I am not remotely close to being a lawyer, but I’m always interested to see their use of electronic documents.
Aside from the obvious productivity benefits from going paperless in a law office, I was surprised (though possibly I shouldn’t have been) to learn that there is a level of gamesmanship that can come in when using electronic documents in a court case.
Ernie over at PDF for Lawyers pointed to this fascinating article on Bow Tie Law’s Blog relating to some shenanigans with locked PDFs in a lawsuit relating to, of all things, installation of clothes dryers.
It turns out that judges tend to frown on defendants providing an almost 12,000 page locked PDF as evidence. Who knew?
Also interesting is this comment from Adobe Employee Rick Borstein in the comments section:
Working for Adobe, I do get this question frequently and– heck– I could tell you some stories! Discovery documents should be unencumbered, but I’ve seen parties lock down PDFs in order to delay cases. The most important thing is to know what to do in case this happens to you. A few years ago, I was at a large firm that hired 15 people to retype PDF documents that were locked by the other side. They should have run to the judge instead of taking the burden of the cost and delay to the case.
Oh those wacky lawyers!
(Photo by basbarnowl)