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's online form tool gets useful a new feature

Adobe has been developing some interesting online stuff (e.g. SendNow, which I've covered in a previous blog post). FormsCentral is an online tool that lets you build, distribute and collect forms (and form data). There are other folks who are doing online forms, most notably Google.

I've used Google's form tool and find it sufficient for basic needs. Where it (and I would guess other) online form tools fall completely apart is when it comes to gathering attachments along with a form.

Why would you gather attachments? Well, let's say you are an employer and you're using an online form to collect responses from potential employees. (Yes, a form can be used to accept applications. A form can be used to gather any responses or data.)

You can collect these kinds of responses using Google Docs' Form tool. But you can't collect PDF resumes or recommendation letters at the same time. Up until now Adobe's FormCentral tool didn't let you do that either. But today Adobe announced this new attachment feature as part of their FormCentral service.

I can see a law firm making use of this tool as a way of getting basic information from a new client (after some meaningful initial human contact, of course). And the feature that let's clients upload documents along with the information gathering might be useful too.

For more information about FormsCentral (as well as pricing) click here.

Adobe's SendNow is quite useful for lawyers

Increasingly attorneys who litigate are producing documents to opposing counsel via email as PDFs. Or, at least they try to. Then if the file size of the PDFs is too large, they resort to using some kludgy solution like Dropbox or some other online repository. Up until recently, that's what I did.

Adobe's SendNow service is a web-based tool that anyone can use for free, with some limitations. With the Free Plan are limited to file sizes of 100 Mbs, and you get a maximum total online storage of 500 Mbs. Also, recipients have 7 days to download the files. For most small productions that's enough.

The Basic Plan gives you 2 Gbs for file transfers, and up to 5Gbs of storage. But the real kicker is that it also gives you detailed tracking of when the files were downloaded and by whom. Thus, in effect, it's like having an audit trail of the fact that the documents were produced on a certain date. Litigators surely want this, and I would think that they'd happily pay the $10/month fee.

Let me make it clear how the detailed tracking works. First, the entire history of all of your productions are stored online under your SendNow account. Second, each time a recipient successfully downloads a PDF document production you are notified by email.

If you need more than 5Gbs of online storage you can opt for the Plus Plan, and get 20 Gbs of storage. You'll still be limited to productions at 2 Gbs. The price is $15/month.

The SendNow feature is built into Acrobat X, so if you have the latest version of Acrobat you can issue the production from that program without having to navigate to the web. You may still have to log into your Adobe SendNow account, but it's certainly very convenient to do this from within the program that you no doubt used to prepare your online document production.

If you don't have Acrobat X you can download the SendNow Desktop application for free, and use that program. SendNow supports many file types besides just PDFs (e.g. Microsoft Office docs, audio and video files etc.).

The only caveat about SendNow is that its use is limited to one user (since it's tied to an individul Adobe ID, and the Terms of Use don't permit several people to piggyback on that one ID). The recipients of your SendNow production do not need to have a SendNow account.

Save Bates-stamp settings for future use

In the past we've [talked about how to bates-stamp](http://www.pdfforlawyers.com/2011/09/the-8-page-guide-to-bates-stamping-in-acrobat-x.html) in Acrobat, and also how to set things up optimally. But once you've set up the optimal settings, it makes sense to save those settings. You can do that from the final dialogue box that appears when you're specifying where the bates-stamp will go. The screenshot below shows you that saving those settings is a simple two-step process: (1) click "Save Settings, and then (2) name the setting.

Off to speak to Alaska attorneys about using PDFs

Today I'm heading off to Anchorage, Alaska to speak to attorneys in the Civil Division of the Department of Law. My talk, which will happen on Thursday, is about using PDFs in the practice of law. Folks there rely heavily on Adobe Acrobat, and want to learn more about how to make the most of the software to manage PDFs better.

Music to my ears.

The 8 page guide to bates-stamping in Acrobat X

Here is an 8 page PDF that walks you through the steps you need to follow in order to bates-stamp a document (or documents) in Acrobat X. The PDF is made up of a series of screenshots so you can see exactly what you need to choose.

Bates-stamping in Acrobat is pretty easy once you've done it a couple of times, and it's usually a lot easier to do it yourself than to ask your paralegal. There are choices, and you should be the one to make them.

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?

Bates-stamping over several sessions - Should you do it this way?

Bates-stamping is important if you want to keep track of documents you produce. If you want to know how to do it, watch this video (go to the 13:00 mark for bates-stamping part). Bates-stamping is easy with Acrobat once you've done it a few times. And you should always bates-stamp documents that you're producing.

One common problem, though: you often don't get all of the documents that you need to produce at one time. Hence, you tend to have multiple productions. What happens then?

Well when you get the new documents, you will have already produced a range of documents that, let's say, ends in bates-number 1037. And so you'll be thinking you want to start this batch with bates-number 1038, right? Not necessarily.

If you want to keep the documents perfectly sequenced, then by all means start the next batch with number 1038. Acrobat will let you start your next bates-numbering sequence at any number you want. But, do you really have to do that? (Again, I'm not trying to convince you to alter your current method, just pointing out a workable option).

Let's say you don't care about being perfectly sequenced. How can you still make it so each document gets a unique bates-identifier? The answer is to change the prefix of the bates-identifier for each separate production. 

Here's an example of how you might have 4 separate productions, and label them slightly differently to accomplish this objective:

• HawkinsProd-01-[bates-range]
• HawkinsProd-02-[bates-range]
• HawkinsProd-03-[bates-range]
• HawkinsProd-04-[bates-range]

Obviously, you'd have duplicate numbers in the [bates-range] part of the idenfier. But, you'd still retain uniqueness of identifier based on the first part, "HawkinsProd-[diff #]."

In small cases this might make a lot of sense. Maybe you just want to quickly bates-stamp the new documents and produce them, without having to take the time to find the last bates number. Maybe you like keeping track of when the document was produced. 

Anyway, like I said, it's just something to consider. You can create a unique identifier in lots of ways, such as with a prefix or suffix. The bates-number doesn't have to be the only thing that makes the document unique. As long as you can keep track of your documents and have a unique letter/number to identify it with that's enough.

Do you know about the "headers & footers" option in Acrobat?

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the ABATechShow in Chicago, where I was asked to deliver two talks for the Paperless track. First let me say that if you've never been to TechShow you should go. Soon!

TechShow attracts over 1,000 lawyers and legal professionals who yearn for practical information on how to use technology to do a better job practicing law. The people who speak at TechShow are not only extremely knowledgeable (I'm not even in the top 10% there), but also amazingly generous with that knowledge. So it's not just the sesssions that are instructive; just hanging around the hallways or the information booth can yield some really cool tips. Which brings me to today's topic, which involves something I learned from my co-presenter, Larry Smith.

I had never paid attention to the Headers & Footers option in Acrobat, and so when Larry suggested we cover it in our talk ("Getting the Most Out of PDF Software") I was skeptical. "What practical use does that have," I asked Larry. His answer surprised me (in a good way) and maybe it will surprise you too.

First of all where do you find this option? It's the first option listed under the DOCUMENTS menu. If you select it you'll see three other options as shown in the screenshot below (click on it to make it larger).

So apparently you can add Headers & Footers or remove them, or even update them. What other option in Acrobat (frequently used by lawyers, and paralegals) does that sound like? If you answered "bates-stamping" you can advance to the next round, where the following screenshot will seem familiar:

The dialogue box for Headers & Footers looks exactly like the one for Bates-Stamping, except for at least one thing: it doesn't have an option to Insert Bates-number. So, just for comparison I have included a screenshot of the dialogue box that gets presented when you choose the Bate-stamp function:

Note that the title bar of the dialogue box says "Add Header and Footer" but then simply replaces the "add page number" button with an "add bates number" one. And that is the big clue about what the Header & Footer option is most likely to be used for.

Larry told me that he often uses it when he gets a bunch of PDFs that don't have page numbers. He can easily assemble them into one PDF, but then they still don't have page numbers. And page numbers are kind of useful, right?

Thus, the Header & Footer tool allows you to quickly add page numbers to a PDF that is lacking them. And, just as in bates-stamping, you can opt to shrink the document slightly to make sure that your pages numbers are never sitting on top of existing text (see screenshot below).

All you have to do to use this dialogue box is (1) select the "Appearance Options" and then (2) choose the "Shrink document ..." option. 

You can choose to number only certain pages, and you can start the numbering on any number you want. This simply requires that you (1) select that "Page Number and Date Format" button and then (2) select what the page range and the starting number. And as you can see from the screenshot below, you also have options for including the date, and choosing what format it will appear in.

I hope that by now you'll see how useful the Header & Footer option can by. It's probably not something that you'll use a lot, but it's definitely something that is useful in certain situations. I'm glad I learned about it. And if you are too then we both have Larry Smith to thank for this tip. Larry is the Executive Director of the Association of Legal Administrators, and former Director of the ABA group that puts on TechShow.

Next year TechShow is taking place from March 29–31st of 2012, and if I were you I'd mark that on my calendar now. Once you attend TechShow you'll understand how wonderful it is. For now, you'll just have to take my word for it: if you're a lawyer or legal professional and you work with a computer then you need to go to TechShow.

 

Best Acrobat keyboard shortcuts - a handy list

Having used Acrobat for many years now, I've gotten used to using keyboard shortcuts to do many PDF actions. The reason that most people don't use Acrobat more—in my opinion—is that they find it awkward to work with. In other words, they don't know the important keyboard shortcuts.

Learning the keyboard shortcuts takes a bit of time; mostly, you have to train yourself to use them instead of the mouse. But once you make these shortcuts a habit you'll find that using Acrobat is actually easier than working with paper.

I've compiled a list of the shortcuts that are most essential for what a lawyer or legal professional would use on a day-to-day basis. Download this PDF cheat sheet (right click and choose 'save as'); then learn these keyboard commands and you'll find that working with PDFs is super-easy.