If you are a lawyer not planning to retire within the next several months, sooner or later you are going to need to know how to publish PDF documents. One big reason is that wherever you turn these days, PDF is quickly becoming the standard for the courts.

If you are not a computer geek or a twenty-something, you may be unaware that PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It was developed by software company Adobe as a standard for delivering electronic documents, and it has become widely accepted because of its consistent quality and the free reader that allows virtually anyone to view PDF documents, regardless of computer or operating system. Documents look the same and have the same formatting whether you are using Windows, Mac, Linux or even Unix. In addition, PDF files can be protected so that they cannot be modified. No doubt for these reasons PDF has become the standard for electronic filing in the U.S. Federal Courts' CM/ECF system (Case Management/Electronic Case Files).

PDFs Required for E-Filing

Electronic filing became mandatory in all US District Court, District of New Hampshire civil cases filed after June 1, 2004 and in all criminal cases filed after January 1, 2005. The only caveat to this mandatory rule involves pro se litigants filing on paper. However, as of October 1, 2005, any remaining paper cases, even those involving pro se parties, will be converted to electronic cases. Attorneys will be required to file electronically in those cases while pro se parties may continue to file paper documents.

Over the past year and a half, the District Court, spearheaded by the efforts of Clerk James R. Starr and Chief Deputy Daniel J. Lynch, have been preparing the Bar for this transition. They have been doing an excellent job of educating the Bar on all aspects of e-filing. The Court has from the start wanted the rules and procedures to be user-friendly, and they have developed one of the most intuitive and informational Web pages on the topic of e-filing that is available on the Internet. That Web site is: http://www.nhd.uscourts.gov/. Just click the Electronic Case Files (ECF/PACER) link off the main page on the left taskbar. From there you will be directed to a page where you can learn all you need to know about Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) and CM/ECF.

Why Should You Use PDF if You Don't Practice in the Federal Courts?

As mentioned above, PDF can prevent text alterations and can maintain consistent formatting regardless of what computer either you or your recipient is using. A concrete example might help illustrate why you need to hop on the PDF bandwagon.

If you are a transactional lawyer who often exchanges proposed revisions of documents with opposing counsel, rather than sending your file as a Microsoft Word document for them to revise and return to you, you might want to consider converting the document to PDF format.

For instance, your opponent might make changes to your draft that he neglects (or chooses not) to report to you. While Word has a "Protect Document" feature, it can easily be deactivated. You could also use the "Track Changes" function, but why should you have to spend the time and effort when you can simply send the document as a PDF file that allows you to preserve the format, page and paragraph references.

Another thing to consider is that word processing documents often contain hidden information called metadata about the history of the document's activity. For example, if you and your client differed on a provision (i.e, you added a paragraph and your client demanded it be taken out,) in MS Word or WordPerfect your opponent could possibly track all of the changes made to the document, gaining unwanted insights into your negotiating position.

How about Litigators?

Litigators can probably benefit from PDF files more than anyone, but for another set of reasons. Litigators often deal with voluminous numbers of documents. The PDF offers access to some nifty built-in organizational tools. You could scan your documents into a database program such as the popular, if expensive, Summation. Summation costs around $1,500 and this price does not include time and cost for training either - both of which you will probably need in abundance. Summation uses a file format called TIFF which is a competitor to PDF. For attorneys who want to save money, PDF is a viable option, especially in smaller volume cases when you are not dealing with thousands of documents.

Time Equals Money

The next time you have a small case with only 1,500 pages of documents that your client has given you to produce, think about using PDF. A good scanner with a page feeder can do this work in about 60-90 minutes. Acrobat will let you scan the documents into the PDF format, and can even create one big computer file with 1,500 pages. If you purchase StampPDF, a program that works with Acrobat, which you can get for about $180, you can electronically date-stamp all of the documents in about four minutes. Automatic date-stamping can save several hours of your paralegal's time and your client's money. But this is just the start.

Once you have scanned your documents, reviewing them for privilege can be done very quickly using Acrobat's features. You can go through all of the pages you just scanned very quickly on your computer, viewing the entire page at once or viewing it at whatever resolution you like (this is good for older eyes), only stopping on relevant documents. When you see something that you want to mark for further review or to exclude, hit "CTRL+B" to attach a bookmark to that page. Reviewing 1,500 pages in this manner can take you little more than three hours. When you are done, you can quickly review each of the bookmarked pages and easily make "annotations" that you can then refer to whenever you want.

If you are working on the case with other people, and they have the full version of Acrobat then they can add comments, too. The value of this is that the comments are searchable by author, so if you want to see everything that they had to say about the document you can search just for their comments.

All the while, the underlying text remains intact. If you later want to print the document without the comments, one simple click lets you print it in its original form, without comments, for you to send to your opponent.

Where to Get the Software

Interested in preparing for the PDF transition? You can download Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0 at www.adobe.com. Acrobat Reader is a free application that allows you to view PDF documents. While you cannot create PDF documents using Reader, there are numerous shareware and ad-ware products that will convert documents created in WordPerfect or MS Word to PDF format and vice versa. Many of these can be found at www.download.com. One excellent ad-ware program is PDF995 available at www.pdf995.com. It is free to use but displays ads when you are using the product. You can upgrade 995 to an ad-free version for as little as $10 per user. Of course, you can always use Adobe's products such as PDFWriter or Distiller. Acrobat 6.0 retails for $170 from Amazon or you can pick up a slightly used copy of 5.0 (basically the same thing) for $100. Larger firms may want to consider Adobe Distiller, which offers enterprise solutions and comes with a correspondingly heftier price tag. Finally, a robust and inexpensive alternative to Acrobat is PDF Factory by FinePrint Software. This application lets you create and combine PDF files and starts at $50 for the standard version.

Outsourcing the Work

If you find yourself in a rush or if you are on a computer not equipped with PDF software, you can always outsource the task. There are online services that will do it for you-for a price.

The dominant company in this market is Adobe. Their service costs about $10 a month or $100 a year and you can test this service with five free conversions. A completely free service you may want to try is provided by BCL Technologies at www.PDFonline.com. It converts files of two megabytes or less for free and the finished product is quite good.

Where To Learn More

Also, for attorneys who want to learn the ins and outs of using Adobe, there are several excellent books on the market. One, written especially for the profession is Lawyer's Guide to Adobe Acrobat by David L. Masters available through the www.lawpractice.org/ catalog or by calling the ABA Service Center at 1-800-285-2221. It is written in basic language, assumes little previous knowledge of Acrobat and has an in-depth section on creating e-briefs. Its sections on creating and modifying PDF files take full advantage of the special features PDF offers over Word and WordPerfect including special navigational aids, unique commenting tools, digital signatures, and security features. It also explains how to extract text, save Web pages as PDF files, and use Bates Numbers for PDF files.

If you are new to Acrobat, an additional book you may wish to get is Adobe Acrobat 6 PDF for Dummies by Greg Harvey available at virtually any bookstore. Like most of the "Dummies" books, it is easy to understand, includes plenty of diagrams and screenshots and is a handy reference tool when you need to tackle a new task. While there is some overlap in the content of these two books, you may find it useful to compare different explanations for more challenging tasks.

Finally, if you have specific questions regarding the Court's ECF system or Web page, please contact Chief Deputy Daniel J. Lynch at Daniel_Lynch@nhd.uscourts.gov or at (603) 225-1477.

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