CaseSoft FYI - August 2005

We're pleased to announce that CaseSoft tools won both litigation support software awards in Law Office Computing's 11th Annual Readers' Choice Voting.  Details below.

Want to learn CaseMap's ReportBook feature in 30 seconds?  Read on and you'll discover how to produce these sophisticated compilations of CaseMap reports in just a few mouse clicks.

We've just finished a new white paper entitled "Making the Most of a Cast of Characters."  It's available in PDF form herein.

Finally, are you aware of Acrobat's ability to search the text of a collection of PDF documents?  Let Acrobat find the set of documents that include any term.  Again, details below.

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CaseSoft FYI August Contents

1. CaseMap & TimeMap Sweep LOC Litigation Support Awards

2. TimeMap 4's Powerful "Send to PowerPoint" Feature

3. Learn a Key Feature in 30 Seconds: ReportBooks

4. New Cast of Characters White Paper

5. Three Ways to Improve Your Courtroom Graphics

6. Using Acrobat's Search Features

2. TimeMap 4's Powerful "Send to PowerPoint" Feature

3. Learn a Key Feature in 30 Seconds: ReportBooks

A ReportBook is a compilation of any number of CaseMap reports presented in one booklet along with a title page, a table of contents, an introduction, a confidentiality statement and more.

Click to view a sample PDF ReportBook created directly by CaseMap 5

Yes, a ReportBook is a very sophisticated work product.  But you can learn this feature and start producing ReportBooks in less than 30 seconds. 

How's that possible?  Each CaseMap file contains five prebuilt ReportBook templates that do the work for you.  You can create custom ReportBooks and get fancy if you wish.  But why not get your feet wet by just starting to use the prebuilt ReportBook templates?  You'll be amazed at the work product you can produce with just a few mouse clicks.

Let's learn the ReportBook feature:

1. Open one of your case files or the Hawkins example case. 

2. Click ReportBook on CaseMap's Main menu. 

3. On the ReportBook menu, you'll see the names of the default ReportBook templates listed, e.g., Case Summary. 

4. Select the Case Summary template and then select the Save as PDF option on the fly-out menu.  CaseMap creates a PDF of the Case Summary ReportBook, which includes a cast of characters, a fact chronology, a document index and other reports, along with a title page, table of contents and more.

You're done.  You've learned the basics of producing ReportBooks.  Please email them to team members and clients.

If you're interested in learning how to customize ReportBook templates or how to create your own ReportBooks from scratch, please view one or more of our webinars on the topic.  They're available 24/7.

Click to learn more about ReportBook webinars and view them

We've just completed a new white paper entitled "Making the Most of a Cast of Characters."  In addition to laying out the three steps necessary to create a great cast of characters, this article reviews our "Cast of Characters Debriefing" protocol that can be used to dramatically enhance witness interviews.

Have you read our many other white papers, including "The Bell Curve & Document Imaging/Indexing," "Chronology Best Practices," and "Better Visuals Via Brainstorming"?

6. Using Acrobat's Search Capabilities

Have you used the Search PDF sidebar that’s available in Acrobat 6 and has been enhanced in Acrobat 7?  If not, you definitely owe it to yourself to check out this powerful feature. Display the sidebar by clicking the Search option on Acrobat’s Edit menu.

Want to locate every mention of a witness or term across a collection of PDFs? The Search sidebar makes this task a cinch.  When your search produces multiple hits, a Refine Results pane makes it easy to zero in on a more specific subset of documents by adding additional criteria.

Acrobat's Search feature isn't limited to searching in a single PDF -- you can use this feature to search across an entire folder of PDFs at one time.  The Professional version of Acrobat also allows you to create indexes of your PDFs called Catalogs.  Creating a Catalog of your PDFs results in far faster searches.

Important caveat: searching in PDFs is based on the premise that these files contain text in addition to images — something that requires your discovery documents to be processed using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. You can use Acrobat itself to OCR documents one at a time (in Acrobat 7, there’s a Recognize Text Using OCR option on the Document menu).
However, if you’re dealing with a large number of documents, it’s best to perform the OCR process completed when the documents are originally scanned.

To learn more, start Acrobat and press F1 to display Acrobat Help.  In the Acrobat Help look up the Searching topic.   Acrobat's Search feature is also reviewed in the Acrobat-related webinars discussed below.

Please note that even though we love Acrobat and want to make you aware of it's wide range of features, we don't sell or support it.  If you have more detailed questions about Acrobat, please direct them to Adobe or to the organization from which you purchase Acrobat licenses.

You may be interested in two articles we've prepared on Acrobat ...

Open a PDF of our article reviewing Acrobat/CaseMap integration

Open a PDF of our article reviewing the new features in Acrobat 7