Any lawyer who practices in federal court knows that you need to electronically file all documents with the clerk in Portable Document Format (with the .pdf extension). However, having just recently spent $400+ on yet another upgrade to Adobe Acrobat Professional, I understand that not everyone likes spending $400+ every year or two just to have the latest greatest version of such a bloated program. If you are only a casual filer, it doesn’t make much sense to spend that much money for a program with limited usefulness to your practice. Therefore, I would suggest one of the free, or lower cost, alternatives to Adobe’s package. Which one, though? Lawyers ask me that all the time.
Well, now I have found a website that not only answers that question, but also the question of which products the experts recommend as alternatives to almost any other popular program.
The website is called alternativeto.net, and it lists alternatives for many of today’s most popular commercial programs. From PDF creators, to video editors, to photo editors, to just about anything else that you can think of. It just might be worth a check to see if there is an alternative to that high priced software suite before you plunk down some serious money first.