Good, bad or indifferent, PDFs as a production format are here to stay. While they do have a variety of advantages, one of the big hazards is having huge 100 or 1000 page PDFs provided in production. To me, a 1000 page PDF is essentially the same as 1000 single page PDFs, each page has to be reviewed and managed. Easily breaking up the big PDF into true documents can save time and avoid the endless headaches that these large files create throughout the litigation process.
Perhaps the key benefit to breaking these PDFs up into documents is simply the 75% reduction in the number of files that need to be reviewed and managed. As mentioned above, a 1000 page PDF needs every page reviewed, which translates to 1000 pages or files to review. With an industry average of 4 pages per document, breaking up the big file generates 250 PDFs. Now you only have to review and process 250 files.
Once broken up, the ability to just focus on the key documents rather than having to lug around a 1000 page file and try to find stuff using bookmarks, etc. will save time, money and aggravation.
The i-View Demo program offers the perfect tool for that task and it is free to keep and use even if you don’t buy a license. A full description of the process is included in this video:
i-Legal, from the days when it did tons of scanning, developed this approach to “slipsheeting” documents electronically rather than having to hand sort all the pages to insert a physical slipsheet. This allowed us to simply run stacks of paper through the scanner and then properly break it up using just a left and right mouse click. We saved 100s of hours and endless aggravation by making this process digital.
We believe that this approach allows for the efficient management of a hugely inefficient problem.