PDF for Lawyers

Annotate PDFs (free and easy)

If you have a Mac and the latest operating system you can easily annotate PDFs.  How?  This very short video from Apple explains how.  And this video shows you how to manipulate PDFs using the same free software that came with your Mac.

Adobe Reader survey

The Adobe Reader Team would like to know what all of you want most in the next versions of Adobe Reader. Faster? Smaller? Easier to use? Feature additions? OK the way it is?

Click here to take the survey.

The survey should take 5 minutes or less to complete. The survey will run until the end of January.

Print less, save more, be happier, and help the planet

The less you print, the less paper you have to wrangle. And the less paper you have the less stress you have. But, in addition to your self-centered reasons, there is a benefit to the world if we use less paper—especially the completely wasteful use of paper.

Ever print out a web-page and find that your print output included an extra page or two that you had no interest in? You just toss that into the waste basket, don't you? This is the kind of needless waste I'm talking about.

If you want to save money and help the planet, try Green Print. It's a simple plug-in that works with Windows or Mac computers. If you like it after trying it out for free you can buy it for $29. Over the long haul, you'll recoup the money. And you'll feel better for having done a good thing.

TIFFs versus PDFs - which is preferable?

Back in 2000 when I started becoming more intense about scanning documents I was told by many people that TIFF files were preferable to PDFs, mostly because the business-class scanners were configured for TIFF output. Once I discovered PDFs, I found them preferable in many ways. Still, there are many people (mostly vendors) who argue for TIFFs. The other day I was sent a white paper comparing the two formats, and I think it nicely sums up the advantages and disadvantages of each format.

The quick and dirty conclusion: PDFs can do a lot more than TIFFs (security, searchability etc), but sometimes PDF files wind up being a little bigger. But, with digital storage costs plummeting each year, this is not a major deficit. Obviously, I prefer PDFs. Otherwise this blog would be called "TIFFs for Lawyers."

Go straight to mobile voicemail

This is a quick productivity tip that has nothing to do with PDFs per se. But, since the overall goal of using PDFs is to make your life easier, this is something that I know some of you will find useful.

If you want to leave someone a voicemail message on their mobile phone, and you want to make sure that you don't wind up actually talking to them then here is the site for you. If you don't want to visit the site, then here is what you do:

1. Dial 267-slydial (or 267-759-3425) from any type of phone

2. At voice prompt, enter the U.S. mobile phone # of recipient

3. You will be connected to their voicemail.

Tablet PCs - very useful tool for lawyers

I've had a chance to play with a Tablet PC for several months now, and I'm quite impressed.  To me, the Tablet shines in at least two arenas: (1) courtrooms, and (2) meetings.  In these settings a laptop is often acceptable (though sometimes not) but is awkward.  When you use a Tablet people tend not to notice that you have a computer in your hands, and that creates a much better social dynamic.  There are no doubt many reasons for this, but the reasons don't matter.  If you ever have the chance to test out what I'm saying you'll understand immediately.

The trick with Tablets is to learn to use the pen stylus to do your input.  Yes, I know that many of you can input faster with a keyboard (so can I).  But when you're in court, or in a meeting, you usually aren't inputting a lot of information, usually just taking notes or looking for information.  A stylus is perfectly acceptable for taking notes (remember how to use a pen and notepad?), or for pulling up information on your Tablet.

I could say a lot about the Tablet, and I plan to, but for now I'll say that if you want to learn more then visit the Tablet Lawyer blog, which is run by James Province.  He is a lawyer in Washington and knows how to use Tablet PCs in the practice of law, and his site is devoted to helping other lawyers learn how to use Tablets.

Home Office Lawyer Blog

If you haven't stumbled across Grant Griffiths excellent blog you should.  It's called The Home Office Lawyer, and it overflows with useful tips for the solo and small firm practitioner.  Check out his recent post on the new Fujitsu scanner, which he recommends. 

I like it too, but I already have a Fujitsu scan-snap and if I were going to upgrade I would get one of the models that are TWAIN or ISIS compliant, so that I could scan from within the Acrobat program as opposed to having to use the scanner software.  Fujitsu's basic scanners let you scan to PDF, but sometimes I wish that I could open a PDF file and scan on to the back of it (i.e. a correspondence file where you just keep adding pages to the back, or front). If you want to do that you need a scanner that is TWAIN or ISIS compliant, which only the higher end models are.

Anyway, go check out Grant's blog and tell me if you don't love the tagline: "A Mac.  A blog.  A home office.  What more does a lawyer need?"

Internet Phones - great tool, especially when travelling

I'm visiting my brother in Panama, a great country -- but unfortunately one in which my cellphone will not work.  But I came prepared for this situation.  Among the things I took with me was my Packet8 phone, which is an internet-based phone system (i.e. VOIP, or 'Voice over IP').  For $20/month I can make and receive unlimited calls in the U.S. and Canada. I have been using this phone for my work.  I have a New Orleans area code, and I can set the phone up so that it rings simultaneously to my cellphone (where I can take the call if I want).

But since my cellphone doesn't work here that's not useful right now (although it's very useful when I'm in New Orleans).  Anyway, I set the Packet8 phone up here by attaching it to my brother's router and --bada boom bada bing-- my 'landline' phone works like a charm.  Another thing that works like a charm is Skype, the free VOIP phone system that lets you use your computer to make and receive phone calls.  I can call anyone in the United States for free.  Skype works with both Macs and PCs.

PDF resource: Serious Geekage from Tinaja.com

Don Lancaster, a long-time icon of the "midnight engineering" school of wild-eyed inventors, has an excellent website with all kinds of information about PDF and PostScript. This is deeply geeky, and he spends a lot of time tinkering under the hood -- something that most law firms aren't going to do. He makes PDFs do a lot of amazing things by manipulating the underlying PostScript.

If you want (or you want your technical staff) to understand what's really going on with PDF so that you can set up an effective workflow, there are excellent resources here. A deeper understanding of how to do (and automate) some important tasks (like tracking and checking the URL links in a PDF file) could save a ton of time, effort, and money. He also freely distributes the tools (i.e., some utility programs) for doing a lot of these things cheaply, quickly and very effectively.

The materials go all the way back to the very early days of PDF, so if you are working with older versions, you might find some gems of wisdom here.

Also, if you are interested in all things eBay, he has the most amazing methods for prepping images for the web, generating thumbnails etc.

Technolawyer is a great place to keep up with legal technology

If you want to learn about legal technology, and get some great tips from lawyers who actually use technology, go sign up for one or more of the E-mail newsletters put out by Technolawyer. Much of what I have learned about technology has come from reading the E-mails I receive from Technolawyer. The E-mail subscription is completely free.