The Connected Lawyer

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.

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.

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?

Here’s a great tip from Affinity Law Office Technology Blog about a free plugin from Microsoft to create PDFs from Office 2007.

I am a firm believer in using Adobe Acrobat. If you haven’t bought my argument yet, however, and you are using Office 2007, you should install this plugin.

I 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.

I 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.

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.

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.

Without 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.

The 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.