Thank you to Lit Software for sponsoring iPhone J.D. Many of you know Lit Software because of the company's fantastic TrialPad and TranscriptPad apps. The company's newest app is DocReviewPad, an app that you can use to review and annotate documents on your iPad. It is the only app of its kind for the iPad, and it turns an iPad into an even more useful litigation tool for attorneys. For my overview of the basic features of DocReviewPad, check out the review that I posted in July. But since then, the company has issued three updates to add new features and improvements.
The most recent major update was version 1.2, which came just a few days ago, and it adds some great new features. (And that update was tweaked today, October 27th, with Version 1.2.1.) My favorite new feature is that you can now create a tag or issue code at the page level. In the past, you could only assign issue codes tags or issue codes for an entire document — which usually makes sense, but in some circumstances is not as precise.
After you assign issue codes, when you create a document report, the report will now show you whether the issue code applies to the entire document (and will give you the Bates range of the document), plus the report will show you if there is a document for which the issue code applies to just one or a few pages of the document (with an indication of both the total Bates range of the document, plus the specific Bates number pages on which the issue code appears).
Another new feature is a redact tool, useful if you have a document that you need to produce which contains information that is privileged, trade secret, or otherwise not appropriate for disclosure. Note that this is not a "true" redaction in that DocReviewPad simply obscures the content with a black box, which means a PDF editor could still reveal the content below the black box. However, if you print the document with the redacted portion obscured and then re-scan the page that you printed, you will then have an electronic file that can be produced and which doesn't contain the redacted words or information underneath the black box.
One nice interface improvement is that there is no longer a single "Annotate" tool which contains both the highlight and the pen function. Instead, there is a separate button for "Highlight" and for "Pen." Both of those tools are so useful that it makes sense to give them dedicated buttons so that you can select them more quickly.
Another interface improvement is that you can now hold your finger down on a document image and a pop-up menu will appear with useful options: rename document, remove or update the appearance of the Bates number that you applied, assign a new Bates number, extract pages (with the option to select a starting and ending page, plus a file name for the extracted pages), and close the document.
Other new features include the ability to search for a specific Bates number as well as OCR data and document name, and a notification of gaps in the Bates number sequence.
DocReviewPad was a great app when it was launched in July, but it continues to get more useful thanks to frequent updates adding new features. It is amazing that you can use an iPad to store, organize and review all of the documents in your case, and even create production sets. But even if you just want a tool for applying Bates numbers to a set of documents, DocReviewPad works great for that function alone and is easier to use than any other software I've tried for the computer or iPad.
Click here for DocReviewPad ($89.99): 
