P2P

42 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | S U M M E R 2 0 2 3 Testers varied by firm, but the numbers ranged from 5-10 people to over 100 in the largest firms. International firms often included global offices in the PoC. To launch the live test, I would provide a legal-centric, hour-long orientation overview for the testers. Throughout testing, I was the contact point for all questions on usability and functionality. I relied on our Technical Support team to address advanced integration and deployment questions. Basic functionality requirements included the ability to create all versions of PDF the firm may use, including PDF/A. For firms with IP practices, the format suitable for submission to the US Patent and Trademark Office is a necessity. Key, legal-specific functionality included Redaction, Metadata Scrubbing and Bates Numbering. The process had to be absolutely reliable. Other required features included the ability to easily edit documents, to add and remove pages, to combine multiple files and apply markup and comments. Document comparison was nice to have. MS Office Integration was key. Integration with leading document management systems was necessary, typically iManage and the others in the ILTA TechSurvey. It was important that the PDF solution work with a variety of local, state, and federal web sites. And of course, compatibility with PACER was always important. Beyond functionality, ease of adoption is always a major go/no go decision point when considering moving hundreds or thousands of users to a new PDF solution. The main feature that eased adoption was the MS Office-style ribbon user interface. Since law firm users understand MS Office intimately, the familiar layout and usability of the UI style made adoption simple and efficient. The users know what they need to do with PDF, and they know how to navigate the UI as soon as they see it. This enabled ease of adoption of a new PDF product. A viable replacement needs to offer even more value. This added value appears in PDF Conversion, the ability to convert PDF into more useful forms, from Searchable PDF to fully functional MS Office documents. This area is where the new, lower cost solution may be demonstrably better. Kofax Power PDF incorporates OmniPage OCR, which offers both superior Text Recognition on poor quality scans, and superior Format Recognition to recreate fully functional Word documents, including re-creating formats such as line and paragraph numbering, formal layout in pleadings and agreements, tables and other elements that are tedious and time-consuming for users to edit. Another great time-saving feature is the ability to take a scanned or static PDF form and convert it to a completely fillable form including data entry fields, checkboxes and other elements that would otherwise need to be manually created. Law firm users who worked with forms absolutely loved that feature. In sum, law firms need to find a solid alternative PDF solution at a lower price. The alternative must perform at the high standards demanded in the practice of law. It must be practical for all users in the firm to move comfortably and quickly to the new solution without training or burden on support. And finally, if the new product performs some day-to-day tasks appreciably better than the traditional product, the firm enjoys a superior value and greater efficiency. ILTA F E A T U R E S Tony McKinley is a Competitive Intelligence Specialist in PDF, OCR and Search, and author of "PDF Expert - Master PDF and OCR". As Lead SE for ScanSoft/Nuance/Kofax managing all major PDF opportunities in North America, he enjoyed the incomparable privilege of learning the real world use cases for PDF and exactly how people employ the world's dominant digital document format to achieve critical business processes.

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