Legal Pleading Paper Help

[pdx_beagle]

I have been following the posts about legal pleading paper, but unfortunately have not yet found a satisfactory answer that would allow my office to switch to Nisus. I am sincerely hoping I am missing something, because Nisus is clearly a great product with snappy performance. I would love to dump MS Word. However, as a lawyer I need some very specific requirements to do legal pleadings:

1) 26 line per page numbering in the left-hand margin, regardless of the lines of text. Each page should be identical, numbers are not necessarily tied to lines of text.
2) Double vertical lines separating the line numbering from the left-hand margin.
3) A single vertical line separating text from the right-hand margin.
3) Every page needs to have items 1-3, regardless of number of pages in the document.

Unfortunately, these are just rules of procedure that we are required to follow. I liked the idea of automatic line numbering, but unfortunately it only numbers when there is actual text on a line, so this doesn't fill the need. For your review, I have attached a sample PDF of what my template needs to look like. I look forward to your solutions!
Thanks.

[robertb]

I'm not a lawyer, but this topic was addressed earlier; it included a template, linenumbers.zrtf, that seems to be what you need.

Here's the link: http://nisus.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f= ... inenumbers

[martin]

Thanks for that link Robert, but unfortunately those templates don't quite meet his requirements. He needs both line numbers on every page and that the line numbers are not tied to actual lines of text; those templates accomplish either one or the other.

Basically the numbers need to show 1-26, even if he actually has 30 lines of text on a page. I don't know why one would design/mandate documents to appear that way, but it's what a lot of lawyers need, and unfortunately NWP falls short at this time.

[martin]

I don't know why this didn't occur to me before, but a colleague suggested using a watermark. With that, it's actually pretty easy to have a pleading page. If you open the file I'm attaching here, you will see the numbers 1-26 on every page, independent of the actual number of lines of text.

I think this should solve the issue for you. Please let me know if I missed something, or you have any questions.

[pdx_beagle]

Beautiful! I think that will do the trick. Great solution. Thank you, and goodbye Word!

[Candace]

Hi Martin,
I see that your clever watermark page works beautifully --- but I can't see how to use it for more thanthe first page of a document. I have a 70 page brief I need to get onto pleading paper. It has different sections, with different headers. When I paste it into the pleading template, only the first page has numbers.

Thanks. Candace Hale

[martin]

Hi Candace,

I have a 70 page brief I need to get onto pleading paper. It has different sections, with different headers. When I paste it into the pleading template, only the first page has numbers.

It sounds like you're taking your existing (70 page, multi-section) document and pasting it into the pleading paper template. After you do that:

1. Select the whole document (eg: Command + "A").
2. Choose the menu Tools > Watermark.
3. In the watermark dialog don't change any of the existing settings (eg: leave the image file as it is), but make sure "Apply to" is set to "Entire Document".
4. Click the "Apply" button.

That should update all your document's sections to show the desired pleading page line numbers.

That still leaves the vertical lines on either side of the page. You'll have to propagate them as well. With the entire document still selected:

1. Show the Page Borders palette.
2. In the palette, under "edges to modify", turn off all edges except the left-vertical line. The palette should automatically update to show the exiting settings for the left edge.
3. Click the "style" popup button/menu and just reselect the existing option (eg: the double line style).

That should do it for the left edge. Now repeat the process, but for the right edge.

I hope that helps!

[Candace]

Holy Moly, Martin -- thank you. I am happy to say that I was able to foist off the brief on someone with a legal secretary, who converted it to another program (hideously, laboriously) -- but I will come back to these instructions next time the issue arises. Thanks again. Cheers, Candace

[blakers76]

Martin,

How did you create the .pdf file that you used in the watermark? Could you post the actual .pdf file so that I could see it? I'm looking to do the same thing, but what to make some tweaks.

Thanks

[blakers76]

By the way, if its not clear, I'm talking about the "linenumbers.pdf" file that shows up in the "Watermark from image file" button in the Watermark dialogue box.

[phspaelti]

Presumably you could just make it yourself. Make it as an empty file in Nisus using the regular line numbers feature. Then save as pdf and use that.
I'm upoading my own version of such a (rtf) file here.

[blakers76]

Okay, I see. I guess what I wasn't sure about was whether the .pdf file used to make the watermark was a full, letter-sized sheet. Thanks.

[martin]

How did you create the .pdf file that you used in the watermark? Could you post the actual .pdf file so that I could see it?

I made that PDF in Photoshop, but as Philip has pointed out, you can make a PDF from anywhere, even just NWP's regular line numbering feature. Once you have the full page PDF, you might use Apple's "Preview" application to crop it down.

And in case you still find it useful, I'll attach the PDF I used. Actually, the process brings to mind a trick that's worth sharing: if you ever want to get at an image in any NWP file, just resave it using the RTFD file format. RTFD is "RTF Directory", which is basically just a package (a special kind of folder) that contains a regular RTF file plus all the ancillary content (like images) saved as separate files. Once you have the ".rtfd" saved, use the Finder's contextual menu "Show Package Contents" to peek inside and see all the graphics.

[martin]

The just released Nisus Writer Pro version 2.0.5 now makes adding pleading page numbers much easier. Rather than using a watermark or image, one can now anchor a floating text box (containing the pleading numbers) to the desired header(s). I'm attaching a pleading page that shows the technique.

[lindajconrad]

Thank you Martin for preparing and providing this pleading paper. It looks like we can just use it without having to understand the how or why it works. Someday I might figure it out, but for now, I have a pleading to get out. Most of my work is done in the appellate court, so I don't usually have to worry about numbered pages. Thank you again. -Linda