Acrobat for Legal Professionals

November 12, 2009

Download my Thirty Top Tricks for Acrobat 9

If you follow this blog, you already know that my colleague Mark Middleton and I offer eSeminars on various topics such as Security, Forms, etc.

Those are deep, hour long eSeminars.

On Friday, November 13, we'll be presenting Thirty Top Tricks for Acrobat 9.

You can register here if you haven't yet.

Since I'm sure not all of you can attend, I've rolled up the Thirty Top Tips for Acrobat 9 into a ten-page, illustrated document so you can try them on your own!

Click the menu on the widget to download or view the file.

If you read on, I'll tell you how you can share the document with others.

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November 9, 2009

Learn Acrobat Online: Free eSeminar Series

Can you name something free which makes you more productive?

I can . . . just attend our free "Learn Acrobat Online" eSeminar series!

We're going to kick it off this Friday with an "Acrobat 9 Tips and Tricks" Session.

Although not all the sessions are legal-focused, Google sends so many folks to my blog, that I thought I might reach some new folks.

You can register for all of the events by clicking the button below.

Read on for full, detailed agendas.

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November 4, 2009

Creating a Click-thru Agreement in a PDF

A click-thru (sometimes called ClickWrap) agreement is a software or web-based acceptance of terms.

Click-thru agreements rely on the recipient clicking "OK" or "I agree" to accept the terms of the agreement.

I recently received this email message about Click-thru PDF agreements:

Is it possible to create a message that appears prior to a [PDF] document being opened to accept terms and conditions? If the user would click "Yes" the PDF would open. If the user click "No" the document would close.

Short answer: Yes!

Do Click-thru Agreements have Legal Precedent?

Yes, there are a number legal decisions on the subject.

The earliest reference I found was to ProCD v. Zeidenberg (text), which established that clicking a button in a software program constituted acceptance of terms.

A number of relevant court decisions may be found here: Click-Wrap Agreement - Internet Library of Law and Court Decisions.

In this article, I'll show you how to create an alert message that pops up when a PDF is opened:

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November 1, 2009

Creating Email Portfolios for Small EDD Productions

I took a close look at the Acrobat 9 packaging and didn't find any mention of EDD (Electronic Data Discovery).

Despite that, I'm hearing from more and more law firms that would like to use Acrobat to capture, review and produce email as part of a case.

A great solution is an Email Portfolio. Acrobat can convert an entire folder of email in Outlook or Lotus Notes into well-organized PDF Portfolio which lets you sort, filter and search.

The Outlook integration provide by Acrobat offers the following:

1. Convert individual email messages to PDF
2. Adds attachments in their native format into the PDF of the message
3. Combines all of the converted messages into a PDF Portfolio
4. Adds a full-text index to the PDF Portfolio

Acrobat's email archiving feature is intended to be a personal email archiving tool, however with a bit of tweaking (and perhaps a plug-in like Evermap's AutoPortfolio), you may be able to use it successfully to manage small EDD productions.

New to Email Portfolios? Learn about the basics of Email Portfolios by watching this short movie.

In this article, I'll discuss:

1. How to create a new User Account for production
2. Setting up a "null user" in Outlook
3. How to load PST and MSG files into Outlook
4. How to convert email messages into an PDF Email Portfolio
5. Reviewing documents in the Email Portfolio
6. Producing Documents from the Email Portfolio
7. Converting an Email Portfolio to a PDF Binder
8. How to use Evermap's AutoPortfolio tool to move data to a litigation support product like Summation or Concordance

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October 14, 2009

Acrobat 9.2 Update is Available

Yesterday, Adobe released the Acrobat 9.2 update.

You can get the update by going to the Help—> Check for Updates or at the following locations:

Windows Updates
Mac Updates

We recommend that all Acrobat 9 users update.

Acrobat 9.2 includes security updates, but also some fixes to some bugs that affect legal professionals in the areas of Redaction and Bates Numbering.

Read on for a link to the release notes and a brief overview of some of the fixes.

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October 6, 2009

Converting Color PDF to Greyscale PDF (An Update)

Converting Color PDFs to Grayscale or Black and White in Acrobat 9

It's rare to find color printers or copiers widely deployed in law firms. When color documents appear in discovery, firms don't always know what to do with them. Examples include PPT files, images scanned in full color, etc.

Acrobat files can contain color and non-color elements:

• RGB: Red, Green, Blue color
• CMYK: Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and Black
• Greyscale: Shades of gray ranging from 0 (white) to to 256 (black) in value
• Monochrome: Black and White

RGB or CMYK image-only PDFs, in particular, can be quite large. Converting these PDFs to grayscale or black can reduce the size of the file and speed printing.

Other times, litigation support departments will have to satisfy the odd attorney who prefers to read grayscale documents.

Whatever the reason, it is fairly easy to convert RGB or CMYK PDFs to Greyscale. It's a bit more difficult to convert to monochrome, but I've included a workaround for that, too.

You'll need Acrobat Pro to make this work for you . . .

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September 28, 2009

Fall Acrobat eSeminar Series

Want to learn more about how to use Acrobat 9?

My colleague Mark Middleton and I will be hitting the interwebz for a series of eSeminars this fall. lWe are trying a few new topics which we hope you will enjoy!

More details on the seminars if you click the More button below.

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September 12, 2009

Try these Two-line Dynamic Exhibit Stamps

I received a lot of positive correspondence after I created and posted a set of Dynamic Exhibit Stamps in my blog article Add Dynamic Exhibit Stamps in Acrobat using a free stamp set.

If you followed the instructions in the article, a new, dynamic stamp was installed in the Comment and Markup toolbar.

When you use the stamp, Acrobat . . .

1. Asks you for the case number:
   
   
2. Stamps it on the document
   

A number of lawyers pointed out that they need to stamp more than just the exhibit number.

David Masters, author of the book "The Lawyers Guide to Adobe Acrobat", emailed me this:

In Colorado, our courts expect exhibit stickers to indicate Plaintiff's or Defendant's and have the case number on them.

The job then was to create a dynamic stamp which asked for two lines of input. More importantly, the stamp should be able to be customized.

Mission accomplished and delivered in this blog article!

Once applied, a stamp looks like this:

Follow the MORE below for:

• Credits
• Download
• Installation
• How to use the stamp
• Instructions on how to customize the stamps

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September 10, 2009

What's the difference between Acrobat versions?

Probably the most frequently asked question I'm asked is— "What's the difference between Acrobat Reader, Standard, Pro and Pro Extended?"

And, the second most frequently asked question is—  "What's the difference between Acrobat 8 (or other version) and Acrobat 9?"

There are detailed "official" matrices you can download from the Adobe website, but they probably don't speak as directly to you, the legal professional.

I've put together two "unofficial" documents that speak to both of the issues above.

So when you want to know which version of Acrobat has redaction, or if web capture changed in version 9, these PDFs will help.

Download the Files

Acrobat 9 Legal Feature Matrix
Shows differences between
Adobe Reader, Standard, Pro and Pro Extended
(214K PDF)

Acrobat 7-8-9 Comparison for Legal Professionals
See new features added in Acrobat 8 and 9.
(179K PDF)

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September 7, 2009

Acrobat 9 for Legal Professionals eSeminar on Monday, 9/14

Need to find out what's new in Acrobat 9 for Legal Professionals?

Sign up for our free, 1-hour eSeminar!

Monday, September 14, 2009 10 AM PST 11 AM MST Noon CST 1PM EST

or cut/paste to browser http://events.signup4.com/AcroLaw

My colleague Mark Middleton and I will show off all of the top features of Acrobat 9 Professional during this live demonstration.

This event is held in cooperation with the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA).

During the seminar, we'll cover:

• PDF Creation
• Bates Numbering
• Redaction
• Form Data Collection
• Typewriter Tool
• Metadata Removal
• SharePoint integration
• PDF Portfolios

Sign up today!

Just click on the link below:
http://events.signup4.com/AcroLaw

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August 23, 2009

Preventing Edits to Bates Numbers applied in Acrobat

Bates Numbering is the process of sequentially numbering legal documents.

Acrobat 8 and 9 Pro allow you to apply and remove Bates Numbers to documents. To try it yourself, choose Advanced—> Document Processing—> Bates Numbering:

The ability to remove Bates Numbers is valuable in case you make a mistake during the numbering process. However, due to the adversarial nature of the legal business, attorneys may desire to limit what the other side can do with documents.

To whit, this email I received from an attorney last week:

What can I use to flatten Bates numbers so that they cannot be altered or removed using the Acrobat Bates numbering process?

I know I can print to PDF, save as TIFF, print-then-scan, etc., but am looking for a solution that will work in batch mode and not degrade the appearance of the file. Also, I don't favor using security settings because I don't want to restrict the user's ability to access the file.

In this article, I'll discuss how to "lock down" Bates Numbers so that they cannot be removed by Acrobat's "Remove Bates" option.

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August 3, 2009

Reducing the File Size of Scanned PDFs

It seems like a lot of folks are struggling with the size of scanned PDFs. Below are excerpts from two emails I received recently:

My [Fujitsu] ScanSnap makes PDFs that are too big . . . like around 60K per page! What can I do to make these smaller in Acrobat?

I have to eFile [with the Federal Court] and am having to split the filings into many segments to go through the [Court] gateway. The issue seems to be with documents that are scanned on our network scanner. PDFs produced directly from Word are a lot smaller. Is there some trick to reduce the size of scanned files?

Before covering how to reduce the size of scanned documents in detail, let's discuss four factors that affect the size of scanned images:

1. Scanning Resolution
   A scan at 600 dpi results in a much larger file than at 300 dpi.
2. Color Space
   Color and grayscale files result in much larger files than black and white files.
3. Physical dimensions of the scanned page
   A legal-size scan will be larger than a letter-size scan, with all other factors being equal.
4. Compression
   Raw scan data can be compressed to make it smaller.

Ideally, you would control all of the above factors yourself by scanning at 300 dpi, black and white and using an efficient compression algorithm.

Unfortunately, you many not have that option. Many desktop and network scanners offer limited or confusing options— or— the scanned PDFs arrived from outside your firm.

For the purpose of this article we will make a couple of assumptions:

1. You have a black and white scanned document of unknown dpi and compression
2. You have already OCR'd the document, or don't need OCR

Read on to learn how to reduce the file size of scanned documents using Acrobat.

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July 17, 2009

Redaction Tips and Techniques for Acrobat 9

Redaction is the permanent deletion of privileged or sensitive information from documents. Acrobat 8 Pro introduced a comprehensive set of Redaction tools to the product. Acrobat 9 added additional tools and capabilities.

In this article, I'll discuss three tips and techniques for working with redactions in Acrobat 9 Pro:

• Setting a preference so that redacted files are automatically renamed DOCNAME_redacted.pdf.
• Creating a new document which summarizes redactions
• Setting a Preference to automatically copy selected text into the Redaction Comment

Read on . . .

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July 12, 2009

Using the Fujitsu S510 ScanSnap with Adobe Acrobat

My sister Sue is seven years older than me and— as she occasionally will point out— seven years wiser.

Sue is a family therapist and works with a number of clients. She's been in practice for well over twenty years and consequently has a a large number of paper files. The state where she works mandates that she must keep these files for seven years.

Thus, it wasn't surprising when I received an e-mail from her asking if I could suggest ways for her to go paperless.

It immediately occurred to me that Sue's needs might not be unlike those of the typical solo attorney or small firm.

My suggestion was to use an inexpensive Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner to scan in her client files. Fortunately, I just happened to have a ScanSnap S510 sitting in my office. This would be the perfect test environment to develop a workflow and best practices for scanning in client records..

At about $400, the S510 comes with a full version of Acrobat Standard (that's worth $299 right there) and has a rated scanning speed of 20 double-sided pages per minute.

Perhaps this is not the most elegant way to describe this device, but it is sort of a beginner's scanner. Unlike more expensive devices, you cannot control the S510 directly from Acrobat or other applications because it lacks a TWAIN or ISIS driver.

The lack of TWAIN doesn't mean that this isn't a useful device. The ScanSnap S510 is a great scanner, but you do need to understand how to use it to best advantage.

Read on to learn how to set-up and use the scanner. I've even included a downloadable PDF version of this article.

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July 7, 2009

Signing PDFs using the Topaz Digital Signature Pad

There certainly is a lot of pressure to be "green" these days. Reducing paper is a rally cry at big law firms and many smaller firms are thinking about it, too.

While it seems pretty easy to send PDFs instead of printing documents, are there times when we must print? For example, to sign a document?

If you are a regular reader of this column, you might remember my article about creating signature stamps. In that piece, I explained how to use Acrobat to "stamp" your personal signature on documents. This is a good practice to use anywhere fax signatures are accepted.

What about gathering the signatures of clients and partners?

A client comes and is ready sign your standard intake agreement and retainer. How could you accomplish that without printing anything? Could you digitally capture a signature and protect yourself at the same time?

Short answer: Yes, but you need a digital signature pad, like the Topaz SignatureGem (available from resellers such as Computime) which is the subject of this article.

You've probably used a digital signature pad when checking out at a department store. Signatures collected from a digital signature pad are superior in many ways to paper signatures. Not only does the pad capture the signature itself, it also captures how the signature was made by tracking variables such as pressure and pen angle. That offers additional assurance.

For those who want to peak ahead, I recorded a Topaz Signing Pad Demo Movie.

More info, after the break . . .

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June 21, 2009

New Training Movies Posted - Search and Touchup Text

If you haven't tried clicking on the HUGE movie button on my full blog page, then you are missing out on some free Acrobat training.

These short movies play back via Adobe Flash and are only one to five minutes in length.

Today, I posted four new training movies:

• Find and Search: Understanding the differences
  Simple Find commands and full Search offer different capabilities. See how to search multiple PDF files
  
• Creating a Full-Text Index for faster searching
  Learn how to create a ful-text index to search across many PDFs in multiple directories
  
• Accelerating Search in a PDF Portfolio for faster searching
  Create a full-text index which "lives" inside a PDF Portfolio to accelerate search
• Making Edits to PDFs with the Touchup Text Tool
  Change text on both PDF Normal (e.g. converted from an electronic source) and Scanned PDF document

If you are interested, you can learn a bit about my process for creating the movies using Adobe Captivate in my full article.

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