Category Archives: Acrobat

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Adobe Acrobat: Why Use the Real Thing

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AdobeWithout a doubt, I believe that Adobe Acrobat is one of, if not the, most underutilized programs around. It is a very powerful program that has some great document processing and annotating features. For example, I used Acrobat to annotate my cases that I am relying upon in drafting pleadings.

However, I recognize that some people either can’t or won’t pay the cost for a full version of Adobe Acrobat (A full version of Adobe Acrobat Professional costs $499). If you have an older version of Acrobat, however, the upgrade price is a reasonable $159. Additionally, that price is good for upgrading from versions back through Acrobat 5 and applies regardless of whether your older version was standard or professional.

If you are not interested in  annotating your cases in Adobe Acrobat or Bates Stamping your documents with Adobe Acrobat, why should you use Acrobat instead of a less expensive option?

Rick Borstein answered this question in his blog recently. You should check out all of Rick’s post. However, I would like to highlight and wholeheartedly agree with a couple of points that he made:

Adobe offers OCR, creation, redaction, bates numbering, review, etc. all in one package, not spread across several packages or requiring additional products

Only Adobe allows you to Reader-enable a PDF so that users of the free Adobe Reader can:

  • Fill in forms
  • Review and comment
  • Use the Typewriter tool
  • Digitally sign a document

Adobe offers Reader enablement, so that you can send files to free Adobe Reader users for Review.

Rick concludes by saying:

Adobe still makes the best PDF and the best tools for working with PDF. Still other tools may work for certain tasks, but make sure you thoroughly test them against Acrobat Standard or Professional. Take a test drive, compare file sizes and how the files look on-screen. Try printing the files and timing print time.

Above all, does the product meet all your needs? Does it allow you fill in and save data in a court form? Does it allow you to efficiently combine PDFs to create eBriefs or Deal Books. Does it offer the ability to use robust commenting tools? Can you redact a docement and be sure that all the data is gone?

Acrobat isn’t inexpensive, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an excellent value and the right choice for your firm.

Once again, I agree with him. Adobe Acrobat is not the right choice for everyone. However, take advantage of the 30 day free trial that Adobe offers and see how Adobe Acrobat works for you.

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Adobe Acrobat Resources

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AdobeThe Practice Management Blog has added a page with some great Adobe Acrobat resources. I am a big fan of Adobe Acrobat. I believe that its is underutilized by almost everyone who uses it. I also am a big fan of the improvement that Adobe made in version 8, especially with the inclusion of Bates Stamping and making the toolbars more customizable.

Acrobat 8 is a great program and the Practice Management Blog has given us a great resource.

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Acrobat: In Your Browser or a Separate Window?

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AdobeIf you are one of those people who is frustrated when a PDF document opens in your browser when you want it to open in a separate window? Alternatively, maybe you want a choice as to whether a particular PDF opens in your browser or in a separate window.

In either case, Rick Borstein provides great step-by-step instructions for configuringFirefox Adobe Acrobat to act the way that you want it to act. Rick also points us in the direction of another cool extension (PDF Download) for Firefox that gives you greater control over how you handle PDFs from the internet.

This is a great tutorial from Rick. You can check it out here.

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Favorites: Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional

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AdobeI often see people complaining about the costs of Adobe Acrobat and, as a result, seeking a lower cost alternative to creating PDFs. I am not here to justify the costs of Acrobat ($449 retail for a full version of Acrobat 8 Professional). However, I would note that, if you already own a copy of Acrobat, the upgrade is rather reasonably priced ($159).

There is no doubt that you can find less expensive solutions to create PDFs. For example, Word Perfect will natively create a PDF. However, creating a PDF is only the first step in a paperless filing system. In addition to creating PDFs, you also need to be able to manage, annotate, or otherwise handle those PDFs. I have yet to find a less expensive solution that gives me the power that I find in Acrobat Professional, version 8.

Last week I talked about how I do all of my commenting or highlighting on cases in Acrobat. This way I always have my annotated copies of the cases with me. This practice saves me If you have ever unsuccessfully tried to find the copy of a case that you made your notes on, you know how much a timesaver this can be.

In addition to the annotation and commenting features, there are also several other features about Acrobat that I really like and use on a regular basis.

  1. The Typewriter Tool. This tool, which Adobe added in an update to version 7, allows you to type on PDFs just as if you were using a typewriter. This tool is invaluable when it comes to filling out forms from organizations that refuse to provide the forms electronically. I also use this tool to complete forms that people fax to me. My fax arrives via email. I open the PDF. Complete the form. And then fax or email the form back to the sender, all without having ever printed anything.
  2. Combining PDFs. Version 8 contains new wizards to assist you in combining PDFs to create one PDF or a PDF package. I typically find wizards annoying. In this case, however, I think Adobe has done an excellant job of creating wizards that help, rather than hinder, someone combining PDFs.
  3. Speaking of wizards, when creating a PDF from an Excel file, Acrobat asks you which sheets you want to include in the PDF. This is a great feature. I don’t know how many times I had to create the same PDF multiple times because I had forgotten to tell Excel to print all all of the sheets to PDF.
  4. Redaction. Version 8 Professional includes a great redaction tool to allow you to remove sensitive data from your PDF. This is invaluable in making sure that you do not disclose privileged or confidential information. The tool is easy to use and I am glad to see that Adobe added it to the program, thus saving you the additional time and cost of finding and using a plug-in.
  5. Bates Stamping. Another way in which Adobe has eliminated the need for the use of a plug-in is in Bates Stamping. The Professional version now allows you to easily stamp (or remove your Acrobat applied stamps) from a PDF. This a great feature that I use regularly in discovery.

The program has several more features that I love and use regularly. However, I think I will pause my list at this point.

If you haven’t tried to leverage the full power of Acrobat, download a 30 day free trial and see what Acrobat can do for you.

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Great Tips from Adobe

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Last week I wrote about an eseminar that Rick Borstein and Tim Huff from Adobe weAdobere presenting about 30 tricks for using Adobe Acrobat. I attended the seminar and thought that it was excellent.

If you did not attend the webinar, I recommend that you download the written materials. The materials contain lots of screen shots and are easy to follow. Based upon comments during the session, the eseminar should be uploaded to Adobe’s website in a day or so.

In addition to the tricks that I learned (which were several) I was also impressed with how Adobe Connect worked. I had never before experienced Adobe Connect. The interface was very nice. Also, it appeared to allow the presenter to take polls very easily to gauge the user experience level and software version of the attendees.

Acrobat is a program that I use every day in my work. Yet, I am constantly amazed at the many things that the program can do. Without a doubt, it is one of the most powerful programs in your arsenal. I have found, however, that most people use it for nothing more than creating or reading PDFs. Acrobat does so much more, however.

Just recently, I have integrated Acrobat into my research. When I find relevant cases on Westlaw, I email the case to myself in Word format. I then print the case to PDF and then do all of my commenting or highlighting on the electronic version. This means I have all of my thoughts with me all of the time without having to carry around stacks of cases with my illegible notes.

If you are using Acrobat only to create and read PDFs, check out the eseminar and see some of the many things that you can be doing with Acrobat.

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Great Acrobat Info

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Rick Borsetein of Acrobat for Legal Professionals is hosting a free e-seminar called “Thirty Dirty Tricks for Acrobat 8.” TheAdobe seminar is on Thursday July 26 at 10 PST.

Rick is a great presenter and will undoubtedly provide us with some useful tips we did not know before. It’s a one hour seminar, its sure to provide you with some great information, and its free. What’s not to like?

If you want to get an idea of what Rick’s and Adobe’s e-seminars are like, you can check out Rick’s presentation on Securing Legal Documents. Rick provides a link to the presentation here.

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Bates Stamping Your Documents

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Anyone who is involved in litigation is familiar with the need to Bates stamp documentsBates Stamper that are produced in discovery. Ernest Svenson of PDF for Lawyers makes a compelling case for why all Bates stamping should be done electronically.

Svenson explains:

Let’s say you have 1,000 documents to bates-stamp. I seriously doubt that any paralegal could finish the task in less than 4 hours. It would probably take at least a day, maybe more. But to scan those documents would only take about an hour, maybe two hours if you had a really slow scanner. Once you’ve scanned the documents it takes about 30 seconds to bates-stamp them using Acrobat 8.0.

Using a computer to bates-stamp ensures that you don’t miss any pages. And you can tell Acrobat to shrink the borders of the page and apply the bates-stamp in the resulting white area. This guarantees that the bates-number on every page is visible. Also you can add text before or after the bates number, (e.g. as “2nd Production – No. 000345”). Finally, if you realize you made a mistake and included some pages that should not have been bates-stamped, you can remove the bates-stamping and start over.

He then concludes:

In short, there’s a smart way to bates-stamp documents, and a really stupid way. Why anyone would want to make someone bates-stamp documents by hand is beyond me. Frankly, I think it should be considered a form of cruel and unusual punishment. Apparently, though, it’s not all that unusual.

And that is really sad.

I could not agree with him more. Jump over to PDF for Lawyers to check out the rest of his post.

Once you Bates stamp documents electronically, you will wonder how or why you ever did it manually before. Plus it is super easy to stamp documents now that the latest version of Adobe Acrobat includes the Bates Stamping ability.

If you use CaseMap to organize your case, you can use a CaseMap plugin to stamp your documents and then automatically import the Bates stamp values into the documents portion of your CaseMap file. This makes your life doubly easy.

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Security for Your PDFs

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AdobeDo you want to know:

  • How to keep the recipient from copying text or printing a PDF?
  • How to password protect a PDF?
  • How to ensure that only the intended recipient can open a PDF?
  • How to revoke a PDF, even after it has been renamed, copied to a thumbdrive or sent outside my firewall?
  • How to find out if a PDF is genuine and hasn’t been tampered with?
  • How to ensure that the PDF I need to send does not contain dangerous metadata?

If so, you need to register for Adobe’s eSeminar on Securing Legal Documents and Information.

The eSeminar is on May 24, 2007, at 10 am PT. The eSeminar is free and is hosted by Rick Borstein of Acrobat for Legal Professionals.

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Converting CAD Drawings to PDF

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If you are not reading Rick Borstein’s blog Acrobat for Legal Professionals, take a moment right now and go subscribe.

This week Rick posted a great how-to describing how to convert documents from a DWG format to PDF. DWG is the format used by many CAD programs. There are CAD viewers available, however, you must learn how to use those viewers in order to view the files.

Rick explains how you can convert a DWG file to a PDF, even if you do not have a program that will open a DWG file. Rick also explains how to use the pan & zoom functions as well as how to navigate the layers in the file.

All of this can be very handy information if you become involved in a litigation in which you are getting documents from an architectural or engineering firm.

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Creating a Transparent Signature Stamp

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I have briefly blogged before about creating a transparent signature stamp. I have also referred you to Rick Borstein’s excellent post about creating a stamp to use in Adobe Acrobat.
For the third time in less than a week, however, I have found a great little video tutorial that explains how to create a transparent signature stamp in a Word document. This document can then, of course, be converted to a PDF if that is something you need to do.

I have used the method described in this video for several months. The signature stamp, when combined by my virtual fax program, allows me to draft letters and fax them without ever printing a copy of the letter.

The video was created by Finis Price at TechnoEsq. You can see it here.
[quicktime width=”320″ height=”240″]http://www.technoesq.com/wp-content/themes/connections/img/videos/TranspSig.mov[/quicktime]