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.

K-Lite Codec Pack

As previously discussed in the Tip of the Night for December 7, 2019, a video may not play in an application or on an operating system, unless the necessary codecs are installed. A codec will uncompress a video file, so it can be played. Typically video files are compressed to save storage space at the loss of some of the original resolution. These are lossy video files.

The K-Lite codec pack, available here, https://codecguide.com/, will allow Windows to play a wide range of video and audio formats. It should allow Windows Media Player to recognize most video and audio files. The Ogg video format (with an .ogg, .ogm or .ogv extension) is actually a container file which must be uncompressed before it can be played. It is not supported by Windows Media Player. See the list of supported files posted here. If you attempt to play such a file in Windows Media Player, you'll get an error like this:

If you prompt the Windows Media Player to try it, you'll get this result:

After the K-Lite Codec Pack is installed, an OGG file should play in Windows Media Player. I tested this on my PC tonight and confirmed that installing the pack made the difference.

Another common format video format which doesn't work with Windows Media Player is are Adobe Flash videos with the .flv extension.

However, if you are presenting videos with IPRO's courtroom presentation software Trial Director ,be aware that the K-Lite codec pack can cause problems. Tech support for IPRO warned me last month that the K-Lite codec pack has been known to interfere with the performance of Trial Director. It's usually recomnended that Windows Media Player be set as the default application for video and audio files when using Trial Director.

Creating a Table of Contents in Word

Creating a Table of Contents in Word should not be a great technical hurdle, but I find that the process in MS Word 2019 is not entirely intuitive, so I thought I would pass along my notes on how to go about it. After the cite check of the legal brief is completed, there's often a rush to complete the ToC as soon as possible so the brief can be filed. It will be necessary to place the title page and ToC on pages with different pagination than the rest of the brief, and create the headings for the table itself.

1. First enter a Page Break on a new line after the title. Go to Layout . . . Breaks. Then after the page break marker, enter a continuous section break:

2. Then set a page break and a continuous section break at the end of the TOC/TOA section. (I assume that you're working with an add-in for Word, like Best Authority, that will generate a Table of Authorities.).

3. Unlink pages numbers in the TOC/TOA section from the title page by unselecting the ‘Link to Previous’ setting on the Design tab. [Click in the Footer to get the Design tab, and select the page number.]

Also in this step, change the format of the page number in this section to lower case Roman numerals, by selecting the page number in the footer and right clicking and selecting Edit Field.

Delete the page number for the title page.

4. Unlink pages numbers in the BODY section from the TOC/TOA section by unselecting the ‘Link to Previous’ setting on the Design tab, and selecting the Arabic numeral format. The brief should now have three independently page numbered sections.

Right click on the page number and select 'Format Page Numbers . . . ' to confirm that each section begins at 1.

At this point run the ToA.

5. On the Home tab define the formatting for the ToC. Go to the option for Multilevel list in the Paragraph section, and then select 'Define New Multilevel List . . .'

So for level 1 because we have headings like this in brief:

. . . we leave the 'Enter formatting for number' box blank; set the number alignment to 'Centered', and also set the Font to boldfaced.

Then for level 2, we select uppercase Roman numerals; set the alignment on the left, and again boldface the text.

Then on level 3, we select uppercase letters; set the alignment on the left with a further indent; and boldface the text.

6. Select the headings in the Word document and then on the References Tab in the Table of Contents section select Add Text and set the level for each heading one by one.

If everything is working correctly you should see the headings added on the Navigation pane at the left.

7. The heading should show up on the Navigation Pane (to display this go to View . . . Show section.) For some reason, MS Word 2019 often alters the capitalization of the headings in the Navigation pane. But this doesn't seem to change the final result when the ToC is inserted into the document.

8. On the References tab add in the Table of Contents on the second page of the Word document, or the first page of the section section.

You will now have a ToC which can be automatically updated by selecting the 'Update Table' option which appears at the top when you click into the table.