Inevitably every practicing attorney will have to compare “identical” or similar documents in an attempt to find subtle differences or changes. Make use of existing programs to quickly find the differences—saving time and serious eyestrain.
Adobe Acrobat Professional can compare two PDFs and highlight all of the differences. Under the “documents” tab, select “compare documents.” Acrobat will quickly highlight the differences on both documents. When opposing counsel files an amended pleading, this is incredibly useful. One downside, however, is that Acrobat highlights every change, including spacing and punctuation. At the same time, better safe then sorry, and sometimes seemingly minor changes are actually not so minor.
Another option is CompareMyDocs.com. The program is web-based and in the beta phase, but it is also free. The upside is that it allows you to compare multiple documents (more than two). On the other hand, the program will only read .rtf, .doc, and .docx documents. The features and tools are also limited right now to highlighting, bold, and italic. Hopefully, as the program evolves it will be able to handle more types of documents and add more tools.
Compare Multiple Documents With CompareMyDocs.com | Web Worker Daily
(photo: Runs With Scissors)
Randall Ryder is a Minnesota consumer rights attorney who sues abusive debt collectors and is a publisher of Elder Parent Help. Follow him on Twitter @randallryder. 
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi
What about the other three: Change-Pro, Workshare and pdfDocs?
Frederic
I work in the IT department and we are in the process of switching from DeltaView by Workshare, to Litera’s Change-Pro. We have had on going minor issues with DV and I believe the product is at the end of its lifecycle. Word 2007 has a built-in comparison tool that may provide enough functionality as well.
We have upgraded our firm to Office 2007 and are having excellent results with Word’s compare feature. We are seriously considering retiring our other product and using only Word if it continues to work well.