Acrobat 8 named ‘Product of the Year’ by Law Technology News readers

By Kurt Foss, Editor, AcrobatUsers.com

Rick Borstein and Mark Middleton represented Adobe Systems at the fifth annual technology awards program hosted by Law Technology News (LTN) in early February, where Acrobat 8.0 Professional took the top prize as the reader-chosen "Product of the Year." Acrobat won top honors even while competing against several industry-specific software products; awards were given in fourteen individual categories.

"I think what's interesting and special is that LTN readers are primarily users of specific legal-technology products," Borstein said. "Out of all the entrants, we were probably the only general tool listed. So it was a real validation for us that its readers chose Acrobat and, in doing so, acknowledged they see it as an essential tool in the legal profession."

David L. Masters, a Colorado attorney and author of The Lawyer's Guide to Adobe Acrobat, said “you can hardly practice law today without knowing about the use of Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The federal courts and a number of states have mandated PDF for electronic filing. With Adobe Acrobat software and PDF files, you can increase productivity, decrease costs, and improve client services by switching from paper to electronic workflows.”

“The volume of documents produced as PDF files through disclosure and discovery in litigation continues to grow,” said Masters, who soon will release the third edition of his guide that covers Acrobat 8.0, which he expects to become available from the ABA Law Practice Management Section website in late March. “Recognizing the power and efficiency of electronic documents, attorneys employing best practices--be they co-counsel, opposing counsel, or in-house counsel--expect that documents will be exchanged as PDF files. Likewise, clients have come to expect legal professionals to provide documents as PDF files. Given the widespread adoption of PDF as the standard for electronic files, lawyers need to work with those files using Acrobat.”

Borstein explained that the vote of confidence by the LTN readership was in part the result of Adobe setting out to add several key tools and capabilities to the latest version of Acrobat that are aimed at the paper-intensive legal industry's needs. In addition, the support of and personal commitment to the needs of legal-industry customers by Borstein and Middleton have enhanced the adoption and intelligent use of Acrobat within the profession.

"In Acrobat 8 we added some legal-specific features [PDF: 1MB] that are really valuable to legal professionals. Something Adobe also has worked hard at doing is making sure we show all of the other valuable features in Acrobat in a legal context,” he said.

“A feature like Bates Numbering--the sequential numbering across documents--is really an essential tool for legal professionals. You can imagine the challenge if you have 20,000 documents in your case and need to be able to locate each page in a specific document,” Borstein said. “In many small law offices, the only way to do that previously was manually with a Bates Stamper, or by printing and applying labels and making copies. Using Acrobat, paralegals and attorneys can scan paper documents or convert their electronic documents to PDF, and then electronically stamp them. This saves hours of work, and also reduces costs for their clients at the same time."

Another key feature added in Acrobat 8, although not specific to legal users, is redaction--the ability to selectively and permanently remove sensitive information in documents.

"Redaction allows an attorney or paralegal to remove privileged content that doesn't need to be shared or shouldn't be shared when producing documents in the discovery process," Borstein said. "For example, very often personally identifying information like Social Security numbers and e-mail addresses won't be produced for the other side because that's something you shouldn't share. Some other examples are the names of minor children or spouses that are associated, or the names of third parties who could be damaged either monetarily or by reputation if they were associated with the case."

Legal users also take routine advantage of many of Acrobat's other tools, according to Borstein. "Acrobat has a lot of other things that are really helpful, like search and packaging. Legal users do a lot of the same things that regular Acrobat users do--perform optical-character recognition (OCR), make paper searchable, use and fill out forms, combine documents, create PDFs and capture Web pages," he said. "They're also obliged because of state rules to maintain client records for a long period of time, generally seven years in most states. So a feature like e-mail archiving is really valuable."

Borstein and Middleton have spoken at more than 200 industry-specific seminars, conferences and trade shows, demonstrating "how to use Acrobat in a legal context in a way that's useful to them and that makes them more productive or saves them time," Borstein said.

No small part of that above-and-beyond support is Borstein's popular "AcroLaw" blog, in which he delves into issues and resolves common questions about legal applications of Acrobat. The blog has become a treasure trove of tips, tutorials and examples, providing Borstein and Adobe with another way to interact with the community of legal users.

"I love to be able to respond to the readers and let them know what's happening," Borstein said. Judging by the recent LTN award, readers of the legal-industry publication appreciate that kind of support.