Acrobat for Legal Professionals

May 29, 2007

Securing Legal Documents - Preso and Resources

On May 24th, my colleague Mark Middleton and I presented a Securing Legal Documents and Information eSeminar.

In the seminar, we covered password, certificate and policy-server security.

Click to see
On-Demand Security eSeminar

(53 minutes)

The presentation was requested by many attendees, so I thought I'd post it here.

I've also included a single-page PDF which lists a number of security resources.

Click to get to these documents…

More…

11:58 AM | Permalink

May 12, 2007

Batch Conversion to PDF/A

In my two previous articles (see the archives ) on PDF for Archiving—PDF/A—I discussed the benefits of this archival format and how to create and validate PDF/A.

One challenge facing government agencies, law firms and their clients is the conversion of large numbers of legend files to PDF/A.

In this article, I’ll cover how to use the Batch Processing facility in Acrobat 8 Professional to transform common file formats found in the legal market to PDF/A-1b.

Read on to learn more…

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2:31 AM | Permalink

May 8, 2007

How-to Movie Archive

This entry is an archive for how-to movies related to articles on this blog. All movies require Flash Player 8 or above.

DWG to CAD Conversion (opens in a new window)
See how to use Acrobat Professional's Batch Processing to convert many DWG files to PDF.

Email Archiving: The Basics (opens in a new window)
Learn how to convert Outlook or Lotus Notes email to a compact, searchable PDF Package complete with attachments.

1:51 PM | Permalink

May 7, 2007

Converting CAD Drawings in Discovery

CAD— Computer Aided Design— files are sometimes produced as a result of electronic data discovery.

Disputes between clients, contractors, builders, architects, engineering firms and suppliers are often the source of these requests.

Autodesk AutoCad is the most popular CAD application used by Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) firms. 

AutoCad's binary file format is the DWG format.  Other CAD applications may also open or save DWG.

You may find yourself one day with a CD full of DWG files.

What should you do with them?

A variety of DWG viewers are available. However, many firms do not wish to install and train paralegals and attorneys on how to use these applications. Many firms prefer to review CAD files in one of the document formats they normally use such as TIFF or PDF.

PDF is a better choice than TIFF for reviewing CAD drawings:

  • Layers Retained
    The ability to layers on/off allows reviewers to more easily find problems and issues. TIFFs are single layer.
  • Smaller File Size
    I did a test on a 2-sheet B-sized CAD drawing:
    - 5.75 MB TIFF
    - 270K PDF  (22 X smaller)
  • Symbols Retained, Fully Searchable
    CAD files may use non-standard fonts and symbols which do not OCR accurately from TIFFs.
  • Cleaner, More Accurate Review on Screen
    CAD objects converted to PDF remain as vector objects. This allows the reviewer to zoom in with no loss of quality. TIFF files are bitmaps and degrade at high resolution.

Fortunately, Acrobat 8 Professional can convert AutoCad files to compact, searchable PDFs complete with layers.

Guess what?

You don't have AutoCad installed on your computer to complete the conversion.

Read on to learn how … I will also cover a couple of tips for working with large format files.

More…

9:06 PM | Permalink