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| Bates Platinum, Gold and Silver | |
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Much of what we do as lawyers is obtain, organize and store information, mostly in the form of documents. We then use this information to draft documents and craft arguments for transactional and litigation matters. We collect so many documents we often have to rent storage space to store them until our bar associations say we can toss them or give them to our clients. It’s no wonder an effective paperless office would be a dream come true. The usual process is as follows: 1) We get a bunch of documents from our client or the other side; 2) we Bates stamp the documents; 3) we scan the documents into Portable Document Format. At this point, we have an electronic Bates-stamped version of the documents on the computer. I got my first Bates stamp shortly after I got my first computer in 1983. I have been using it ever since. There isn’t a better way to identify documents and to know what you have. But it requires someone to sit in a room and stamp banker’s boxes full of documents. It’s noisy, repetitive, slow and boring, and it’s possible for the operator to miss a document or two. When I heard about Bates Gold and Silver, two versions of a program that generates Bates stamps (and other information) automatically, I got really excited. I was even more excited when I actually got the programs installed on the computer. If you put your documents into a printer, the program will actually Bates stamp the documents. If you can’t put the documents into a printer, it will print labels with the Bates numbers on them. While it still takes time (and is still boring) to peel and affix labels, it’s much easier and quieter than stamping documents. The program also keeps track of who did the job, the date of the job and who the job was for. When the next stack of documents comes in on the same matter, you just continue the stamping from the last number of the previous job for that matter. You choose fonts and colors (if you are printing to a color printer). It really could not be simpler. And you can put a lot more information on the document than any stamp can add. The amount of information that can be added depends on whether you use the Gold or Silver version. On the Gold version, you can add more information. The labels (or direct print data) are also more customizable. You can print to a number of Avery labels or you can create your own custom labels. You can print Bates numbers, numbers with prefixes, suffixes or both. You also can print letters. For a detailed list of differences between the Gold and Silver versions, visit Afab’s Web site at www.afabonline.com/bates.htm. After using Bates Gold for some time, I could literally think of only one feature it lacked — the ability to Bates stamp a PDF file. Just before I completed this review, I called Afab for information about the programs, and they told me they were in the process of releasing Bates Platinum which would Bates stamp PDFs. Stop the presses. The tedium is over. I tested the product and at $499 for a five-user network copy ($20 per each additional network license), Bates Platinum stands in a class by itself. It took less than eight minutes to Bates stamp a 580-page PDF on a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 running Windows XP Pro. And I was spreading cream cheese on a bagel while it was working, not developing a repetitive stress injury. The Bates stamped PDF is slightly larger than the original: 27,920KB vs. 27,646KB. Here is the new process: Scan your documents to PDF. Open Bates Platinum. Enter your initials. Choose “File” as your input source, browse to your existing PDF and choose your other options as you would in the Gold version. You are done. If these are documents for opposing counsel, just print the PDF; it’s got the Bates numbers and whatever other information (a confidentiality notice for example) already on it. The numbers are perfectly legible with no smudges or missed pages. Bates Platinum removes a major impediment to practice organization, and gets one step closer to the perfect paperless office. Bates Platinum is a great program to level the playing field with the big firms. The program installs itself, has good documentation in the form of a PDF manual, is intuitive and incredibly easy to use. I can think of few ways to spend $499 that will make you and your staff happier, more organized and more productive. Bates Platinum Plus is in the works but will not be released until at least the first quarter next year. The planned feature set will include the ability to Bates stamp the documents as they are originally captured to PDF by a TWAIN scanner, the ability to Bates stamp Microsoft Word files and TIFFs, and the ability to e-mail the Bates-stamped result right from the program. You can upgrade from Platinum to Platinum Plus for the difference in price between the two for a limited period of time after Platinum Plus is released. In other words, if you want Bates Platinum Plus, you can use Bates Platinum for free until Platinum Plus is released. |
Afab Computer Solutions Price: $499 for Platinum five-user license; $299 for Gold five-user license; $249 for Silver five-user license; $199 for Silver single-user license. Windows 98 or later Reviewed by Steven Schmidt, shareholder, director and president of Business & Technology Law, P.C., Albuquerque, N.M. PROS CONS VERDICT |
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