PDF for Lawyers

Bookmarks & sticky notes: learn to make 'em fast

I will keep harping on this because it matters a lot, if you want to become adept at using PDFs to be more productive that is. The reason you keep writing on paper to make notes is because it's easy and you don't have to think about it. The reason you don't use PDFs is because it's hard. Why is it hard? Because you have to think about how to do it, and right now you don't know how to do it quickly.

To make notes in Acrobat there are only two things you need to learn how to create quickly: bookmarks and sticky notes.

Think of bookmarks as those yellow tab stickies you put on pages that are in stack. You put those tab stickies there to mark where you have something important you want to look at later. In Acrobat you would create a bookmark to do this. In the graphic below you see the bookmarks panel on the left hand side (the area marked #1). Even if you don't have that panel visible you can create a bookmark with the shortcut CONTROL + B (or COMMAND + B on a Mac, which is what I am using to demonstrate this)

So to create a bookmark you just navigate to the page that you want to bookmark and invoke that command. The bookmarks panel will open and you can name the bookmark whatever you want. You can use bookmarks to break up a document into smaller documents, but that's a whole separate topic.

Now, lets talk about sticky notes. Sticky notes are akin to the marginalia you would scribble next to an important passage. In the world of paper you'd also tab those areas so you can find where you made notes. In the world of Acrobat you can open up the panel and see all your comments listed, and then you can click on any one of them to automatically navigate to that page.

Okay, so sticky notes are a lot more powerful in Acrobat than the ones you make on paper. They can also hold a lot more text than you can scrawl in the margin of a piece of paper. One thing you should know

Acrobat puts the sticky notes under the Comment menu (at least in Acrobat 9 and prior). If you click that menu you'll see (as depicted by area #2 in the graphic above) that the first choice is "Add Sticky Notes." And if you look over to the right you'll see that the shortcut for doing this is COMMAND +6 on a Mac (or CONTROL + 6 on a PC).

So let's review "B" is for bookmarks, and "6" (middle of the keyboard row of numbers) is for creating sticky notes. If you're on a Mac put one finger on the key to the left or right of the space bar (that's the COMMAND key) and then pick a 'B' or '6'. If you're on a PC put your finger on the outermost key from the spacebar (that's the CONTROL key) and then pick a 'B' or '6'.

Practice that until it becomes second nature. Then start weaning yourself from using paper notes; they're inefficient, and they're holding you back.

 

Removing PDF metadata & document markups using Acrobat

All digital documents contain metadata, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Metadata is just hidden information about a document, usually not very interesting information. But hidden information is hard to evaluate because, well...it's hidden. Some of that hidden information could be embarrassing and some could be downright damaging. PDFs are digital documents, and hence they contain metadata. Fortunately, Adobe Acrobat gives us a way to quickly find, and delete if we choose, that hidden data. The trick is to know where to look. Unfortunately, if you look under all of the menus in Acrobat you won't find a choice labelled 'Metadata.' The command you're looking for is called "Examine Document" which is under the DOCUMENTS menu choice. See the screenshot below:

Once you select this option your PDF will open a panel on the left hand side and start to run an analysis of the document, as shown by the red arrow marked #1 below. The #2 red arrow points to the types of information that have been found. You'll note that this document contains "metadata" and "bookmarks," which would be considered a type of "markup" in Acrobat. Comments and highlighting are also considered forms of "markup."

So the next question is, obviously: how do you remove the metadata and other markups? And the answer it found next to the red #3 arrow in the screenshot below. You just click on the button that is labeled "Remove."

But before we do that let's go back and look at the left panel again because you'll note that we have choices as to what we remove. That is, it's not an all-or-nothing deal. We can cherry pick what we want to have taken out. After all, we might want to leave the bookmarks in the document. So, these are the choices:

If we're happy with the choices that are selected (in this case all) then we click that "Remove" button and Acrobat will purge all of that information. But, the changes aren't locked in yet. If you look in the lower left hand area you'll see this important notification:

Once you save the document (or save it as a new document, if you prefer) then the changes will be locked in. So that's how you get rid of metadata, and comments and bookmarks. Frankly, I think it would have been better if Adobe had put these tools in the same area where you examine the document properties (which we talked about in the last two posts). It seems to me that once you shouldn't have to go to two different places to "examine the document." In Acrobat X the process is a little easier to find because the command is labelled "Remove Hidden Information" as the screenshot below depicts:

I hope that helps folks understand how to use this important tool in Acrobat. It's features like this that make me cringe when I hear lawyers recommending some less expensive alternative to Acrobat. Yes, I realize that Acrobat is a costly tool. But it's also a very powerful one, and versatile as well. Lawyers who want to have the options to sanitize documents and do all sorts of other important tasks should spend less time worrying about saving a few dollars and more time learning how to take advantage of all the useful features in Acrobat. What's that saying about "Penny wise and pound foolish"? Final note: The ability to remove metadata is part of Acrobat versions 8 and above.

Two really useful shortcuts in Acrobat

Spending the time to learn shortcuts will help you get the most out of any software, and that’s especially true of Acrobat. Here’s a quick tip that makes use of two important shortcuts.

Let’s say you have to review one big PDF with a lot of pages. Maybe it’s is one long document, or maybe it’s a PDF that needs to be broken up into a bunch of smaller documents. But let’s assume it’s the kind of document where you really just need to quickly blast through it quickly, scanning it like Evelyn Woods. The first thing you want to do when you review a document is get rid of the distractions. You can make it so Acrobat takes up your full screen, but then the toolbars and menus would still be distracting. 

No, what you want is to make your computer screen show only the document itself. 

You could go to the VIEW menu and then select FULL SCREEN MODE, but this is a post about using shortcuts. What is the shortcut for ‘FULL SCREEN MODE’? (Go navigate to VIEW > FULL SCREEN MODE and you can see for yourself). The shortcut is some key and the letter L. Which key? Depends on if you’re using a Mac or a PC.  On a Mac the key combo is COMMAND + L; on a PC it’s CONTROL + L. Why the letter L? Who knows, but let’s say it stands for ‘large’. That will help you remember.

So when you blank out the distractions and you start hitting the down arrow key to go page by page, what do you do when you come upon a page you want to mark? You use the bookmark shortcut. What is the bookmark shortcut? It’s the same key we used before (depending on if you have a Mac or a PC) and the letter B. That’s pretty easy, right? B is for ‘bookmark.’

And the cool thing is you can apply the bookmarks while you’re in full screen mode. If you didn’t know the shortcut you’d have to leave full screen mode just to create a bookmark, which would make it impossible to effectively use the full screen mode. Now you know the secret to quickly reviewing a document. Pop into full screen mode with Command + L (or Control + L if you have a PC), and then use the same key with ‘B’ to create bookmarks. Once you’ve bookmarked the entire file you can go back and quickly rename the bookmarks or add additional commentary.

Incidentally, the View Full Screen command also works in Adobe Reader too. Unfortunately you can’t create bookmarks in Adobe Reader, though.

 

Setting viewing preferences for recipients (in Acrobat)

Yesterday we covered how to set your viewing preferences in Acrobat. So how about if we talk now about setting preferences for the recipient of a PDF document you created? Normally, you won't care about doing this, but there are times when you should.

For example, let's say the document below is a contract that controls a certain dispute.

I want to send this contract, which we'll pretend has dozens of parts (in reality you'll see that it only has 9 parts) to another lawyer for him to read over. To make it easier to navigate the document I'll probably quickly bookmark it so that all of the sections were listed along the left hand side in the bookmarks panel. Note, I'm creating these bookmarks for the other lawyer's benefit. And if he doesn't see the bookmarks then I've done extra work for nothing.

I could explain to him that there are bookmarks in the document, and then provide a short explanation of how to open the bookmarks panel. Odds are, though, that he wouldn't bother to open the bookmarks panel (trust me, I've field tested this proposition extensively). No, the easiest thing for me is to simply change the document preferences so that the bookmarks panel opens automatically.

Here's how you do that. Navigate the Acrobat menu as follows: FILE > PROPERTIES (or use the keyboard combo CONTROL + D, or COMMAND + D on a Mac). That will pull up the following dialogue box:

As noted on the image above, you should (1) click the 'Initial View' tab, and then (2) set the Navigation Tab to 'Bookmarks Panel and Page'. Finally, save the document with these changes and send it along to the recipient. 

When he or she opens the document it will have the bookmarks panel already in view. Most people know what to do at this point. Of course, you can create bookmarks for pages that you specifically want to discuss too. You can use bookmarks all kinds of ways. But they're only helpful if the recipient knows they're there. And now you know how to make sure that happens.

For more information on using bookmarks, click here.

How to print bookmarks in Acrobat

A few weeks ago I got a nice email from Bill Blewett, a lawyer in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. My great grandfather had a large farm in Sioux Falls, so it was good to hear from someone from that part of the country.

Anyway, Bill wanted tell me about his time-saving method of creating a document index based on bookmarks:

The other day I was able to combine 5,100+ bates-stamped pages of documents into a single .pdf and create bookmarks within the .pdf to organize the documents. Then, using [a referenced] script, I was able to easily print out a multi-page report that showed the page numbers and the bookmark names, all in a hierarchical format. Combine this script with the keyboard shortcuts in adobe and I easily cut several hours off of creating my document index. I can’t even estimate how much time (expense/headache) I saved over printing the documents out.

 

Being able to print out bookmarks is often very useful, as Bill describes. And so I was going to post the script and then explain how to use it, but as I went through the process to create the necessary screen captures I discovered that the process of creating a javascript is a little more daunting than I anticipated. I was able to create the javascript to print bookmarks a long time ago, but for some reason the language I was using to create the new script (to demonstrate it) wasn't working.

Hence, I gave up.

So, what can we take away from my experience? First, unless you're really adept at playing with javascript (and I'm pretty sure most of you aren't, and I'm not either), then you're not going to enjoy trying to create a javascript to print out bookmarks. Worst case: the process is unenjoyable and unsuccessful. And so to spare you that misery I've decided not to provide the detailed explanation that Bill pointed me to. Hopefully, someone will either make it easier or find a great way to explain the process so that an idiot like me can do it.

If you want to learn how to do this, then I suggest you read this article I published at PlanetPDF back in 2005.  Most of that information is still applicable, especially the reference to third party software that you can purchase to do this task. If printing bookmarks is something you'll be doing fairly regularly then it might make sense to buy the software for that task.

Bookmarks are often essential for navigating PDFs

I assume that most of you have seen bookmarks in a PDF. If not, then here's a short explanation: bookmarks are a series of navigation links located in a panel on the left side of Acrobat. The bookmarks panel can be hidden when you open a PDF with bookmarks contained within it. Click on the icon that looks like the one below to show the bookmarks panel:

I frequently create bookmarks in PDFs. In fact, I do it so often that the shortcut for creating a bookmark is etched in my brain (Control + B on a PC, or Command + B on Mac). If the document you are creating bookmarks in is text-searchable (or has been OCR'd), then you can select some text and then hit the shortcut command just described, and Acrobat will create a bookmark with the selected text.

A good place to learn a lot about bookmarks is this excellent article by Duff Johnson, who knows a lot about PDFs and does a great job of explaining things.

Bookmarking Tip for Acrobat

Knowing how to create bookmarks is important if you are going to efficiently navigate your PDFs.  This one of many reasons why you need the full version of Acrobat.  I talked to a patent attorney in Kansas the other day who reviews information from the Patent office that is made available in PDF format. But, he only has the basic Adobe Reader.  He obviously spends a lot of time navigating PDFs, and often returns to the same PDF later on to find information he has reviewed previously.

This is a person who needs the full version of Acrobat.  And he needs to learn how to bookmark pages so he can quickly return to them later on.  The first thing you should do when you get Acrobat (after setting up your default viewing preferences) is to learn the shortcut for creating a bookmark. In Windows it's CONTROL + B, and in Mac it's COMMAND + B.

Now here's the really cool bookmarking tip that you can use PDF you are in is text-based (i.e. 'searchable').  You'll know it's searchable if you can highlight a word or sentence of text.  So, let's say you've highlighted a passage and you want to tag that as a bookmark.  If you highlight it and then use the shortcut for creating a bookmark Acrobat will create the bookmark and name it with the text that you highlighted.

I'm not sure if this works in older versions of Acrobat, but I can say that it definitely works in Acrobat 9.0.  One way I use it is when I create a PDF of, say, a complaint or other document that has headings.  I can quickly go through the document and highlight each heading and create a bookmark.  Then when I open that document later on my bookmarks are essentially a table of contents of the main parts of that document.

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.

Bookmarks - Navigation aid & Reminder

A PDF Bookmark is a powerful navigation tool, but a lot of people don't seem to use bookmarks. That's a big mistake. 

I keep all my case pleadings in a PDF document, and I bookmark each pleading separately so I can navigate to it quickly.  If the pleading has Exhibits or associated documents I bookmark each of those documents and then nest the bookmark under the main bookmark for that pleading.  The bookmarks can be moved around if you want.  And that's a powerful benefit.

Let's say you have your pleadings scanned in chronologically, which makes sense.  Discovery requests are issued in, say, January of 2007 but are not responded to until March.  Between then you've had some other pleadings come in.  But you want the response bookmark to be nested below the original request.  First, that makes sense since the response is associated with the request.  But it also makes sense as a visual aid that helps you see which responses are outstanding.  Take a look at this short movie clip and you'll see what I mean (the third bookmark doesn't have a nested bookmark, which tells me there is no response to that request).

Using Bookmarks to open files and other tricks

One of the unknown features of the Bookmark feature in Acrobat is that you can use it to open a file. Just go to an existing bookmark and right-click (Windows) or Ctrl-click (Mac). Then pick "Properties" and you see a tab for "actions" and one of the choices is "Open File." So now you see that you can use a bookmark to open a file, or a bunch of other things (i.e. open a weblink etc.).

Now, why would you want to do that? Good question, which my co-author Dave Fishel recently explained in an online seminar.

You could use this technique to great advantage if you wanted to create a blank PDF document that simply had links to other key documents, files, web-pages, images, or whatever. Think "trial notebook." And the best part of this trick is that the links are hierarchical, which means if you have the Master PDF and all of its other files in a group of folders you can move the entire group to a new location and the links will still work. In other words, the links are relative links. Pretty cool, huh?