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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:
- Convert individual email messages to PDF
- Adds attachments in their native format into the PDF of the message
- Combines all of the converted messages into a PDF Portfolio
- 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.
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New to Email Portfolios? Learn about the basics of Email Portfolios by watching this short movie. |
In this article, I'll discuss:
- How to create a new User Account for production
- Setting up a "null user" in Outlook
- How to load PST and MSG files into Outlook
- How to convert email messages into an PDF Email Portfolio
- Reviewing documents in the Email Portfolio
- Producing Documents from the Email Portfolio
- Converting an Email Portfolio to a PDF Binder
- How to use Evermap's AutoPortfolio tool to move data to a litigation support product like Summation or Concordance
January 10, 2009
Can a PDF Portfolio have bookmarks?
People just love bookmarks, the TOC-like panel that let you jump from page to page in a PDF:
People like Bookmarks so much, they wish they could have the same organization tool for a PDF Portfolio, which is a collection of individual documents in a PDF container. I have several other articles you can read on Portfolios in my Portfolio Category.
While PDF Portfolios don't have bookmarks per se, I do have a workaround that might make many of you happy.
| Can't get enough Rick? Follow my daily life on Twitter. |
December 15, 2008
Case Analysis Part III: Exporting a PDF Portfolio List to a Spreadsheet
In previous articles on PDF Portfolios for Case Analysis (see Part 1 and Part 2), I discussed how to create, customize and code files in a PDF Portfolio to help you work with case documents.
Law firms often need to share information about case files. For example, you may need to create a report about the files contained in a PDF Portfolio to share in discovery.
Out-of-the-box, Acrobat does not offer the ability to export the Portfolio List View.
Fortunately, Adobe's Acrobat Technical Evangelist Joel Geraci has posted Joel's PDF Portfolio Utilities on his PDF Dev Junkie Blog. Using this free utility, you can easily export the list view.
In this article, I will discuss how to use this utility.
December 8, 2008
PDF Portfolios for Case Analysis: Part 2
PDF Portfolios— a new feature of Acrobat 9— are useful for Case Analysis.
In PDF Portfolios for Case Analysis, Part 1, I covered how to:
- Download and use a special Portfolio template for Case Analysis
- Customize the Portfolio Cover Sheet and Header
- Create folders
- Add new columns to capture fielded information
In this article, I will discuss how to:
- Add your own case files to the Portfolio
- Move files to appropriate folders
- Add keywords
- Sort and Filter information
I'll also include a few tips for working with PDF Portfolios.
October 12, 2008
PDF Portfolios for Case Analysis: Part 1
| June 16, 2009 Note: I've made several changes to this post including an updated Case Analysis Portfolio template. |
Case Analysis is the process of reviewing documents associated with a case and making decisions about them. For example, you might use Acrobat to help you find:
- Documents containing your clients name
- Documents which relate to a specific issue
- Documents which are privileged
A PDF Portfolio is a single PDF document which contains other documents. By keeping the documents together in a PDF Portfolio, we can accelerate document review.
In this article series, I'll discuss how to use Acrobat 9 and a PDF Portfolio for Case Analysis.
For some background on PDF Portfolios, click here to view a demo movie.
In this article, you will open a Case Analysis Portfolio and customize it for your case. In Part 2, we will load documents and start to code and work with documents. In Part 3, you will learn how to export a PDF Portfolio to a spreadsheet file.
August 30, 2008
PDF Portfolio Conversion and Reordering
At the International Legal Technology Association show this week, I demonstrated one of the top new features of Acrobat 9— PDF Portfolios.
Portfolios are a great way to deliver closing binders and deal books. Clients find PDF Portfolios easy to use and engaging because:
- Portfolios can contain both PDF and non-PDF content
- Portfolios are searchable
- Portfolios use a folder structure for organization
- Portfolios are sortable via a spreadsheet-like interface
See a Demo Movie of PDF Portfolios Using a PDF Portfolio for Closing Binder |
There
was a lot of interest in PDF Portfolios at the show, and a few questions that I haven't addressed here on the blog:
- How do I convert non-PDF documents (Word, Excel, etc.) into PDF inside a Portfolio?
- How can I convert all incoming documents to PDF at the time I create a PDF Portfolio?
- How do I change the order of the files in a Portfolio?
Fortunately, there are methods to address the issues above. Read on to learn more.
July 15, 2008
Bates Numbering Across a PDF Portfolio
Bates Numbering is the consecutive numbering of legal documents.
With Acrobat 9 Pro, you can Bates number all of the files in a PDF Portfolio in a single step, even converting common Office formats automatically along the way. Keeping all the files in a PDF Portfolio is convenient and makes it easy to deliver and maintain the document set.
Want to learn more about PDF Portfolios? |
Want to know about Bates Numbering in Acrobat 9? |
| Still on Acrobat 8? See this older article on Bates Numbering | |
In this article, I'll discuss how you can Bates number across a Portfolio, and also discuss a few limitations.
July 18, 2007
Managing, Annotating and Searching PDF Packages
In my last article Search and Combine using PDF Packages, I discussed how to search a large number of documents and combine the resulting documents into a PDF package.
The result was a PDF package containing a target list of documents for further investigation.
With this “hot” set of documents in hand, it is time to carefully review them. You want to find out:
- Who is mentioned in the documents
- The issue(s) associated with the documents
- When actions took place
Once you have all of this information, what do you think about what you found? How will you make your case?
In this article, you’ll learn how to:
- Add Notes or Annotations to a document in the package
- Add or delete documents in the package
- Search within a package, including your annotations
December 2, 2006
Email Archiving with Acrobat 8: They're Packages!
The International Data Corporation estimates that over 8 trillion email messages will be sent in North America in 2007. (1)
Legal Professionals are accelerating their use of email messaging due to the proliferation of mobile messaging. Almost 90% of large firms offer the Blackberry or similar device. In 2006, 18% of solos and 30% of small firms reported that these devices were available to them.(2)
Email has become a primary pathway that firms use to communicate with clients and the courts. Increasingly, email is growing as a source of discovery data.
Properly managing and archiving email is a critical skill for attorneys. Large firms may use specialized archiving products which can cost in the six figures. Smaller firms need to take a more cost effective and proactive approach.
Acrobat 8 introduces greatly enhanced email archiving capabilities. Read on for more information . . .