Fathom Graphics uses Acrobat.com along with Adobe Creative Suite Design Premium to produce, review, and collaborate on creative content for clients. The company uses Adobe solutions to create easy-to-read checklists to help ensure no detail in complex design workflows goes unnoticed. Taylor tells us that Acrobat.com makes it easy to upload creative files, enabling everyone involved in a project to review, comment, and track changes. The streamlined process helps Fathom Graphics complete projects ahead of schedule and provide clients with a superior customer experience and outstanding results.

To learn more about how Fathom Graphics uses Acrobat.com, click here.

The book covers a wide array of topics that are relevant for novice users such as the new interface, basic PDF conversion and Adobe Reader, as well as topics for more advanced users such as OCR, Guided Actions, prepress and accessibility features.

Here is a sneak-peak at some excerpts to give you a taste of what Adobe Acrobat X PDF Bible offers:

• Exporting PDF Content
• Editing Text
• Scanning and OCR Conversions
•  Creating Accessibility and Tagging PDF Files
• Understanding Acrobat Form Tools

This book from Wiley publishing has long been a trusted Acrobat reference, and much like Acrobat, it keeps getting better with time!  It’s available for purchase now at bookstores and online.

Varanasi says that digital literacy is essential for student success. By using the right mix of tools in the classroom, teachers can challenge students’ traditional notions about their own creativity and get students to think differently about how the explore, create, and communicate assignments. By using more dynamic creative applications, teachers and students can look at assignments in new ways. To read more, check out the recent Adobe success story here.

Here’s the final question and the lucky winner will receive Premium Plus 1 year subscriptions to both FormsCentral and SendNow available at Acrobat.com, valued at approximately more than $400.00:

What was the last form you filled out?

The contest opens 10 a.m., Wednesday, March 23, 2011, and closes 2 p.m., Tuesday, March 29, 2011. The prize drawing will occur on or before 5 p.m., March 29, 2011. The drawings are open to residents in North America only. For the complete rules see here.

Be sure to follow @Acrobat for future contests and prizes next month!

Fans will have access to Acrobat videos on AdobeTV through a customized video tab, highlights from the Acrobat blog and updates from the @Acrobat Twitter channel, including tips and tricks, tutorials, product updates, events and activities, customer stories, contests, and more.

Join the Acrobat conversation on Facebook and become a fan today!

Today, Rebecca kicks off the series by highlighting how to create your form and the tools that’ll help you do it; later this week week, she’ll carry on with testing and distributing your form, and finally she’ll take a look at analyzing all the data you garner over the course of your form’s life.

For now, read on for the down-low on form creation in FormsCentral with today’s post here.

Here’s question two and the lucky winner will receive a copy of the Acrobat X Suite (for Windows):

If you were an Acrobat feature, which one would you be and why?

The contest opens 10 a.m., Wednesday, March 16, 2011, and closes 2 p.m., Tuesday, March 22, 2011. The prize drawing will occur on or before 5 p.m., March 22, 2011. The drawings are open to residents in North America only. For the complete rules see here.

Check out @Acrobat next week for the last question of the month!

Gathering Research

Research for a legal brief begins long before the first draft is written. There may be an initial gathering of relevant decisions at the outset of a new case.  Based on the facts as we know them at the beginning of a new matter, we may assemble a large arsenal of decisions that set out the elements of the relevant claims and the burdens of proof for each.  The decisions are saved in PDF format and annotated with Acrobat’s commenting tools, such as sticky notes and the highlighter.  The decisions are combined as a single PDF with the name of each bookmarked for easy reference. 

As litigation continues, new decisions are added to the master research file for future reference. 

When it’s time to begin the first draft, the highlighting and annotations mean I don’t need to re-read each opinion to locate the relevant portions.  Already, Adobe has saved me significant time.

Draft Review

After I have completed a meaningful draft, it is printed to PDF and circulated for comment.  This may involve comments from the client, co-counsel, or others on the litigation team.  But regardless of how many people need to review the draft, by sending the document in PDF, we avoid confusion about which version is in circulation and prevent the inevitable problems that occur when multiple people attempt to edit a single word-processing document.  Instead, comments can be inserted and reviewed without any risk to the original document.

There are times, though, that a reviewing party wants access to the original, editable version of the document.  For example, if they want to reorder the sections of an argument to see how it reads before suggesting that they should be changed.  For those situations, I can simply attach the original document to the PDF version.  The reviewer can open the attachment to change the document as needed. But comments are returned in the PDF for integration into the subsequent versions.

Document Assembly

When the brief is nearing its final draft, it’s time to gather the necessary exhibits.  Because all of my files are kept electronically in our document-management system, this process is surprisingly uncomplicated.  As I’m writing, I pull the documents that will be exhibits and save them in a folder.  Once the brief is in final form, the exhibits are combined into a single document.  I prefer to identify each exhibit in two ways.

First, we insert a “slip sheet” between each exhibit. The slip sheet is simply a single page with the exhibit number centered on the page and written in very large font.  When flipping through pages, slip sheets are easy to spot and make it easier to identify when an exhibit starts and the next one begins.  Second, we use Rick Borstein’s exhibit stamp to mark the exhibits themselves with the appropriate number.

Once the exhibits have been assembled, it’s time for the final touches.  Sometimes, this means adding continuous page numbers.  Other times, it means adding a footer to indicate that the documents are being filed under seal pursuant to court order.  These requirements vary by court but, with Adobe, it couldn’t be easier to make any necessary changes.

With the exhibits assembled, the brief is printed to PDF and the exhibit document simply inserted after the final page of the document.  No printing and re-scanning required.  This step alone saves a tremendous amount of time, prevents the accidental omission of a page in the final scanning and keeps the file size to a minimum, which is particularly important for e-filing.

Molly DiBianca is paperless attorney, employment-law lawyer, early adopter, employee-engagement evangelist and blogger. She works at Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor. You can follow on Twitter @MollyDiBi or her blog on going paperless at: www.goingpaperlessblog.com  Have a great wizard story on how Acrobat has inspired your work? Share it with us in the blog comments, we’d love to hear from you. Stay tuned for more upcoming Wizards in our Acrobat Wizards at Work blog series.

Acrobat has included accessibility features for many years. In Acrobat  X, you can add tags, and review the status of a document using either brief or extensive checking tools. Donna Baker, a prolific author and writer of many books and tutorials on Acrobat, has posted an article, “Acrobat X Accessibility — Beyond the Obvious,” that will take you on a tour of some common accessibility features. She additionally goes beyond the basics to look at accessibility requirements for common page elements you might not consider—accessible comments, form fields and more. Read the article on AcrobatUsers.com here.

Ready? Here’s your first question:

What is your favorite feature in Acrobat ?

A reminder, the contest opens 10 a.m., Wednesday, March 9, 2011, and closes 2 p.m., Wednesday, March 16, 2011. The prize drawing will occur on or before 5 p.m., March 16, 2011. The drawings are open to residents in North America only. For the complete rules see here.

Stay tuned here at @Acrobat each week in March for more questions! Good luck!