Link to Archive of Burney's Gadgets for Legal Pros

Dragon Naturally Speaking 9

At least once a month, I get a question about voice-recognition software. Usually someone has read a recent story about software that will hear and understand everything you say and dutifully respond to your every wish. They imagine a computer that actually does exactly what they command, types every word that comes out of their mouth, and opens or closes applications when they ask. They imagine a Star Trek scenario where they walk into the office and their computer responds to the sound of their voice. They envision never having to peck out another brief on their tacky keyboard, but simply dictating it to their PC, and printing out a beautifully formatted document.

That reality is not quite upon us, but I can confidently recommend Dragon Naturally Speaking version 9 to anyone who asks me today about voice-recognition. Just understand that it's more of a complement to a keyboard and mouse, and not a full replacement.

Adobe Acrobat 8

It feels like once I finally get used to the latest version of Acrobat, they release an upgrade and I find even more features that I like. The latest offering from Adobe is Acrobat 8 and there are a handful of major features that appeal directly to legal professionals.

First off is a built-in "real" redaction tool. In the past, people would draw a black box around text on a PDF document and feel smug that they just redacted the text underneath. Unfortunately, they were oblivious to the fact that the recipient of the PDF could simply select the black box and delete it, thus revealing the text underneath.

For a true redaction on a PDF document, you had to use third-party software such as Redax from Appligent. Not only would the software create a black box on the document, but it would scrub away the underlying text.

Now Adobe has included a true redaction tool right inside of Acrobat 8 and I am impressed at how well it works. You select the Redaction tool under the Advanced menu and then you can select the text or images that you want to be marked for redaction. The text is not scrubbed away until you select "Apply Redactions." Acrobat 8 warns you that this step cannot be undone, and then prompts you to save the file under a new name.

In addition, Acrobat 8 also asks if you want to search the PDF file for any other information that could be dangerous if released into the wild. Acrobat searches for things like metadata, form field logic, annotations, comments, hidden layers, and embedded search indexes; and allows you to remove all of that information with a click of the button.

The second big announcement for legal professionals with Acrobat 8 is a built-in Bates Numbering tool. Again, in the past, you had to rely on a third-party application to stamp pages of a PDF document with a consecutive Bates numbering scheme. But now Adobe provides a nice built-in tool for adding a Bates numbering scheme to a collection of PDF documents. It basically works from within the header and footer tools within Acrobat, but I was impressed with how easy it was to accomplish.

There are several other impressive improvements in Acrobat 8, but those are the two biggies for legal professionals. Overall, I felt that Adobe delivered a cleaner and more intuitive interface with Acrobat 8. I would always find myself hunting around for the right command in Acrobat 7, but Adobe's re-design of the toolbars in Acrobat 8 really makes a difference in getting right to where you need to be.