Disability Law

One Lawyer's Perspctive After Using Google's Picasa 3 To View Photos & Documents

By Jack E. Clay

I have been using Picasa for several years to view photographs. Lately, I have been reviewing our photographs in past and present case files. For those of you who do not use Picasa, it can be wonderful tool for workers' compensation lawyers, personal injury attorneys, or any other specialty for that matter. For example, it scanned my current and some past client files and found over 3,000 photographs from my years of practice. I was surprised at the number and variation of pictures we have including:

- photos from auto accident scenes;
- wrecked cars and truck;
- pictures of injuries;
- photographs of surgical procedures;
- scars;
- photos of Georgia Panels of Physicians in our workers' compensation cases;
- photographs of x-rays (in addition to original x-ray films);
- pictures of clients' homes after modifications in catastrophic workers' compensation and injury cases;
- clients performing tasks such as sitting, standing, kneeling walking up and down stairs, etc. to show limitations due to injuries;
- pictures of dangerous conditions at construction sites and factories where my clients have been injured;
- photos of parties to case, including defendants;
- and photos of books and other items used in depositions. For example, I deposed a doctor once and saw a medical book authored by him on the coffee table in the lobby. I snapped a quick photo and used it during my direct examination.

Picasa is a great way to view and organize these photographs. We have also started reviewing documents in .tiff format using Picasa. TIF is a file format now owned by Adobe that has not been updated since 1992. One problem I have noticed, however, happens when you view multi-page documents in Picasa. There does not seem to be a way to view multiple pages. Essentially, Picasa shows the first page of the document. Perhaps there is a way to resolve this situation.

While my paperless law office scans and views documents in .pdf format, whenever possible, many courts use .tiff format. Some use several formats. For example, the State Board of Workers' Compensation ICMS seems to use. tiff as a default for scanning incoming "paper documents", but uses .pdf for many documents created by attorneys. Federal courts throughout the country use the .pdf format for documents on its Pacer / ECF systems. In Georgia, we have a group called the Georgia Courts Automation Commission. Sadly, however, we have yet to implement a uniform electronic filing and case system throughout our state court system here in Georgia. I am hopeful that this will happen over the next ten years.

Full post as published by Georgia Law Blog on December 24, 2008 (boomark / email).