Law Office Technology » Adobe acrobat

Using Adobe Acrobat to Respond to Discovery

lawtech — Mon, 10 May 2010 02:49:36 +0000

I recently received discovery from a plaintiff in a civil case. The attorney provided the discovery in printed format and on a “floppy” disk (computer disk in reality, although I still call them floppy disks). She did this in accordance with the Ohio Rules of Civil Procedure but I still had to laugh. I haven’t had a computer that would accept a floppy disk for over a decade now. I promptly placed the disk in an envelope and mailed it back to her. Perhaps she can use it in another case.

I have more ways to answer her discovery than she probably has bytes on that floppy disk. It’s amazing how large law firms can be so behind the times.

Of my myriad ways to deal with her printed discovery, I chose to use Adobe Acrobat to avoid retyping the document. First I scanned the discovery into pdf format with my Scansnap scanner. I opened the resulting file in Adobe Acrobat and proceeded to insert text fields into the document with the text field tool. To insert a text field, I simply drew a box with the cursor. After I have drawn the box, Acrobat provides me with several options concerning the text field. I generally check the option for multi-line (allows for a multiple line response in the text field) and the option for scrolling long text (automatically scrolls the line to the next line when you reach the right margin).

I inserted a text field in the response area of each request for admission and made text fields for my signature bloc and for the certificate of service. In a few minutes, I was done.

Blue regions are the text fields that I inserted right into the discovery document; however, the blue regions do not show up as blue regions on the printed final version – only your inserted text shows up there.

We used to keep a typewriter at the office for functions like this but no more.

Adobe Acrobat Professional to the rescue. Next!

Adobe Acrobat Tips and Tricks – Pages Function

lawtech — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 03:30:15 +0000

Want to make pdf document creation a breeze? Click on the “pages” button in your open pdf document.

From here you can quickly make several changes to your document. Like . . .

Re-order pages,
Delete pages,
Add other pdf documents to your current document.

You can accomplish all this by dragging and dropping with your mouse.

Adobe Acrobat PDF Tips and Tricks – Password protection

lawtech — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 03:13:01 +0000

Let’s say your sending a pdf document that you just scanned in and created with your new Fujitsu ScanSnap Scanner with the Instant PDF Creation feature and you want to send it to a client via email. Afterall, you want to do your part to protect the environment and be known as a green business so why make another copy and use snail mail when you can email an electronic file? What’s the carbon footprint of such outdated practices anyway?

However, you’re worried that email poses some security risks so you want to protect yourself and your client. You come up with the idea to password protect your PDF document. How do you go about doing it?

We open up our document in Adobe Acrobat Pro, proceed to the File menu and select – Properties.

From here, we select – Security.

We select – Password Security to protect our document with a password.

Finally we set our security options and we’re good to go. Just don’t let your client know the password via the same email that contains the document.