My Solution: eBriefs

Electronic filing beyond the basics

by David L. Masters

As court systems move to permit electronic filings, non-technologically proficient lawyers see themselves at the top of a slippery slope with mandatory e-filings at the bottom. Technologically proficient lawyers and firms, on the other hand, see the opportunity to provide courts and clients with dynamic documents that facilitate the presentation and communication of complex fact patterns and legal arguments. The move to electronic filings, while presently in its infancy, may unfold as a paradigm shift equivalent to court rules that require all filings to be typewritten or printed.

This article describes my solution of how to go beyond merely e-filing documents with the court. It describes in detail how to create complex digital or electronic documents. Many court sanctioned e-filing systems have adopted the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) for their file systems (including the author’s home jurisdiction).

Accordingly, the process detailed here relies on Adobe Acrobat for assembling the electronic brief. Acrobat also provides a means to convert paper documents to electronic copies that can be attached or linked to the brief. This article uses a brief to illustrate the process of creating an electronic document; the concepts can be applied to other pleadings as well as transactional documents.

It would be hard to imagine a law firm today not using a computer and word processing application to generate a brief for filing with the court. Because almost all documents generated in the typical law firm are created electronically, the process described here begins at the point when the brief has been completed and would be printed on paper and signed.

Printing to PDF

Before printing the final word processing file to PDF, print it on paper. The responsible lawyer should review the paper version and highlight all references that will be linked to source materials (cases, statutes, transcripts, the record on appeal and so forth).

Consider also whether the links should appear in a color other than black (e.g., blue). The tasks of creating the links, changing the color of the text and assembling the e-brief can then be delegated to a staff person who will work from the printed version with highlighted references.

To print the file to PDF, use a print command within the native application that allows for printer selection (In Corel WordPerfect select "File" and then "Print" or "Ctrl+P" or "F5;" in Microsoft Word select "File" and then "Print" or "Ctrl+P"), and then choose either Acrobat PDFWriter or Acrobat Distiller (depending on program settings, a dialog box might require input of the name of the PDF file being generated).

Choosing between PDFWriter or Acrobat Distiller depends on factors such as the complexity of the brief and the word processing application used to create the original file. PDFWriter works quickly and produces satisfactory results with most document files. Distiller takes more time but produces a richer PDF document. If the document to be converted already has numerous bookmarks or divisions, Distiller might be a better choice.

When possible, reference materials should be printed to PDF from an existing digital source. For example, case law retrieved from an online source or CD-ROM can be printed directly to PDF. Use short logical names for these materials, such as a short form of their citation (e.g., 941 P2d 1018). Avoid using periods, commas and other punctuation marks when naming these files. Whenever possible, obtain digital copies of transcripts. Using a transcript management application such as E-Transcript Binder, Summation or TextMap, print the transcript to PDF. Alternatively, open the transcript file in a word processing application, adjust the formatting as necessary (often a frustrating process making the price of transcript management software seem insignificant), then print the file to PDF.

Some source materials to be linked to the brief will not be available in digital format. For example, copies of contracts, answers to interrogatories or affidavits might be available only in paper form. These documents should be scanned and, if good copies or originals contain mostly text, then these images should be converted to text by an optical character recognition (OCR) program. By performing OCR on these documents, they become searchable and links can be made to pinpoint locations. Some OCR applications will convert PDF image files, retaining an exact copy of the original while creating a text file behind the image. Keep in mind that OCR doesn’t produce perfect results; the primary purpose is to provide a text background that can be searched.

Scan documents at a resolution of 300 dots per inch (dpi). Some sources suggest a lower resolution, but 300 dpi produces near photocopy quality when printed. In order to minimize the size of scanned image files, select scanner output settings for "black and white" (sometimes listed as "text" or "line drawing"). Select color or gray scale output settings only when necessary (these settings produce substantially larger files). If the documents to be scanned contain drawings, handwritten notes or the like (content not susceptible to OCR), prepare a document summary (In Acrobat select "File," "Document Properties," "Summary," keyboard shortcut "Crtl+D"). The information included in the document summary will be included in any index generated and provide a means to locate the document using the Acrobat or Windows Explorer search function.

Time must be taken to decide whether the reference materials will be attached to the original document (by inserting pages), or maintained as separate document files. Short works lend themselves to inclusion of all reference materials. Longer or more complex documents should link to external documents. No precise guideline can be stated for when to do one or the other, and the courts have not promulgated rules addressing this issue. The detailed procedures described below address both all-in-one documents (simple eBrief) and documents with links to external reference materials (complex eBrief).

If producing a complex eBrief, the linking process must be performed on the local hard disk drive. In other words, the final PDF version of the brief must exist on the local "C" drive. This must be observed — building the complex eBrief on a network drive will result in nonfunctional links when the final product is transferred to compact disk or electronically filed with the court.

The simple eBrief process can be done at any workstation with Adobe Acrobat. The brief file and source files may exist on a network drive and need not be copied to the local drive. The CD can be recorded from a network source, but might work better when the source file exists on the local hard disk drive of the CD-R machine.

When the brief has reached its final form (ready to be printed, and the linked references font color changed if desired), print it to PDF. Using Adobe Acrobat, open the document and bookmark the major divisions (including the first page) by going to the desired location and pressing "Ctrl+B." After creating the bookmarks, go to the end of the document ("Ctrl+Shift+PageDown" or "Ctrl+End"), and insert the first item that will be linked. To insert this document, from the Acrobat menu select "Document" and then "Insert Pages" ("Ctrl+Shift+I"), find the file representing the pages to be inserted, highlight and double-click it, and click "OK." After Acrobat inserts these pages the display remains at the former last page of the document. Advance one page (to the first page of the document that was just inserted), and insert a bookmark identifying the document (this bookmark will be useful during the linking process). After these pages have been inserted, go to the end of the document (now the last page of the most recently inserted file), and repeat the process until all source materials have been incorporated into the brief.

When adding documents to the original, group them by type (i.e., put all the cases in first, then transcripts, then affidavits, then other exhibits). Within each grouping insert the documents in the order of appearance in the pleading. Think of this as taking photocopies of the cases cited and grouping them together in the order of appearance, then taking a group of transcripts putting them in order and attaching them to the growing document.

To begin, create a folder for the project, such as, CD Smith Brief (using this convention, rather than Smith Brief CD, places all the CD projects in the same area of the hard disk drive when viewed through Windows Explorer). Within the project folder create subfolders for source materials, for example:

    Brief (C:\CD Smith Brief\Brief)

    Authorities (C:\CD Smith Brief\Authorities)

    Cases (C:\CD Smith Brief\Authorities\Cases)

    Statutes (C:\CD Smith Brief\Authorities\Statutes)

    Regulations (C:\CD Smith Brief\Authorities\Regulations)

    CourtRules (C:\CD Smith Brief\Authorities\CourtRules)

    Transcripts (C:\ CD Smith Brief\Transcripts)

    Record (C:\ CD Smith Brief\Record)

A staff person can retrieve cases and statutes from online or CD-ROM sources, print them to PDF, and save them to the appropriate folders.

For appellate briefs, scan the record to PDF (this way the images of the record on the final CD will have the numbering supplied by the trial court appellate clerk). After scanning the record, run the file through an OCR application such as OmniPage Pro. If the trial court provided an electronic record, then this step can be skipped.

Using Adobe Acrobat, a staff person now opens the brief and begins building the links. Find the first reference in the brief to be linked to a source. Click on the "Link" tool, drag a box around the citation (full case name, reference to record, reference to exhibit and so on), and choose "Invisible box" and "Go to View" (as opposed to open file). Now set the link destination. When the sources are in separate folders, it helps to have Windows Explorer open to facilitate this process. For example, to set the link for a case citation switch to Windows Explorer (Alt+Tab), double click on the folder (C:\CD Smith Brief\Cases), double click the appropriate case (it will open in Acrobat) and click on "Set Link." Continue through the brief setting links. When creating or drawing the link box, hold down the "Ctrl" key. This will tell Acrobat to select text and produce link boxes of uniform size.

In the simple eBrief, where all source materials have been inserted into the original document, the linking process is easier. Go to the first item to be linked; select the "Link" tool, drag a box around the citation or reference, select "Invisible Box" (This only needs to be done on the first link. The program will remember this choice as long as the document remains open), and select "Go to View." Now, rather than using Windows Explorer to find the file, simply click on the appropriate bookmark (in the background, behind the current dialog box). The bookmarked page will appear. Click "Set Link." Once the link has been established, the dialog box will close and the program will return to the point in the document where the link was just created. Continue working through the document building links. After all links have been made, give a test CD to another staff person to walk through the brief confirming that all links work properly.

E-filing has opened the door to submission of documents containing active links to all materials cited. Much of the work to produce electronic source materials, building the links and transferring the finished product to CD-ROM can be done by staff. Producing eBriefs will not cause significant expense to the client, but it will provide better advocacy.

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