Manual Annotation

This section is accessed from the Document Viewer>Doc Tab. Files may be annotated directly in the Lexbe eDiscovery Platform (LEP) or the user may upload documents that have been annotated outside of LEP to a case. The second option requires the user to annotate the document on a local computer using a local program such as Acrobat Pro or another desktop annotation tool.  If an annotated document version of the same file already exists, uploading a new annotated PDF will overwrite existing annotated documents.  

Download a PDF Version to Annotate

Open the Document Viewer of the Document to Annotate (there must be a PDF displaying in the Doc tab).  Download the PDF file to the local desktop (download within the Doc tab).  When complete, go to Browse page and under the Filters>Select Filters section filter on Original to Annotate or Highlight.  Download all to Briefcase and then save to desktop.  If not already in PDF format, convert to PDF using Acrobat Pro or another PDF utility or print driver.

When done annotating, upload the new annotated version directly in the Document Viewer page, Doc tab>Annotation field

To complete this action, click on the Upload button for the applicable task and refresh the page.  Once the upload is completed the Annotated tab will display its version in the Document Viewer page.  The user may still view the other version from the Page, Doc and Original tabs.

Which Version Will Be In A Production?

Only the PDF versions NOT annotated/highlighted will be automatically included into the productions under the PDF, TIFF and TEXT sub-folders.

Annotation and Quality Control

• Annotate or highlight the PDF file using a PDF editor with annotation capabilities (e.g., Acrobat Pro, Nitro Pro, Auto-Redact Plug-in for Acrobat, etc.) or other PDF annotation tools. With all tools, be sure to use annotation tools and not drawing tools, as drawing tools will not remove text layers.

• Make sure that the annotation tool has not removed the text layer as well as the image view of the annotated text. The user may check this several ways, including copying out the text from Save As Text option in Acrobat Reader.  The user may also search for annotated text if the annotated copy has been OCRed (best practice is to save as an image with the PDF editor to remove all text possibilities).

• Make sure that the number of document pages are the same (annotate rather than remove pages, if needed).  To maintain Bates numbering consistency, only annotate PDFs with the same number of pages as the original PDFs uploaded.

• Make sure the annotated PDF is not corrupt, password protected, print restricted, extraction restricted, etc. (Check properties in file within local PDF viewer).

• We suggest naming the annotated version with same original file name, except adding -ANNOTATED to the end of the title (e.g. Enron 00012345-ANNOTATED).

Annotation in LEP 

The user may annotate/highlight files directly in LEP by choosing the Open Annotation Editor button. See Annotation for more information.