While online research sites offer downloads in formatted for a word processor, I do not recommend using those formats. I imagine the allure of having an authoritative source as a .doc is the benefit of cut, copy, paste for use in quotations. But cut copy and paste is also available from PDF unless that PDF it is secure or the text is not recognized. Downloads from online legal research sites, are in my experience, never secure and always recognized.
Indeed, I find very few secure PDFs from any source.
Text Recognition, on the other hand, may sometimes present problem. Documents we scan ourselves (or more likely some sends to you), that go from tangible to digital, do not have text recognized by default. We know the difference when we click on the page to have the whole thing turns blue. The reason for that is, Acrobat is trying to select the one thing it sees, a picture from the scanner.
However, when we convert a digital file, e.g. a .doc, to PDF, Acrobat retains the character recognition in the process as sent from the authoring program e.g. Word. (If you want to find which program authoried a PDF click “File” – “Properties…” and on the “Description” tab of that dialog box. And that is also where you will see the meta-data. also reviewed in the movie below.) Research sites offer their PDF in the latter category and when you run across a PDF that does not allow you select individual text, click the “Document” menu and select “OCR Text Recognition” (Optical Character Recognition) and you will be able to recognize text in the current or multiple PDFs.
By using a PDF you lose nothing in terms of functionality and gain the stability of a PDF, a myriad of commenting features, and therefore a far better participant in your personal law library. Don’t worry renaming the cases is very fast. See my video on Renaming cases very quickly in Acrobat wherein I demonstrate how to rename a file with a full name and citations in a few seconds with a just a few click and key stokes.
In my experience it is not the general features and benefits that make lawyers not adopt a digital posture, it is the little stuff. I hear “But then I have to name all the files.” True and annoying using an old approach but with the features that all computers have, e.g. copy, paste and a keyboard, these little things can be easy and need not hold up the progress toward digital convenience.