- law dawg
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As least one of you has been clamoring for a post focused on the filing and production of non-native pdfs, so here it is. Where do you stand on this? Is there any reasonable position other than production of native or OCR’ed pdfs should be mandatory and customary? What about providing opposing counsel with the original .doc file of discovery requests? Is there any reason that shouldn’t be a requirement? If you’re the type that doesn’t do these things why? Who hurt you? But seriously, are you intentionally antagonizing opposing counsel or just oblivious to the burden on your staff and opposing counsel as a result of these practices? What other common courtesies do you extend in your normal course of business? Where do you think the line should be between requirements and courtesies? What practice do you do or have seen that you wish more people would do?
Have you heard how the Lewis Roca merger with Womble has gone?
Probably not great since so many of their associates left.
Partners, too. Most recent partner departure is Jennifer Hostetler, opening her own practice.
Thank you Law Dog! Only the purely evil print, wet ink sign, scan and file/serve!
Or they may just be a luddite.
Only a luddite doesn’t know how to OCR a non-native PDF.
A luddite or a solo practitioner who refuses to get a full adobe subscription because making his paralegal/assistant miserable is worth the 13 dollars per month he saves.
Or they may be filing in a jurisdiction or with a judge who requires wets.
Judge Lane and Judge Wanker issued an administrative order a few years ago which mandates wet ink signatures for filings, affidavits and verifications. The judges signed it…. electronically, a nice little “fuck you” to practitioners, but also hilarious.
What is a non-native pdf? Let’s start there.
A scanned pdf. As opposed to a word file saved as a pdf.
Attorneys want to be able to copy and paste all pleadings and discovery even if they are PDF.
Someone needs to lay this out like we’re busy lawyers. Do word makes native pdfs? Are native one easier to copy or something?
The problem we’re focusing on is when someone prints out a document, signs it and then scans it. Unless they have settings and a program set up for it, the scanned copy does not have optical character recognition OCR on it. This means you cannot search the pdf with the find feature and you cannot copy text from it. When you save a word doc as a pdf or use adobe to create the pdf from the doc, it includes all the information for it to be searchable and copyable.
Thanks!!
A non-native PDF? Would that be an illegal PDF? I’ll show myself out.
I just have a program that converts them to word. Takes about 30 secs. Not a big deal.
Have you found a program that isn’t buggy? I get so many errors when I try to OCR a document of more than a few pages. I dread the day I have to ask OCR to recognize the word FLICK.
I use smallpdf.com
As a bulk reader of filings who works mostly paperless, I find it very annoying when counsel doesn’t take the time (we’re literally talking minutes–or less) to OCR non-native pdfs. I am totally capable of OCR-ing the files on my end, but why should I have to?
So although it’s not necessary, it’s really helpful if OC has a decent amount of productions for the new additions to be bolded and or separated by what is disclosed with each production. I have to think it helps both sides as well.
There are people who don’t do that? I thought it was standard practice to bold the new stuff whenever you updated the party’s NRCP 16.1 production or served updated discovery.
Not everyone does it. And that’s just rude.
I always use native pdfs in every filing both at the district court and appellate level.
I want to make things as easy as possible for clerks to search and copy/paste right from my arguments. If my rule statement can be copied and pasted, and yours can’t, guess which one they are using.
Bless you. Judges appreciate this very much and curse the rest.
It is an ADA issue, not just a convenience one. OCR after the fact is not an adequate accommodation.
source?
Blind people use screen readers and a screen reader can’t read an image. OCR is inadequate because it is not reliable and requires vision to sanitize (like when it turns all Ls into 1s).
The courts are required to comply coming up on the April deadline so I’m not sure why they wouldn’t put the onus on counsel submitting documents and it would ripple from there: https://www.ada.gov/resources/2024-03-08-web-rule/
Bate stamp all disclosures
When setting a depo, why not just give the other side a heads up and ask for dates before you notice. Just say hey, we’re looking at taking a depo on on of these dates. Which ones work? If they dont cooperate then fire off the one you want.
I don’t mind if people just unilaterally set it as long as they immediately send me an email saying, “Hey, I just set this but here are some alternative dates or you can suggest some.”
This is what I have always done, I immediately send an email saying “I unilaterally picked this date because it works for me, happy to move it if need be. Please just let me know if another date would be better.” Had counsel a little while again chew me out and site administrative orders to me because I set it unilaterally. What a putz. I literally told him I was happy to move it.
Outlook has a scheduling poll feature that I’ve used in the past to set depositions.
Asking for dates is worthless as it takes a month to get a date. Just unilaterally set it and indicate with the notice that you will move it if requested by “X” date. The problem is the same counsel that won’t respond to emails asking for dates is the same counsel that will ask to move the depo the day before it is scheduled despite giving them a deadline to request to move it and setting the depo out 3-4 weeks. Unfortunately, the majority of people fall into this category so the few that are easy to work with have to deal with unilaterally set depos with a note that says it can be rescheduled for a convenient date. boo hoo hoo.
Have no idea why you’re getting downvoted. Oh yeah, the douches who pull crap are downvoting.
Yeah there’s a douche that unilaterally sets depos, refuses to self for a mutually convenient date and then cancels at the last minute. F you Robert🖕🏽
Stop filing 25 page motions with 100 page exhibits. Ain’t no one got time for that.
But then when I only attach relevant pages I get accused of cherry picking content. I’d rather give the Court the whole document so they can read it if they want and so it’s part of the record for appeal.
Dullest log blog in memory.
Everyone commenting on this issue must be young. We oldsters still use WordPerfect and abhor the piece of garbage known as Word. You want my documents in WordPerfect format, I’m fine with that after I remove all metadata.
I’ll even convert my documents into Word to provide to opposing counsel, but I will not certify that the conversion is clean.
As someone who has used both extensively, WordPerfect also sucks, gramps.
It’s inconsiderate to use WordPerfect at this point. WP imposes an obnoxious, unjustifiable burden on clients, opposing counsel and other parties when sharing documents like proposed orders and other drafts. Regale us with stories about why WP is the original and best, superior to Word. Betamax was apparently better than VHS too. Fair or not, Word won a monopoly. That’s the reality we live in. Don’t be a jerk and use WP.
Google Docs, bitchesssssss. OpenOffice, if you’re old-school but not, like, ancient-times school. LibreOffice if you hablas the espanol or just like the new branding. OnlyOffice if you prefer the Russian-owned OnlyFans version of Office.
Share this, sucka!
Microsoft made it so that Word and WordPerfect are incompatible. WordPerfect is superior. Microsoft is trying to wipe out WP. Archived documents and forms appear in different versions of Word and WordPerfect. I use both but prefer WP. Microsoft is making it so you have to use their latest version of Word. You can go down with Word but not up to the latest version. I have found as many problems with older versions of Word as WP.
The WordPerfect suite hasn’t been updated since 2021, it only runs on Windows and not on Macintosh or mobile platforms, and it doesn’t support real-time collaborative workflows.
The WP folks, basically: “From my cold, dead hands!”
I really don’t care which is better. When you send me a proposed order in WP, I can’t fucking open it. It’s legitimately inconsiderate to use WP at this point.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/state-pay-mother-4-6-202434886.html