In almost every area of the law, lawyers have to deal with legal forms. How do we complete these forms? Do we fill them out by hand? Do we keep a typewriter around for those special form completion occasions? Do we perform xerox magic by physically cutting and pasting from other documents into our legal form? Do we recreate the form in our favorite word processor? These are all solutions that I have tried yet there must be a better way.

If there is, wouldn’t it be great if we could take some of our common documents and turn them into forms? Instead of pulling up a former version of our motion to amend complaint and changing the names and other information, how about making it into a form where we can fill in a few blanks and print it out ready for filing? No more searching through the document to make sure we didn’t leave any information from the previous case.

I thought about HotDocs for this document automation process but had an inkling that I already had software that could do the job – Adobe Acrobat Professional.

To make a form, simply convert your document into pdf format and select “forms” under the “tools” menu. The most common tool will be the “text field tool” followed by the “check box tool”.

acrobatformtool

Here I am selecting the “text field tool”. Once you’ve done that just start drawing boxes wherever you want a field to show up on your document. After you have finished, you will have a “fillable” form that you can save and make later changes or print out when ready.

I’ve created a few already.

EEOC Charge of Discrimination

Ohio Civil Rights Charge of Discrimination

New Client Questionnaire Intake Form

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