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Litigating with Adobe Acrobat: Part 1

by Joe Kashi

April 2006

Basing my litigation practice upon Adobe Acrobat, I have been able to simultaneously improve my ability to quickly, effectively and efficiently handle fairly complex litigation while reducing my non-billable overhead by about 50 percent. Here are some tips that I learned along the way.

The most important concept is that how you use Acrobat, and what it can do for you in a litigation practice, is almost infinitely mutable. There’s no single right way to use, only the way that is right for you. Experiment and see what works best for you and your staff rather than taking my thoughts as gospel. Remember, though, that properly and fully exploited, Acrobat can be a transformational technology - whether you ease into Acrobat or simply jump in head-first, think about how you can leverage its many capabilities. Because Acrobat can work in so many different ways, it is difficult to state an overall “Litigating with Acrobat” theme beyond its great flexibility and adaptability. So, I’ll content myself with simply setting out some of the ways that my litigation practice has evolved in its use of Acrobat. Next month, I will describe some specific in-court and presentation uses for Adobe Acrobat.

  1. Make Acrobat your primary filing system. Use Acrobat documents in preference to paper wherever possible. We retain only original paper documents such as recorded instruments, notes, or signed discovery and disclosures.
  2. After you scan your paper documents, avoid the temptation to retain the paper. We stamp already-scanned incoming paper as a client copy and then re-send it to the client.
  3. Scan and handle documents only once. We will scan any documents presented by the client during a meeting and then return them immediately to the client.
  4. Use your scanner and laser printer as your basic photocopying machine, particularly for large documents that you must keep in order, such a service copies of disclosures. We found that this was less expensive than a traditional photocopier and ultimately far easier and faster to use.
  5. Use a very fast network with fast hard disks and gigabit Ethernet connections to the desktop. Some Acrobat documents can be very large indeed, particularly briefs with embedded video and audio clips and attached exhibits. We built our file server using 15,000 rpm SCSI hard disks, lots of RAM on the server, and switched gigabit connections. Most new computers include a gigabit Ethernet connection on the system board and full-speed gigabit network switches are now quite inexpensive.
  6. Your Acrobat filing system will quickly grow large. Be sure that your server hard disks are big enough - 150 Gigabytes would be a good start. After a case is completed, we move it into inactive storage on a large local hard disk that is also backed up each day.
  7. Store all documents in one place, on a central file server.
  8. The electronic filing system is your complete office - back it up completely and reliably every day. This is easy to do with the fast and inexpensive USB-based shirt pocket hard disks that we described in the February 2006 issue of Law Practice Today. Be sure to verify that a backup is a good one. We use the basic backup accessory in Windows XP because it is universal and can be run on almost any computer in a pinch.
  9. Use Acrobat 7 Professional. It has many features that make it particularly useful in preparing exhibits and other basic law office tasks.
  10. Keep track of the time spent scanning and coding any documents. These costs are recoverable, and hence billable, under Alaska’s Civil Rule 79 cost recovery provision and, I suspect, under many state court versions of Rule 79.
  11. Ease into using Acrobat. Start scanning new cases and any documents that you are likely to need in the near future. Within three months, you will find that most of what you need on a day to day basis is already scanned and available across your local area network. For older cases, scan as needed or when you are about to archive them. Set a target date when you will be scanning everything.
  12. Make the contents of all documents text-searchable by enabling OCR as you scan each document. Alternatively, if you find that this takes too long or is inconvenient at that time, then set up a batch command to OCR multiple documents or entire folders in one operation.
  13. Search the content of Acrobat documents by using a good indexed desktop search program. We very much like the free Coperic Desktop Search program. Change the default parameters to also search your network drives and to completely search PDF documents as a text document rather than merely searching on the file name.
  14. Put a scanner on each desk. Scanning documents is a task for everyone, not just clerical staff. Attorneys should consider scanning each document when a client provides it to them and then immediately annotating the document with pertinent information by way of comments, bookmarks or annotations in Acrobat 7 Professional. You can either print out a document with the markups showing or simply the raw scanned document.
  15. As a desktop scanner, we like the Fujitsu ScanSnap series, which is very flexible and convenient, and adequately fast, for light duty scanning. For heavier scanning and as a departmental scanner, we like the Xerox DocuMate 252/262/272 series made by Visioneer, which also markets comparable high end document scanners under their own brand name. You really need sheet-fed document scanners, not flatbed scanners with an attached Automatic Document Feeder. These do not work nearly as well.
  16. You will also need a high quality flat bed scanner that accurately scans photographs and similar materials. You should not skimp here because most scanners do a pretty bad job on photographs. After several false starts, I got the Epson 4990 Pro flatbed scanner, which does an excellent job of accurately rendering flat materials.
  17. Get the newest versions of Corel WordPerfect X3 or Microsoft Word. Both of these programs have enhanced PDF file capabilities, including the ability to read and revise the contents of a PDF file.
  18. Start exchanging documents as PDF attachments. This saves me a tremendous amount of time and hassle when working with experts and cooperative opposing counsel.
  19. Organize your electronic client file structures in any way that works for you but avoid overly complex directory structures. You don’t really need them once you have standardized file content names and run an indexed desktop search program, and you will waste time searching through too many different directories. Remember, one of the biggest advantages of an Acrobat-based filing system is that you can totally rearrange an entire case file quickly and easily to suit an evolving litigation situation.

Keep in mind that you will be using the same scanned documents for everything: initial client intake, the preparation of pleadings, disclosures and discovery, trial briefs, exhibits, and in-court presentations. For example, the same Acrobat “binder” that I used to put together initial document disclosures became, with annotations adding exhibit labels and numbers, the materials sent to an out of state expert, the exhibits for the expert’s testimonial preservation deposition, the materials used to depose the other party, and my actual exhibits.

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About the Author

Joe Kashi is an attorney and litigator living in Soldotna, Alaska, who is active in the Law Practice Management Section and a technology editor for Law Practice Today. He has written regularly on legal technology for the Law Practice Management Section, Law Office Computing magazine and other publications since 1990. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from MIT in 1973 and his J.D. from Georgetown University in 1976, and is admitted to practice in Alaska, Pennsylvania, the Ninth Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court.