It's not as high-tech as this paperless deposition system, but it doesn't need to be.  Often the best solution is the simplest one, and I think that's true for Adobe Acrobat.  It does a lot of things pretty darn well, and since I use it all the time I'm very familiar with its organization.  Next time you take a deposition consider how much smoother it could be if you didn't have to deal with paper. 

Of course, if you have a deposition like this one it wouldn't matter.

Digital workflow for lawyers

I'll be speaking to the Lawyers Computer Group on 'Digital Workflow' in a couple of weeks.  The talk is about about using scanners and Adobe Acrobat to streamline your law practice (so you don't feel like this poor guy).

The presentation is at noon on February 13th in the Pan-American Life Bldg, downtown New Orleans.  To register contact Michael Goldblatt at 504-841-0900, or by email (michaelgoldblatt[at]aol.com).  The registration fee is $15.

The written materials are pretty spare; I'll be posting links relevant to the talk here.  I think you have to register by February 8th if you want a spot.  Hope to see some of you there.

Fujitsu ScanSnap now comes with Acrobat 8.0 Professional

If you own a Mac and want to buy the Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner, you are very fortunate.  Apparently, as this Macworld article mentions, the Fujitsu S510M comes bundled with Acrobat 8.0 Professional.  The Windows version only comes with Acrobat 8.0 Standard.  You can get the scanner here for $399.00 (after $50 rebate).  The retain value of Acrobat Professional alone is about $400, which means you essentially get the scanner for free.  Or the software.  Or both at half price.

Anyway you slice it, it's an amazing deal.  For Mac-users at least.

Controversy over the "Send to FedEx" feature in Acrobat

Last week we reported on the "Send to FedEx/Kinkos" function in Acrobat 8.1.  Now it appears that, because of complaints by printing organizations, Adobe and FedEx will no longer partner to offer this feature.  In October, when Adobe releases new versions of Acrobat and Reader, the 'Send to FedEx/Kinkos" link will be removed, although a separate version of Reader will be available from FedEx that will contain this functionality.  Hopefully, FedEx/Kinkos will also create a plug-in for Acrobat that enables the "Send to" feature.

"Send to FedEx/Kinkos" from within Acrobat

I just noticed that in Acrobat 8.1 (I have the Mac version, but it works with Windows too) I have the choice while viewing a PDF to "send the document to FedEx/Kinkos" for printing.  I have a FedEx/Kinkos about 5 minutes away from my house.  Sometimes I when I've needed to print out large document sets for discovery production, and the most effective way to accomplish this was to go to FedEx/Kinkos store.

Now I don't have to get in my car to submit my job.  I can just use the handy "send to FedEx Kinkos" option from within Acrobat.  How does it work?

Once your document has been uploaded your browser will be directed to the FedEx/Kinko's webpage where you can set print options, preview your document, select pickup and delivery options, and pay (of course).  The file size limit is 100 MBs, and it only works in version 8.1 of Acrobat.  They'll even ship the job to whomever you designate when the job is complete. Orders without special instructions take a minimum of 4 hours to produce, and orders with special instructions take a minimum of 10 hours to produce.

More Information: FedEx/Kinkos Webpage Explanation
                                   FedEx/Kinks FAQ Page

UPDATE:  It appears that, because of complaints by printing organizations, Adobe and FedEx will no longer partner to offer this easy solution.  In October, when Adobe releases new versions of Acrobat and Reader, the 'Send to FedEx/Kinkos" link will be removed, although a separate version of Reader will be available from FedEx that will contain this functionality.

Upcoming seminar on Acrobat - How to create forms

Rick Borstein and Mark Middleton putting on a free online seminar what will demonstrate the best ways of creating and using PDF Forms in the legal world.   The one hour seminar will focus on Acrobat 8, but most of the features will also work in Acrobat 7.  For more information about this August 9th event click here.

Free trial of Acrobat 8.0 Professional & other goodies

Just a reminder that you can try Acrobat 8.0 Professional free for 30 days by visiting the Adobe site.  You'll have to create an account with Adobe, but it's easy to do and doesn't take long.  For more information on Acrobat's solutions for legal professionals click on this link.  And lastly, be sure to visit the highly informative site Acrobat for Legal Professionals.  The post on 30 Tips for Using Acrobat is great, especially the tip (in the downloable PDF) on how to change the font when using the Typewriter Tool.

Scanning & OCR

Rick Borstein, who runs the Acrobat for Legal Professionals blog, has a great article on scanning and OCR with Acrobat 8.  The article appears at the equally wonderful LLRX.com site (run by Sabrina Pacifici).  Rick is extremely knowledgeable and his article is a must-read if you are interested in scanning.

OCR problems in Acrobat 8?

For some reason, I have run into a problem when doing OCR on my documents in Acrobat 8.  I don't think that it's an inherent problem with Acrobat 8 (Mac version) because I've been able to do OCR many times before without any problem.  I think somehow I've engaged a preference setting or changed something inadvertently.

Here's what happens.  When I run OCR everything proceeds normally until I look at the resulting file.  For some reason, the margins of the original document have been shrunk to the point that text along the bottom (e.g. the page numbering and the last line of text) have disappeared.  Obviously, this is not acceptable.

I plan to email the folks at Adobe to find out how to troubleshoot this problem, and when I have an answer to the problem I'll report back.   Meanwhile, if anyone else has experienced this problem, or if anyone has a solution please leave a comment.

Securing PDFs - free webinar this Thursday

If you are interested in learning how to secure your PDFs, you should seriously consider signing up for this one hour webinar put on by Adobe.  It's called "Securing Legal Documents & Information" and its free if you are registered with Adobe.  Expert Acrobat instructors Rick Borstein and Bryant Bell and will cover common questions such as these:

• How do I keep the recipient from copying text or printing a PDF?
• How can I password protect a PDF?
• How do I ensure that only the intended recipient can open a PDF?
• How do I revoke a PDF, even after it has been renamed, copied to a thumbdrive or sent outside my firewall?
• How can I find out if a PDF is genuine and hasn't been tampered with?
• How do I ensure that the PDF I need to send does not contain dangerous metadata?

The webinar is this coming Thursday from noon to 1 pm CST.  To sign up or find out more about the program, click here.

Bates-Stamping Documents the easy way

Whenever I see a set of documents that has been bates-stamped by hand, I cringe.  The only place that one should be able to see that kind of thing is in a museum.  And, yet amazingly, you can see it any day of the week in a typical law practice.  What's so bad about bates-stamping documents by hand?

First, it's mind-numbingly tedious work.  Which means that the poor paralegal that has been assigned to do it is probably going to make a mistake.  Most importantly, it takes a really long time to do it by hand.  Frankly, if I was a corporate client I would add a section to my standard terms of representation stating that I refuse to pay for paralegal time associated with bates-stamping.

Let's say you have 1,000 documents to bates-stamp.  I seriously doubt that any paralegal could finish the task in less than 4 hours.  It would probably take at least a day, maybe more.  But to scan those documents would only take about an hour, maybe two hours if you had a really slow scanner.  Once you've scanned the documents it takes about 30 seconds to bates-stamp them using Acrobat 8.0.   

Using a computer to bates-stamp ensures that you don't miss any pages.  And you can tell Acrobat to shrink the borders of the page and apply the bates-stamp in the resulting white area.  This guarantees that the bates-number on every page is visible.  Also you can add text before or after the bates number, (e.g. as "2nd Production - No. 000345").  Finally, if you realize you made a mistake and included some pages that should not have been bates-stamped, you can remove the bates-stamping and start over.

So all you have to do is scan the documents first.  And this is a good thing.  Because, as an added bonus, you have not only bates-stamped your documents, but now you have them in digital form.  Then if you want to make the documents searchable (and, trust me, you want to do this) you can OCR them first.   Let me emphasize this point: OCR before you bates-stamp the documents.  Otherwise, for reasons I won't get into, you won't be able to OCR the documents later (but, as I said, you can remove the bates-stamping, OCR, and then bates again). 

In short, there's a smart way to bates-stamp documents, and a really stupid way. Why anyone would want to make someone bates-stamp documents by hand is beyond me.  Frankly, I think it should be considered a form of cruel and unusual punishment.  Apparently, though, it's not all that unusual. 

And that is really sad.

Adobe 8.0 Redaction tool - some observations

I've seen the new redaction tool demonstrated and it looks pretty easy to use.  Up til now, if you wanted to do redaction to a PDF document you had to use something like Appligent's software product Redax (which several paralegals I know highly recommend).  Redax is a $349 program, although Appligent sells a Redax-Lite for $199, which doesn't redact on scanned images (only text-based PDFs).

That said, it appears that some people are mildly critical of Adobe's redaction tool.  Duff Johnson, a fellow who is very knowledgeable about PDF matters, says that Adobe's redaction tool is not as good as Appligent's.  I understand his point, but I think that most people aren't going to want to pay $349 just to do redaction, and would rather invest that money in Acrobat 8.0, which has other features (i.e. bates-numbering).  The easy work-around to the problem that he describes is to first make a duplicate copy of any file that you are going to do redaction on.

Acrobat 8.0 has been released

The new version of Acrobat (version 8) has been officially released.  I've already talked about this new version and the amazing features it has for lawyers, including redaction, meta-data examination & removal, and bates-numbering.  This is a must-have piece of software for attorneys and legal professionals.

It comes in two versions, Standard and Professional (the Professional version lets you 'enable' features in the free Reader program, which is good if you are collaborating with clients who don't have the full version, or with people who too cheap to buy Acrobat Standard.

Acrobat 8.0 - First Thoughts

I'm not ordinarily one to jump to upgrade software, but I just saw a web demo of the new Acrobat 8.0 and I'm impressed.  And I'm eager to get a copy when it's finally released (sometime in November).  The Forms wizard is an amazing tool that auto-detects areas where form fields should go and then places them there.  You can edit the placements and then send the document to other people, even people who only have the free copy of Adobe Reader.   

The bates-numbering feature is new and will be well received in the legal community, along with the redaction and document examination tools.  Most lawyers understand what redaction is, but when you see how it actually works in Acrobat you'll be amazed.  Same for the document examination tool, which allows you to examine metadata in a document and decide if it should be purged.  This is a 'must have' upgrade for most business users, especially lawyers who are using PDFs in their practice (and who isn't?).  For more information on this upgrade visit the Adobe Legal site, or Rick Borstein's excellent blog Acrobat For Legal Professionals.

I'll be co-presenting with Rick at a seminar in Jackson, Mississippi on Nov. 2nd.  The seminar is completely booked, but if you are eager to attend shoot me an email right away and I'll see if we can add your name to the list, in case there are cancellations.  Here is schedule of speakers and topics.

Free webinar on Acrobat 8.0

The new version of Acrobat (8.0) is out and it looks like something that legal professionals would be very interested in, particularly the redaction and bates-numebering features.  There is a free webinar next Tuesday at noon CST (1:00 pm EST).  Click here if you are interested in signing up (you will be required to register with Adobe if you haven't done so previously, but it's free).

New Acrobat has tools for lawyers

Brett Burney reports in Law.com on the new Acrobat 8.0, concluding that it has some great tools for lawyers.  Among them, a true redaction tool and built-in Bates numbering.