Adding Digital Exhibit Stickers to Trial Exhibit PDFs

A developer called 'Done by 5' has a utility called Final Exhibits that will add digital exhibit stickers to multiple PDFs automatically. I downloaded and tested the trial version tonight. A key advantage of this software is that it will use the file name of the PDF as the basis for the exhibit number that is added to the sticker. So in this example, the first file in my set is named 'DX 1000.pdf'

Final Exhibits can also number exhibits sequentially. It allows you to resize only the first page of the PDF to place the sticker at the bottom in order to avoid covering text that appears on the first page.

Drag and drop the template of the sticker onto the pages to apply the stickers to all loaded PDFs. The Edit menu includes an option to delete all stickers if you have made a mistake.

After you have added the sticker, Final Exhibits gives you the option to reposition the stickers automatically if you want to expand the edges of the page to fit in the sticker. It's also possible to manually relocate the stickers on specific pages.

There's an option for page-level exhibit numbering. It also works by having the user drag and drop the preview of the number from the left pane onto one page of one exhibit.

Different colors (including an option for transparent) and shapes are available.

Thanks to Diarmuid Truax for this post which raves about Final Exhibits.

Sadly, the trial version leaves a banner across the sticker indicating that it's a trial version.

Printer duty cycles: How many pages can a printer print in a month?

When a litigation team is preparing for a trial, a litigation support professional will often be asked to select the hardware needed for a remote 'war room' set up in a hotel or leased office space. The printers you acquire for a trial may not only be put to heavy use for your trial, but they may also have been used to print out large amounts of pages for other firms which leased them previously. When you're trying to determine whether or not a printer will handle the amount of printing necessary to prepare dozens of witness binders each day for the duration of a trial, look further than just the listed page per minute rate and the paper tray capacity. In the posted specs for a printer, HP or another manufacturer should list the recommended page volume per month and the monthly duty cycle.

The monthly duty cycle is the absolute maximum number of pages that a printer can print out in a one month period.

The recommended monthly page volume is the highest number of pages the manufacturer recommends that you print within a month.

The difference between the duty cycle and the recommended page volume is similar to the difference between the highest possible speed a car can reach and the speed at which it can be regularly driven without causing mechanical problems. A passenger car might be able to reach a speed of 130 mph, but if the same car is driven frequently at 90 mph it soon becomes unreliable.

The recommended monthly page volume will be usually less than 10 per cent of the duty cycle.

Calculating the total page and line count for deposition designations

You can use the Excel file linked to at the bottom of this post to automatically calculate how many pages and lines are in a single deposition designation, and multiple designations.

The beginning and ending pages and lines for each range of testimony are entered in columns B through E. Column H has a formula which computes the total number of lines in a single range of testimony:

=IF(B2=D2,(E2-C2)+1,(E2-C2)+((D2-B2)*25)+1)

If the designation is only on a single page, it simply subtracts the line number in column C from column E. If this is not the case, it multiplies the number of pages by 25, and adds them to the difference between E and C to get the line total.

Column I contains the formula that divides the line count by 25, and rounds down the result to the nearest whole number, unless there are less than 25 lines:

=IF(H2<25,0,ROUNDDOWN((H2/25),0))

The formula in column J: =IF(I2=0,H2,H2-(I2*25))

. . .subtracts the line count for the rounded down result given in column I from the total line count, unless there is less than 1 page, in which case it returns the total line count from column H.

On the TOTAL row, the formula in cell I9 not only adds up the page total listed above in column I, but also gives the sum of lines in column J divided by 25, rounded down to the nearest whole number. This gives the total page count for all the designations given in columns B to E on the above rows.

=SUM(I2:I8)+(ROUNDDOWN((SUM(J2:J8))/25,0))

Finally, the formula in J9 subtracts [the total line count divided by 25 and rounded down to the nearest whole number, but then multiplied by 25 - to get a number divisible by 25] FROM the total line count, in order to get the number of lines left over when the lines adding up to full pages are counted .

=SUM(J2:J8)-(ROUNDDOWN((SUM(J2:J8))/25,0)*25)

Deposition Designations v3.xlsx

Download XLSX • 12KB