Another Reason for Adobe Acrobat

Rick Borstein, the author of Acrobat for Legal Professionals, cements my prior reasoning regarding legal technology.

This post by Rick discusses PDF/A. PDF-whaaa? You say. 

PDF/A, as Rick notes, is the new legal standard for the federal courts, or at least is moving in that direction. Rick notes that, "If you or your firm does any federal work, this new requirement for filing in PDF/A will significantly affect how you create and work with PDF documents."

His blog post does an excellent job of explaining how to start using PDF/A to make sure your documents comply with this requirement.

Let's get it started

I meant to write about this awhile ago, but alas, too many other things became a priority (see this post for a scathing remark about performance).

If you're a newbie, like me, here's a great article written by David Masters discussing how to easily move to a paperless office. I LOVE the idea given in number one to insert the date at the front of the file. Where I'm working, our filing system is so "skiwampus" that it's hard to tell what came first (don't even get me started on the correspondence).

Masters also notes that you should print to PDF. I agree, and can't emphasize enough the benefit of this. I use templates for nearly every document I create. Some templates, such as letters, have an automatic date adjustment or other feature, which adjusts with each new document created. While you can rename the document, and preserve some attributes, when you reopen the file on another day, the features adjust accordingly. Therefore, it's very difficult to determine when the original document was actually created. While I realize there are other methods like using Properties, the big concern is how do you prove the document was created at that time? Do you say, "Look Judge, the computer says I created this document on January 1, 2008," and try to appeal to the Judge's sincerety? Ever heard of the Competence rule? Good luck. (P.S., don't even get me started on the vulnerability of such methods).

Google Apps Hack

One of my concerns involves making my PDF files accessible to clients in the Google Apps module. I've raved about the assets of this module, but a downside of the application is that PDF is not a supported upload format in Google Docs. A quick search on Google revealed this gem that seems to solve my dilemma. Here's the hack:

I might catch heck from Google for this little hack, but here's how I get PDF files to work for my Google Apps domain...

As part of creating the web pages for your domain, you can upload files to display on those pages like
images and stuff. Fortunately that also includes PDF files! And since those files are stored in a public location you can access them via a URL link. Then you can create a Google Doc which contains all of the links to those PDF files.

Here's the steps to do this:
1) Select the Web Pages link from your Dashboard
2) On the Web Page Settings page select the Edit your web pages link
3) Upload the PDF file using the Uploaded stuff control on the right side of the page
4) After the document is uploaded, right-click on the link and select the Copy Link Location in FireFox or the Copy Shortcut in IE
5) Paste that link into a Google Doc, an appointment on your Google Calendar, or wherever necessary

PrimoPDF Gets Praised

I've told you about one of my favorite free programs called PrimoPDF. This beauty of a program gives you full PDF creation ability, without the hassel of having to buy the more expensive Adobe Acrobat Pro.

Well, PDF for Lawyers posted this nice reprint about the PrimoPDF program.