PDF for Lawyers

Sign contracts on your iOS device

Adobe has just released the EchoSign app for iOS, which enables legally binding contracts to be signed with a click. The app is free, but the EchoSign service costs money. It's free for one user who only signs 5 times per month or less. The next tier of service is $14.95/month and allows one user to sign unlimited times. Not sure if this is of use to most lawyers, but some will undoubtedly be interested.

Adobe no longer developing Flash plug-ins - what does this mean?

Adobe announced yesterday that it would stop developing Flash plugins for mobile browsers, which ultimately signals the end of Flash. What does this mean for Adobe? Read Dan Frommer's excellent take.

Review: Adobe Reader for iPad

My good friend Jeff Richardson has a thorough review of the new Adobe Reader app for the iPad and iPhone. I agree with everything he says. The key points in his review are;

• Reader is an easy app to learn, but it doesn't allow any annotations.
• Reader is fine, but there are other apps that do the same thing.
• Reader is free, but GoodReader is only $5 and does pretty much most of what you'd want a PDF app to do (including annotations).

Virtually every tech-savvy lawyer I know recommends GoodReader as the key PDF app that you need to have for an iPad. As David Sparks observes in his iPad at Work book, "if PDF apps were prizefighters, GoodReader would be the one with the crooked nose that has a knack for putting all its competitors, even the pretty boys, on the mat." If you want to sign PDF documents on your iPad get PDF Expert ($10).

And for more excellent tips on how to use PDFs on your iPad get David Sparks' book. It's truly an amazing resource for getting the most out of your iPad.

Adobe's new iOS PDF app is lame

Adobe has just launched an application for iOS called CreatePDF, which lets you create PDF files from an iPad or iPhone. The app costs $10 and is available in the Apple iTunes store.

I’ve been waiting for Adobe to create an iOS application that provides much of the same functionality as Acrobat does on a desktop computer. And, while I appreciate that Adobe has finally taken a step in that direction, it’s a pretty lame step. I believe there are other iOS apps that have this functionality, but I’m not sure because this isn’t something I have a great need to do on my iPad or iPhone.

Apparently, the first few commenters on the app's page on the Apple iTunes site are also unimpressed. Here's what I think the market would like to see from Adobe in an iOS application:

• Dropbox integration, with full bi-directional synching.
• Ability to save signature stamps, and to affix them to a PDF, and then flatten the signature.
• Bookmarking (ideally with ability to highlight text in a text-based PDF and create bookmark with that text.
• Commenting (sticky notes, underlining and highlighting for sure)
• Search of a PDF, including comments and bookmarks.

Feel free to chime in with your comments and suggestions below.

Is it possible Adobe has no interest in developing an iOS version of Acrobat? Seems strange, but maybe they’ve ceded the market to independent developers. For those of you who use iOS apps to manage PDFS, what’s your favorite application? And why is it useful to you?