Category Archives: Acrobat

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My Review of Adobe Acrobat 9

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TechnolawyerLast week, my review of Adobe Acrobat 9 was published by Technolawyer. The review can be found on my Files page or downloaded directly from here.

The short version is that I love the program and would recommend it to anyone who has not yet upgraded. There are several new features as well as improvements to existing features. As I said in the review:

The greatest improvement that I have seen, however, resides in the Forms feature. With Acrobat 8, I could create a form. However, doing so was not an easy process. Every time I tried to use the feature, I ended up spending a lot of time trying to get the form right. And I still usually ended up with a form that worked, but was not what I wanted.

With version 9, however, Adobe has made the Forms feature much more functional. The form wizard recognizes the form fields better. Also, I can now easily add new fields or modify any of the automatically recognized fields. Plus, Adobe has made form creation even easier by having all of the fields appear in the left sidebar. This means I can easily access and modify them, and I can change the tab order of the fields simply by dragging the field names around.

Download my full review here.

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The Perfect Filing Cabinet is a Trash Can

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Ernest Svenson (a/k/a Ernie the Attorney) has a great post at PDF For Lawyers about the necessity of keeping paper documents after they have been scanned.

Ernie explains:

Once people realize the benefits of scanning and decide to do it they usually have one last question: how long should I keep the paper after I scan it? My advice is always to get rid of the paper as soon as possible. A friend of mine who long ago found Nirvana in being completely paperless says he thinks it should be illegal to sell scanners without a paper-shredder attached.

Still, people wonder about getting rid of paper and believe there are special rules that require them to keep certain papers. Which ones? They’re not sure so they tend to keep most of them—just to be sure they comply with that mysterious bureaucratic edict.

He then notes that he recently read a post that advised that all tax related documents must be kept in paper form. Ernie objected to that strenuously:

Oh brother! Here we go again. The comments to this post were festooned with supporting opinions on how vital it is to keep paper receipts.

Instinctively, I knew this was ludicrous. Both from a practical standpoint, as well as a legal one.

* * *

But what about the IRS? Isn’t the Unclutterer article right about the IRS requiring you to keep paper copies of receipts and supporting documentation related to your tax returns? No, the IRS doesn’t require paper copies. And if you don’t believe me then read IRS Rev Proc. 97-22, which specifically allows electronic storage systems if they meet basic requirements of reliability.

You need to check out the entire post. Also, make sure that you read the comments as well for a great discussion of the practical applications of Ernie’s suggestions.

I admit that I have not quite gotten to the point where I toss the paper when it is scanned. However, I have managed to rid myself of a bunch of paper. Further, I am finding it more and more frequent that my physical file on a matter is nonexistent simply because all communications and work on the file have happened entirely electronically.

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Another Great Acrobat Feature

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For years, I have done the majority of my research online. Until a couple of years ago, I would identify the cases that helped me, email those cases to myself, print them out, and then highlight/take notes on the hard copy. A couple of years ago, I realized that it made no sense for me to keep all of my documents electronically, but keep my research in hard copy.

After coming to this realization, I switched to printing my cases to PDF and then commenting and highlighting the cases in Adobe Acrobat. If I have a big project, however, I can end up with several cases to print to PDF. This can be a time consuming task if it is done one case at a time.

Using Adobe Acroabt 8 Professional (no, I do not yet have 9), I can take advantage of the Batch Processing feature. I simple select Advanced > Document Processing > Save as PDF. I then identify the files that I want converted to PDF. Acrobat will open the files and convert them to PDf for me.

Last week I had about a dozen cases to convert to PDF. I simply started the batch processing and ran out to grab some lunch. When I returned, all of the work had been done and the files had all been saved as PDFs.

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Adobe Acrobat Seminars

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It is no secret that  Adobe Acrobat is one of my favorite programs. I am excited about the launch of version 9 and am curious about what new features that Adobe has added to make Acrobat even better for lawyers.

Fortunately, Adobe appears to want to answer that question. Rick Borstein has announced on his blog that he will be free 1 hour eseminars where he’ll “show off the latest legal-specific features of Adobe Acrobat 9.”

Rick says that during the seminar, you will

  • Find out which features are in which version of Acrobat
  • Learn how to create a PDF Portfolio for a Closing Binder
  • Discover the new and powerful Document Comparison tool to help you spot changes fast
  • See how to accelerate Redaction workflows with pattern-based search
  • Split documents for electronic filing workflows
  • See new, easier-to-user forms creation and data collection tools
  • Use enhanced Bates Numbering to help you manage your case
  • Take advantage of new ClearScan OCR
  • Export PDFs for re-editing in a word processing program

Right now he has three different seminars scheduled. I am getting ready to sign up now. If you are at all interested, simply click here to go to Rick’s blog and sign up.

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Acrobat & Mobiliti Problem

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I am using Adobe Acrobat Pro 8 and Mobiliti Basic 7.1. I presume that most people are familiar with Acrobat. Mobiliti is a program that creates a virtual network on your laptop that allows you to access designated folders when you are disconnected from your network. I love this program. It allows me to keep my files synchronized. Plus, it preserves all of my file paths. I recommend it to anyone who uses a laptop.

I have a problem that has been vexing me for a while, however. When I am disconnected from the network and running on the virtual network, Acrobat operates very slowly when trying to access the virtual network (either to save or open a file within Acrobat). When I click on a folder on the virtual network, it takes about 20 seconds for Acrobat to open that folder (yes, I counted).

This can become very frustrating quite quickly.

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

Does anyone have any suggestions?

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Rick Borstein Does it Again!

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AdobeI am not sure how he does it, but Rick is able to figure out what problems I am encountering in Acrobat and tell me the solutions. All without me having to bug him by email. Earlier this week, Rick posted on his blog an answer to the question of how to extract nonsequential pages from a document.

Acrobat allows you to easily extract sequential pages, however, there was no easy way to extract nonsequential pages. Or at least I thought there wasn’t. Rick, however, comes to the rescue with his explanation of how to do so. He explains:

Yes, it’s true that you cannot select and extract a discontinuous range of pages using the Extract Pages option and the Pages Panel.

However, you can drag and drop a non-sequential bunch of pages between two PDFs using the Pages Panel:

Go read the entire post, however, because not only does he give you step by step instructions on how to do is, he also includes a video showing it being done.

This is another excellent post from Rick and another example of why his blog’s feed should be in your RSS reader.

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Another Great Way to Use Adobe Acrobat

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AdobeI believe that Adobe Acrobat is one of the most under used programs that attorneys have. Many, if not most, attorneys have a copy of it on their computer. Yet, almost all of them use it for only two purposes: creating a PDF and reading a PDF that someone else sent them. Acrobat is much more powerful than that, however. I have written before about some of my favorite Acrobat tools.  You can also find several other posts relating to Acrobat by clicking the Acrobat category in the sidebar.

Today I want to point you toward a post from Ernie the Attorney on his PDF for Lawyers Blog. In the post, Ernie explains that he does not use paper in his depositions and that, instead, he refers to his electronic copies of the documents. He explains:

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.

I think that this is a great way to use Acrobat. Not only does it allow you to access your documents easily and quickly. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, it also keeps all of your notes with respect to a particular document in one location. As an added benefit, all of those notes are fully searchable.

Although I have not entirely abandoned paper at my depositions, I do use Acrobat to keep notes on my documents and to organize them. I have found that the PDF Package available in Acrobat 8 is a great way to package all of my deposition exhibits together in a single location.

If you are are using Acrobat only to read or create PDFs, I urge you to start exploring the other options that are available to you.

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Thanks Rick!

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I was working with some documents in Adobe Acrobat and I realized that I needed to reduce the page sizes on some document and I was not sure how to best do it. Fortunately, Rick Borstein had the answer I needed. I hopped over to Rick’s Blog Acrobat for Legal Professionals and after a quick search of his blog, I had a solution to my problem.

This solution emphasizes one of the great features of Rick’s blog. He posts about solutions to real world problems that attorneys might encounter during their workday.  If you are trying to solve a problem in Acrobat, I recommend that you start first with Rick’s blog, before you start searching for solutions elsewhere.

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Another Cool Feature in Adobe Acrobat

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If you read this blog regularly, you probably already know that I am a big fan of Adobe Acrobat. I use it on a daily basis in my practice. One of the things that always frustrated me, however, was that the “recently opened files” list (you know the one that appears at the bottom of the file menu) has only the last five files opened. Plus, unlike most other programs, I was unable to find a way to expand this list.

A few days ago, I happened to notice that right above the 5 last opened files is a link called History. Clicking on it, I discovered that it allows me to see all files that I have opened Today, Yesterday, The Last 7 Days, The Last 30 Days, and The Last 12 Months.

What a great feature. I don’t know why I never saw this before. However, if you, like me, get frustrated with the recently opened file limitation, you now know that there is a great solution that gives you access to so much more.