Abode is a Software Company, PDF is a Format, Reader is Free, Acrobat is Not. 

This may be the most misunderstood, confused, and even confusing subject in law office tech. 

I have seen resumes from lawyers that claim to be expert in Adobe, expert in a entire company? A PDF is often regarded as an inherently secure format, it's not.  The difference between Reader and Acrobat is often not recognized.  And the enormous capability of Acrobat goes tragically underutilized.   

Here is what you need to know to clear up the confusion and get on the way to using some truly incredible software.

Adobe is a Leading Software Company

Abode is probably most famous for Photoshop.  But they also make Dreamweaver, inDesign, Flash, Coldfusion, Illustrator,  Soundbooth, and of course Acrobat ($400) and Reader (Free). 

Adobe software is often sold bundled into Creative Suites aimed at particular purposes, e.g. Web Premium, Production Premium, Design Premium, ($1,700) and then there is the Master Collection ($2,500).  

PDF is a Format Adobe Invented

PDF is an acronym for Portable Document Format. 

Abode invented it in the early 1990s to facilitate document exchange.  PDF lets people view files independent from the software that created them, e.g. a person does not need Excel to see a spreadsheet created in Excel because they can view it as a PDF.  As a document sharing tool, PDF serves a critical function.

Originally, PDF was used as part of the desktop publishing work flow. For example, a designer working for a magazine can layout and ad in inDesign and then convert it PDF for approval and feedback.

This may seem like a trifling matter but inDesign and other industry class design and layout programs are expensive, inaccessible, and complicated. inDesign, alone, costs $699 and universities and trade schools base design curriculum on programs like it.  I can tell you from experience, it takes many hours of study and practice to even get near programs like inDesign.  See the Screen Shot Gallery for an idea of how complex these programs are. 

The legal industry is split between WordPerfect, Word 2003 with the .doc extension, and Word 2007 and its .docx extension; a standardized file format accessible to all is no small thing.

PDF is a common language. 

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No matter how much we hate it, the billable hour prevails.  For me keeping time has always been a hassle.  I have used post it notes, the jackets of a file, a dedicated notebook and then once a week entered the time into the firm’s billing software.

The Time Sheet below is my answer to that.  It is a PDF that works in Reader and supports the full range of commenting tools, including the typewriter, stamps, and even file attachments. 

I also made a Time Portfolio that includes a number of time Sheets in a PDF Portfolio. Commentators rarely talk about Portfolios in Acrobat 9 its predecessor the “Package” in Acrobat 8.  As a hybrid of document and file, they have numerous uses. 

I like them for law libraries and some companies, Abode included, are promoting them as the perfect way to organize real estate closing documents; and they are.  In Step three of the Paperless Express, I’ll go into Acrobat, Commenting, Security, and Packages. Learning about them is certainly worth the time. 

Of course, if you have Acrobat, you can use the same approach to track time directly on any PDF you are using.  Download Time Sheet

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 While online research sites offer downloads in formatted for a word processor, I do not recommend using those formats.  I imagine the allure of having an authoritative source as a .doc is the benefit of cut, copy, paste for use in quotations. But cut copy and paste is also available from PDF unless that PDF it is secure or the text is not recognized.  Downloads from online legal research sites, are in my experience, never secure and always recognized. 

Indeed, I find very few secure PDFs from any source. 

Text Recognition, on the other hand, may sometimes present problem. Documents we scan ourselves (or more likely some sends to you), that go from tangible to digital, do not have text recognized by default.   We know the difference when we click on the page to have the whole thing turns blue.  The reason for that is, Acrobat is trying to select the one thing it sees, a picture from the scanner. 

However, when we convert a digital file, e.g. a .doc, to PDF, Acrobat retains the character recognition in the process as sent from the authoring program e.g. Word. (If you want to find which program authored a PDF click “File” – “Properties…”  and on the “Description” tab of that dialog box.  And that is also where you will see the meta-data. also reviewed in the movie below.)   Research sites offer their PDF in the latter category and when you run across a PDF that does not allow you select individual text, click the “Document” menu and select “OCR Text Recognition” (Optical Character Recognition) and you will be able to recognize text in the current or multiple PDFs.

By using a PDF you lose nothing in terms of functionality and gain the stability of a PDF, a myriad of commenting features, and therefore a far better participant in your personal law library.  Don’t worry renaming the cases is very fast.  See my video on Renaming cases very quickly in Acrobat wherein I demonstrate how to rename a file with a full name and citations in a few seconds with a  just a few click and key stokes. 

In my experience it is not the general features and benefits that make lawyers not adopt a digital posture, it is the little stuff.  I hear “But then I have to name all the files.” True and annoying using an old approach but using the features that all computers have, e.g. copy, paste and a keyboard, these little things can be easy and need not hold up the progress toward digital convenience.  

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While Indexed Search on the Desktop, i.e. the ability to search your computer in the same way we search the web, has reduced our organizational burden, good file names are still very helpful.  My clients and colleagues sometimes resist increasing the number of digital files on their office because it is time consuming to rename files with titles that can be helpful.  This concern need not hold you up at all because the same cut, copy, and paste approach we use all the time can be used to rename files very quickly.  In this movie, I use a few keyboard shortcuts to really speed things up and rename a series of cases for my research library.

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