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Why PDF?
Information is the lawyer’s stock in trade. Lawyers process information. Historically, much of
the information processed by lawyers has existed in paper form. As times have changed, so
has the format of information. Today, much information exists in digital form, and much
remains in paper. Digital information can be stored, manipulated, analyzed, and managed
much more effectively and efficiently than information maintained in paper format. Acrobat
and other PDF creation tools do more than just allow you to work with digital documents in
the same ways you work with paper documents. These tools do not, however, replace your
word processing application (such as Microsoft Word, Corel WordPerfect, and so on).
Digital information can exist in many formats. Just as paper bearing information may be
bound in books or jotted on the backs of cocktail napkins, and be written in many different
languages, digital information can exist in a variety of media and formats (although the
choice of format is more important than the choice of medium). Converting existing stocks
of paper-based information into digital information also requires a choice of image format.
Today, common image formats include JPEG, TIFF, and PDF. The choice of format
appears to have been made: many courts and government institutions have chosen PDF.
Portable Document Format (PDF), was invented by Adobe Systems, Inc. It is an open
specification and has been implemented by more than 1,900 hardware and software
vendors. A PDF is a PDF no matter what software was used to create it. As a result, PDF
has become the de facto standard for the secure and reliable distribution and exchange of
electronic documents, and has a proven track record. PDF is a universal file format that
preserves the fonts, images, graphics, and layout of any source document, regardless of
the application and platform used to create it. PDF files are compact and complete, and can
be shared, viewed, and printed by anyone with the free Adobe Reader program. To date,
more than 500 million copies of Reader have been distributed. Governments and
enterprises around the world have adopted PDF to streamline document management,
increase productivity, and reduce reliance on paper. For example, PDF is the standard
format for the electronic submission of drug approvals to the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration. PDF is also used by the governments of the United Kingdom and Germany
for electronic document exchange.
Alternatives to Acrobat
While the features and functionality that follow in this paper describe the Adobe Acrobat 9.0
Professional software, there are other products which offer similar functionality. In fact,
there are many alternatives to Adobe Acrobat for the creation and manipulation of PDF files.
There are applications that range from Acrobat rivals with rich functionality at a significantly
lower cost to free applications that do one thing – convert a document to the PDF file
format, with no bells and whistles. Lawyers should think about which features and functions
they will use and shop accordingly. Two companies that offer PDF creation with more
robust feature sets include Bluebeam’s PDF products and Nuance’s PDF Converter
Professional.
Bluebeam http://www.bluebeam.com/
offers a legal edition of its product, with the usual
functionality such as page insert/extract/deletion, MS Office one click buttons, combining
multiple files, security, and commenting/markup, as well as legal functions such as Bates
numbering and redaction. For Tablet PC users, there is a way to switch profiles and take
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advantage of features for annotating PDFs in free text. Bluebeam PDF software starts at
$149 and has received favorable mentions in Technolawyer
http://blog.technolawyer.com/2007/01/bluebeam_pdf_re.html
.
NuancePDF Converter 6 Professional http://www.nuance.com/pdfconverter/
has a robust
feature set, including one-click conversion buttons for MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint and
Internet Explorer, the ability to create PDF portfolios, PDF/A conversion, combine multiple
files, MS Outlook archiving, headers and footers, OCR, security, conversion from PDF to
MS Office formats and text to speech conversion through DragonNaturallySpeaking, and
much more for $99. To get Bates numbering and redaction you must buy the Converter 6
Enterprise edition at $149. Other products include PDF Create 5 and PDF Converter, which
are the less expensive, less extensive products costing $49 each. These recent versions of
the Nuance PDF products are garnering excellent reviews, including this recent one in PC
World http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,143697/article.html
Other products, such as NitroPDF Professional at $99 http://www.nitropdf.com
, also provide
plenty of functionality, though lacking the legal specific features of Bates numbering and
redaction. There are a bevy of free products, such as CutePDF http://www.cutepdf.com
(although CutePDF Professional is available for $39) or the Pdf995 Suite (free in sponsored
mode, $19.95 to upgrade and get email support) to choose from in the marketplace.
Websites such as www.planetpdf.com
and www.pdfzone.com
provide tremendous amounts
of information about applications to create .PDF files.
There are many other ways to covert electronic documents to PDF. For attorneys who
need to convert a document to PDF, but do not have access to a computer with the
appropriate software, there are free online converters such as Free PDF Converter at
http://www.freepdfconvert.com/
. Many of your existing applications may have the ability to
save or “print” documents to the .PDF format. Microsoft Word 2007 has a free plug-in
http://tinyurl.com/v46jc
that allows the user to save a document as PDF or XPS (XML).
Corel Word Perfect provides a “save as .PDF” function, as does OpenOffice’s word
processor. Online word processing applications such as Google Docs and Zoho Writer will
also “print” documents as .PDF. Attorneys have many options when choosing software to
convert to the .pdf format. Adobe Acrobat is considered the market leader of all the
programs, and the company has considered lawyers closely in their most recent version of
the Acrobat product line, Acrobat 9.0 Professional.
Adobe Acrobat 9.0
You can use Acrobat to convert, create, distribute, and exchange secure and reliable PDF
documents (you cannot create PDF files using Reader). Acrobat allows lawyers to work with
digital documents in much the same way they work with paper documents. That does not
mean that Acrobat replaces your word processor. You cannot effectively edit documents
using Acrobat. You can mark them up, like you would a paper document, but the real work
of editing remains the domain of word processing applications. While Acrobat adheres to
many of the familiar techniques we employ to work with paper-based documents, it allows
lawyers to work with digital documents more efficiently, more effectively, and with greater
mobility. With a scanner and Acrobat, any law office can become a paperless office. The
person who does the paper filing becomes the person who scans incoming documents.
When documents are scanned and saved they are “filed.” Acrobat provides good image-
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acquisition capabilities, including the ability to perform optical character recognition (OCR)
while retaining an exact image of the scanned pages. Besides acquiring images, Acrobat
makes PDF files truly useful. For example, bookmarks and sticky notes can be added to
image-only files. If the files have a text background, the text can be formatted with
highlighting, strike-throughs, or underlining. PDF files with background text can be
searched; image-only files cannot be searched but information contained in the Document
Summary or in attached notes is included in indexes of document collections. PDF files can
be reviewed and annotated; the annotation can be summarized and published to PDF with
just a few keystrokes or mouse clicks.
Improvements in Adobe Acrobat 9.0
Adobe released Adobe Acrobat 9.0 in July 2008, which includes a standard, pro, and pro
extended version. They also released a free Acrobat Reader 9.0, which is necessary to
view some of the enhanced Flash based functionality incorporated into the new version of
the full program. If you get Acrobat 9.0 advise your clients and others you will be working
with to procure the newest version of the Reader so that they can take advantage of the
new functionality. While the core of the program remains similar to Acrobat 8.0, version 9.0
has added some improvements that will appeal to lawyers. The functionality in Bates
stamping and redaction have been enhanced, allowing more flexibility with the Bates
stamps and pattern based searching in redaction to look for social security numbers and
more. The Typewriter Tool has been improved, allowing for different font sizes and types,
as well as continuous use of the tool with a single click. Creation of forms in Acrobat 9.0 Pro
is much improved, making the process simple and elegant. Another feature that has been
added that will appeal to lawyers is the ability to split files by number of pages or file size,
which is important for those who experience file size limitations during e-filing. The
document comparison feature is much improved, allowing users to redline between 2 PDF
documents. Finally, PDF Portfolios improve on version 8’s packages, allowing an attorney
to create a user friendly and attractive closing binder, ebrief or other portfolio of combined
documents.
For more information on the improvements see this post on Rick Borstein’s Acrobat for
Legal blog at:
http://blogs.adobe.com/acrolaw/2008/06/acrobat_9_announced_new_features.html
PDF File Types
Not all PDF files are created equally. There are image-only PDFs and image-on-text files.
Understanding the fundamental difference between image-only and image-on-text files is
absolutely critical. Regardless of whether you work with image-only or image-on-text files,
the image remains an exact duplicate of the original paper-based document. Image-only
PDFs are just that—images only, just digital photocopies of paper documents. Think of
image-only PDF files as pages in a notebook; you can look at the pages but you cannot
search the notebook without reading each page. Even though image-only files cannot be
searched, they are still more useful than a notebook full of paper pages. Using Acrobat,
image-only files can be annotated with comments and graphics. Comments can be
summarized and comment content can be searched with Windows Explorer and other
computer-based search programs. Image-on-text files are created by printing an existing
computer file to PDF (word processing and spread sheet files are good examples), or by
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running a PDF image-only file through an OCR application. When using OCR applications
other than the functionality built into Acrobat, care must be taken to select a final file type
that produces an exact image on text; otherwise, the visible text in the PDF image may be
changed to comport with the interpretation of the OCR application. Acrobat has the built-in
ability to OCR PDF documents; Acrobat calls this function OCR Text Recognition. Image-
on-text files contain an exact image of the paper copy, with a text layer behind the image.
Engage your imagination for a moment here and picture two PDF image only files created
by scanning two pieces of paper. On one piece of paper was a photograph of the Statute of
Liberty and on the other was double-spaced black text against a white background. When
you look at these two PDF files on your computer, you are looking at image-only files. The
image-only file that shows the Statute of Liberty contains no text for an OCR application to
work with. The image-only file that shows double-spaced black text against a white
background, while just a picture of the text, does contain information in the form of small
black shapes that an OCR application can work with. The OCR application looks at each
discrete mark on the page, compares the image to its catalog of characters, and makes its
best guess at what character the mark on the page corresponds to. After the OCR
application has examined each mark and assigned a corresponding character that
information is saved as a layer behind the image. In PDF image-on-text files, the
recognized characters in the text layer are mapped to the corresponding mark in the image
file. The mapping between the two layers allows you to select areas of the image that
correspond with the text characters. This allows you to search, copy and highlight the marks
on the image portion of the file as though they were text characters. Many lawyers think
image-on-text PDF files are the holy grail of legal document management. When paper
documents are scanned to other image formats such as TIFF or JPEG, only a digital image
of the paper exists. If characters that comprise that image are converted to text, the
conversion process inevitably changes the appearance of the text in the image file. Not so
with PDF files; the image remains an exact duplicate of the original while the interpreted text
exists independently behind, or a layer below, the image. The text file behind or below the
image can be searched. Depending on the quality of the paper documents scanned,
thousands of pages can be captured as exact copies and made searchable through the use
of OCR applications.
Creating PDF Files
PDF files can be created by using Acrobat to “print” to PDF, by scanning to PDF, by
converting existing files, and by capturing Web pages. Using Acrobat as a standard tool in
the law office, on par with a word processing application, is no longer just beneficial—it is
approaching the level of necessity. Just as law firms depend on word processing
applications to create documents, lawyers are depending on Acrobat to create PDFs and
work with them. With various courts implementing (and in some cases mandating) e-filing,
basic knowledge of creating and working with PDF files has become as necessary as
proficiency in using a word processor. PDF is an excellent choice for the law office because
it preserves the fonts, formatting, and graphics of the source file, regardless of the
application and platform used to create it. A variety of file formats can be converted to PDF.
For instance, a set of interrogatories can be created in WordPerfect or Word, printed to
PDF, and then e-mailed to opposing counsel or the client. Likewise, a spreadsheet
prepared using Excel or QuattroPro can be printed to PDF and e-mailed as an attachment
to someone who does not have the source application software to open or read an Excel or
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QuattroPro file. PDF files are compact and can be exchanged, viewed, navigated, and
printed by anyone with the free Adobe Reader software, and the document integrity is
maintained. In addition to creating PDF files from virtually any software application, you can
also create PDF files by scanning and capturing paper documents and by downloading and
converting Web pages.
“Print” Electronic Documents to PDF
As mentioned above, one of the main benefits to using PDF in the law office is the ease
with which you can convert a word processing or other document simply by printing it to
PDF. To print PDF documents you need a PDF printer (which is software, not hardware).
Acrobat installs a single PDF printer, Adobe PDF. Adobe PDF is like any other printer
driver, but it writes out PDF files instead of printer commands. The Adobe PDF printer
appears in the Windows Printers folder and is available to all applications that use
associated Windows printers. The default Acrobat installation adds three Convert to Adobe
PDF buttons to the toolbar in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that allow you to
create PDF files quickly and easily from within those applications. Adobe PDF is also added
to the menu bar. By default, PDF files created using these commands and buttons preserve
hyperlinks, styles, and bookmarks present in the source file. In Windows XP, if the Convert
to Adobe PDF buttons are not visible in the Microsoft application, choose View > Toolbars >
PDFMaker
Scanning to PDF
Another incredible benefit of using PDF in the law office is the ability to scan all the
information that comes into the law office in paper format and save it on your hard disk drive
(or better still, on a drive shared over a local area network). Once you become comfortable
with Acrobat, you are on your way to operating a paperless office. The most common way
to create PDF documents from existing files is to use the Print to PDF function. As
mentioned earlier, Acrobat installs a Convert to PDF button on the toolbars of Microsoft
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. A Publish to PDF button can be installed on the toolbar in
WordPerfect (version 9.0 and later). If you have a Print, Publish, or Convert to PDF button
on the toolbar, you need only click it to start the process. Otherwise, to print a document to
PDF: 1. Open the file that you want to convert to an Adobe PDF file in its authoring
application, and choose File > Print. 2. Choose Adobe PDF from the list of printers. 3. From
the Print dialog box, click OK. By default, the PDF file is saved in the same directory as the
source file, using the same filename, but with a .pdf extension. The conversion of files to
PDF also uses the printer settings or page setup you have chosen for the application that
created the file. For example, if you are using Microsoft PowerPoint and choose Handouts
from the print dialog box, the resulting PDF file is based on the Handouts version of the
presentation.
Scanning and OCR
Perhaps the ultimate utility of Acrobat is the ability to convert paper documents into digital
PDF files using a scanner. Discovery documents, incoming mail, and pleadings can all be
converted to digital files using Acrobat and a scanner. To create a PDF document using a
scanner place the document to be scanned in the scanner, then click the Create PDF button
and select From Scanner. In the Create PDF From Scanner dialog box, select your scanner
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device. Choose the format (single-sided or double-sided) and specify whether to create a
new PDF document or append the converted scan to the currently open PDF document.
Click Scan; at this point a new dialog box appears that allows selection of additional
scanning options such as paper size and the type of file to be created (color, gray scale, or
black and white). This dialog box is a function of the software that came with the scanner
(the scanner driver) and its contents vary depending on the make and model of scanner
used. Accordingly, its precise contents cannot be described here. However, unless you
need a color or gray-scale image of the paper document, always select black-and-white
(sometimes listed as text). Documents scanned as black-and-white images produce
substantially smaller PDF files sizes compared to documents scanned as color or gray-
scale images. Click Next if you are scanning multiple pages to the same file; click Done
when finished scanning. The document scanned to PDF is now visible in the work area of
the Acrobat window. At this point the document must be saved to an appropriate location on
the local computer or network. The quality of the text behind the image in image-on-text
PDF files depends on
several factors. In image-on-text PDF files created by scanning and OCR, the quality of the
underlying text file depends on the quality of the original scanned document. Large, clean,
easily recognizable fonts produce nearly 100 percent accuracy. Small or faint text produces
less-accurate results. Documents printed to PDF have exact text behind the image. The
results produced can be substantially different. To convert scanned pages (image-only files)
to ones with searchable and indexable text (image-on-text files), open an image-only PDF
file. Use the Recognize Text feature to OCR an image-only document within Acrobat. From
the Document menu select Recognize Text Using OCR, a dialog box will open, specify the
pages to be captured (all, current, or a range of pages), then click OK to start the process.
Email Archiving
For those using MS Outlook or Lotus Notes for email, Adobe Acrobat 9.0 has designed a
conversion toolbar that resides in the programs. With a single click users can convert a
single email, a folder, or multiple folders into a PDF portfolio. The resulting file will contain
the text of the email, as well as any attachments (in their original format) of that email
message. The PDF portfolio generated from an email folder is searchable, sortable, and
may be batch printed. Imagine closing a matter and saving the email folder to PDF, which is
then stored with the rest of the files in the matter and is archived appropriately. Then the
folder for that matter is deleted from the email program, effectively clearing out space and
cleaning up the email program.
Saving Web Pages as PDF
Creating PDF files from Web pages comes in handy when you want to capture an entire
section of a Web site, such as a code section or reported decision. You can also save
electronic statements, receipts, and Web orders directly to PDF. Web pages can be
converted to PDF directly from Internet Explorer with a single click. PDF files created from
Web pages can include active links from the pages, depending on the number of levels
captured (Get Only n levels). If the linked pages are not included in the PDF, Acrobat
prompts the user to open the pages in a browser (in other words, connect to the Internet
and open the page in your default browser). Web pages captured to PDF have their
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Macromedia Flash content preserved (those sometimes annoying moving elements in Web
pages). This is possible because the PDF file format itself has been upgraded (to version
1.5). This new format supports JPEG2000 image compression and can fully embed
multimedia content instead of linking to external audio and movie files. To create a PDF
document from a Web page click the Create PDF button and select From Web Page. The
Create PDF from Web Page dialog box appears with a space to enter the URL (Web
address) for the desired Web page. You may find it easiest to locate the Web page in the
browser of your choice, then highlight the URL in the browser address window and copy it
to the clipboard (Edit > Copy or Ctrl+C). Now you can paste the URL into the Acrobat
Create PDF from Web Page dialog box. Notice that the dialog box has other options for you
to select. You can specify the number of levels to convert or even select an entire site (use
the latter with caution—telling Acrobat to convert the entire Thomas or ABA sites to PDF
would be time consuming, bandwidth intensive, and produce a monstrously huge file).
Working With Pages in Adobe
Think of working with PDF documents as working with a notebook full of paper documents.
Just as with a notebook or file folder full of paper, you can add pages to PDF files (at the
point of your choosing), remove pages (take them out, copy, and reinsert), and delete
pages (take them out and discard) from PDF files. Beyond the basics of taking pages in and
out, you can build an electronic table of contents using bookmarks and create links (you can
build a link from virtually any point within a PDF files to lots of other types of digital
information, not just other PDF files). Another aspect of working with PDF files involves
settings that control how you want your PDF file to look when you or someone else opens it,
including how the pages are numbered. When you set the look of your PDF file, you can
also build in some identifying features so that your document can be found using Windows
Explorer or other search software in case it ends up in the wrong place in your filing system.
Adding Pages
Okay, you have a PDF file—whether one page or a thousand-plus pages—and you want to
add more pages. New pages can be inserted at any point in the PDF file; you need only
decide whether the page or pages are added before or after the insertion point. For
example, in a ten-page document you need to add three new pages between the current
pages 7 and 9. If you open the existing file and turn to page 7, then you would insert the
new pages after the insertion point; if you were at page 9, the insertion would be before.
The pages to be added, or inserted, can be single-page or multiple-page PDF files. To add
pages from the Document menu select Pages > Insert or press Shift+Ctrl+I.
Extracting Pages
Now you want to take some pages out of a PDF file. Extracting pages means taking pages
out of a PDF document and saving them as a separate document (they may continue to
exist as a separate document or may be inserted into another document or documents). To
extract pages, from the Document select Pages > Extract and specify the page or range of
pages to be extracted. When you click Okay, the selected page(s) will appear as a new
PDF file. Notice the checkbox option that allows you to Delete Pages After Extracting. When
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you extract pages, the extracted pages appear in a new window. If the box is checked, the
extracted pages are no longer in the original document—they have been deleted. The
extracted pages that appear in the new window must be saved with a new file name if you
want to keep them. Extracting pages from a PDF document is equivalent to taking paper
pages out of a folder, notebook, or box, making copies, and then putting the pages right
back where they came from. The paper copies are the extracted pages. You can work with
these pages, save them, or throw them away. For example, if you have a fifty-page contract
and you only want to use page 3 (containing a legal description of real property) as an
exhibit, then you would extract page 3 and save the extracted page with a new name (such
as “001 Exhibit 1 LegalDescription.pdf”). The original fifty-page contract would not be
altered in any way (there is no risk that you have put page 3 back in the wrong place).
Deleting Pages
Deleting takes the pages out of the current PDF document and throws them away. No, they
do not go to the recycle bin so that you can retrieve them if you change your mind! This is
taking pages out of a notebook and running them through the shredder; they are gone for
good (so use with caution). This feature is handy for ripping out blank pages. To delete
pages, from the Document menu select Delete Pages or press Ctrl+Shift+D. Notice that
once you have told Acrobat to delete a page, the Delete Pages dialog box appears. If you
want to delete only the current page, tap the Enter key (or click on OK), and it is gone (for
good). If you want to delete a series of consecutive pages, specify the range in the Delete
Pages dialog box. The current page is by default selected as the beginning point for the
From-To range.
Rotating pages
Rotating pages is not something you can do in your paper notebook, or at least with as
good a result as with Acrobat. You will find it particularly useful with scanned documents; by
virtue of mechanics all documents go through the scanner in portrait orientation regardless
of how the information was set on the physical page. It is also handy when someone places
the pages in the scanner top down, so that the resulting images are upside down. To rotate
single or multiple pages to correct the orientation from the Document menu select Rotate
Pages or press Ctrl+Shift+R. Once the menu or keyboard commands have been issued, a
dialog box appears allowing you to set the parameters for rotating pages, including the
direction and amount of rotation (clockwise 90 degrees, counter-clockwise 90 degrees, or
190 degrees). The current page, all pages, or a range of pages can be rotated.
Adding Hyperlinks
Links in PDF files are like hyperlinks in Web pages. Clicking on a link takes you to a new
location. Links can take you to a specific page in the current document, to the first page of
another document, to a specific page in another document, or to a Web site; they can open
another file type, play audio or video, and more. Links make PDF documents interactive and
truly powerful. In the transactional practice, think of a long contract with links built into it that
take the reader to the various exhibits or schedules to the contract. Every reference to
Exhibit A can be linked to that exhibit; a click on the link takes the reader to the exhibit. In
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