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Commentary: The Internet Lawyer - Adobe Acrobat - More than just a

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Aug 1, 2005 by Bruce L. Dorner

(This article originally ran in Lawyers Weekly USA, Boston, MA, another Dolan Media publication).

Just about every lawyer has a copy of the free Adobe Reader installed on his or her computer. We all know that court and government forms are easily opened and printed using the PDF format.

The format is not dependent upon any particular word processor - it's similar to making a photocopy of the document. But while all of us have downloaded and printed forms using Adobe Reader, many don't know about the power of the big sibling in the Adobe family - Adobe Acrobat 7.

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With the full version of Adobe Acrobat 7 Professional, you can easily convert your Word or WordPerfect documents to PDF format for storage or secure sharing. You can take an entire computer folder of documents in differing formats and convert them to a PDF archive file.

Think how this might be a way to reduce those stacks of file boxes to a single archive on a hard disk or CD!

In my view, the problem is that Adobe Acrobat is so powerful that you can't appreciate all its tools without some patience, understanding and training. I'm still a novice, but permit me to use this article to explore one small segment of this magnificent tool.

Seeking Comment

Here's the task. You want to prepare a document and send it out to your big corporate client for review and comment. In the old days you would take the paper copy of the document and stuff it into the fax machine. You would receive a return fax with all sorts of scribbles, cross-outs and comments.

Some of them likely would require a phone call because the copy was faint. Next, you'd type all those changes into the master document and produce version number two. Then, you would start the process again.

With the advent of e-mail, we modernized the process by attaching the document to an e-mail. But the problems with this approach are many.

The client has the ability to edit the master document and pirate it for other purposes without benefit of counsel's input. Sometimes, maintaining control over the text in a particular version gets challenging and an earlier version is used as the final document.

And, depending upon which version of which word processor created the document, the text starts to dance around the page as fonts differ and numbering sequences become jumbled. Frankly, the document you get back often doesn't look anything like the document you sent to the client.

One way to reduce this risk is to have better control over the editing process. At your end, use Adobe Acrobat 7 Professional and the free Adobe Reader 7 at the client's end.

Start by creating a document in Word 2002 or above. With Adobe Acrobat 7 Professional on your computer you should have three special Adobe buttons on your Word toolbar. When you move your cursor over the first button it reads Convert to Adobe PDF. At the second button you see Convert to Adobe PDF and e-mail, while the third button displays Convert to Adobe PDF and Send for Review.

Click on the third button and your document is converted to PDF format. A menu appears in the middle of the screen with clear and concise directions. The entire process at both your end and the client's end is menu-driven for safety and simplicity.

The menu asks you to confirm the name of the file you wish to send for review and then asks for the e-mail address of the intended recipient. You may send the document to multiple e-mail addresses at the same time. The menu links to your address book so you may select names directly from your existing list.

Real Beauty of System

Now, here's the real beauty of the current version of the program.

There's a box on the screen labeled Customize Review Options. When you click on that box a menu opens and displays a check box labeled Also allow users of free Adobe Reader 7 to participate in this review. Be sure to leave the check in place.

Now, your client can use the free Adobe Reader 7 to offer comments and edits without having access to the underlying Word document. Multiple parties may be involved if you wish on both the receiving and sending sides of the drafting process. Acrobat sorts all of the comments with great clarity.

The next item on the menu is a canned e-mail with step-by-step instructions for the recipient on how to deal with your document. You may want to add some personal comments to the canned text, but I urge that you leave the instructions intact. Click on the send invitation button and the e-mail is transferred to your outbox or begins its journey to your client, depending upon your personal e- mail settings.

When your client opens the e-mail the invitation to participate in the review process appears like any other e-mail. Assuming your client has the free Adobe Reader 7, the document will open in review mode and a How-to help panel opens with descriptions of what to do next. A toolbar floats along the upper edge of the computer screen, as shown in Figure 1.

Select the Text Edits tool to begin the process, and the help screen shown in Figure 2 explains the process. The client may insert text by simply setting the cursor between the words or characters and typing. An insert carat is shown at the place, along with the new text. The client may delete text by selecting it and hitting Delete or Backspace.

Commentary: The Internet Lawyer - Adobe Acrobat - More than just a

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Aug 1, 2005 by Bruce L. Dorner

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