LiquidText, Innovative Annotation Tool for Complex Documents, Adds Real-Time Collaboration

I first found LiquidText means again in 2017, writing on the time that it simply would possibly “perpetually change the way you learn and annotate advanced paperwork.” The product has developed in a number of methods since then, and as we speak it achieves one other milestone, because it launches real-time collaboration capabilities that allow a number of customers to evaluate, annotate and edit paperwork concurrently.

Be taught extra about LiquidText within the LawNext Authorized Know-how Listing.

For authorized professionals, the brand new collaboration functionality expands the product’s usefulness in any variety of eventualities the place colleagues and groups work collectively. In its announcement, LiquidText ticks off a number of:

Courtroom coordination, for real-time technique updates throughout stay court docket proceedings.
M&A negotiations, enabling groups to securely evaluate and negotiate paperwork concurrently throughout multiplelocations.
Patent evaluations, to streamline collaborative assessments of advanced IP filings.
Medical information evaluate.
Tutorial analysis, to share annotations and literature evaluations.
Monetary evaluation, to share evaluations of economic paperwork.

“We designed real-time collaboration particularly for high-stakes, fast-moving environments, the place each second counts,” stated Craig Tashman, CEO of LiquidText. “With suggestions and validation from professionals around the globe, we’re assured this replace will set a brand new normal for doc collaboration.”

Whereas the brand new collaboration characteristic turns into usually accessible as of as we speak, LiquidText says it has been testing it with key legislation agency companions upfront of as we speak’s launch to establish person necessities and take a look at its collaboration options. A kind of companions was WongPartnership, certainly one of Singapore’s main legislation corporations, whose attorneys performed a crucial position in designing and testing the collaboration options.

“At WongPartnership, innovation has all the time been a core precedence as we firmly imagine within the transformative alternatives that new applied sciences deliver,” stated Chou Sean Yu, deputy managing accomplice and head of litigation and dispute decision in a press release offered to me by LiquidText.  “As an early adopter of LiquidText, we have been happy to help in beta testing LiquidText’s real-time collaboration instruments, which have already made a major influence by streamlining workflows for our litigation and case preparation groups.”

Collaborators can remark by typing or writing on a shared workspace.

What Is LiquidText?

So what precisely is LiquidText? At its most elementary, it’s a mark-up and highlighting device for PDF and different paperwork. However additionally it is a note-taking device, a document-comparison device, a document-linking device, and finally a type of mind-mapping device.

After I first wrote about it in 2017, I described it as a device that “turns paperwork right into a extra fluid expertise that allows you to extra successfully spotlight, choose, annotate and join parts of a doc (or of a number of paperwork with the paid model) as a way to improve your comprehension.”

A person can have each non-public and shared workspaces for a similar doc.

At the moment, LiquidText was accessible solely as an iPad app, and had been named by Apple as essentially the most revolutionary iPad app of 2015 and by Time journal as one of many 10 greatest apps for iPad Professional.

Since then, it has launched variations for Home windows and Mac, in addition to a cloud-based subscription service referred to as LiquidText LIVE. And over time, the accolades have saved coming, together with having been named by Microsoft as the highest productiveness app of 2022.

At present, LiquidText is a device that gives customers with a unified workspace the place they’ll import a number of paperwork, extract and hyperlink excerpts, create thoughts maps, and visually join concepts throughout single and a number of sources.

Simply add somebody’s e mail deal with to ask the individual to be a collaborator.

Collaborate in Actual Time

With the brand new collaboration functionality, customers can now do all that with others in shared workspaces. Key options of this new functionality embrace:

Shared and personal workspaces. Customers can create shared workspaces for group collaboration and personal workspaces for particular person notes. Customers can transfer notes between non-public and shared areas as wanted, sustaining management over what’s seen to collaborators.
Actual-time enhancing. A number of customers can annotate, excerpt and touch upon paperwork concurrently. Adjustments seem practically immediately for all collaborators.
Notifications. Customers can tag collaborators in feedback (utilizing @mentions) to ship e mail notifications and invite direct suggestions and dialogue throughout the venture.
Doc library sharing. Customers can share complete libraries of paperwork, along with particular person information.

To make use of the brand new functionality, the person merely clicks the share button and enters the collaborator’s e mail deal with to ship an invitation. Now, each customers can add notes and spotlight textual content on the identical time on the identical doc.

The person can set a workspace as shared or non-public, or have each a non-public and shared workspace for a similar doc.

Even whereas collaborating with one other, the person can create a non-public workspace for a similar doc, in order that the person can add notes that aren’t seen to the collaborator. At any level, the person can view only one workspace or the opposite, or view each side-by-side. Notes created within the non-public area can simply be shared by dragging them into the shared area.

When a collaborator is just not energetic within the doc, the person can notify the collaborator of a brand new remark through the use of the @ image and their identify.

Fluid Workspaces

LiquidText is a product that’s higher seen and skilled than examine. I encourage you to return to my 2017 article for a extra detailed dialogue of its core options, or try is three-part Introduction to LiquidText video collection on YouTube.

However to recap a number of of its key options:

Each doc in LiquidText is accompanied by a workspace. This seems to the suitable of the doc in horizontal view and under it in vertical mode. As you learn, you possibly can excerpt textual content by highlighting it and dragging it to this workspace or, utilizing the ink characteristic, you possibly can merely lasso the textual content and drag it to the workspace.
Excerpts all the time stay linked to the spot within the doc the place you discovered them. However the workspace is fluid. You may transfer excerpts round or group them collectively just by dragging one over one other. You may add notes anyplace within the workspace, both typed or freehand. With the ink characteristic, you possibly can join something by drawing a line — join a observe to a spot within the textual content or join notes and highlights to one another and even join some extent in a single doc to a degree in one other.
Whether or not on an iPad or desktop, pinching a doc lets you evaluate completely different elements aspect by aspect. Say you’re on web page 20 of a contract however there’s language on web page 2 you need to evaluate. Merely pinch the doc to break down the pages in between and present each web page 20 and web page 2 in the identical view.
Pinching will also be used to break down a doc to indicate your entire highlights or search leads to a single view.
LiquidText gives a number of choices for annotating a doc. Draw or spotlight anyplace on the doc, in your notes, or on the workspace. Add notes and feedback to different notes or excerpts. LiquidText even enables you to touch upon two or extra sections of a doc directly or hyperlink feedback to a number of paperwork directly.

It must be famous that LiquidText is just not a full-fledged PDF editor. For that, you’d nonetheless use a normal PDF utility corresponding to Adobe.

However for reviewing and analyzing advanced paperwork. LiquidText is not like another product available on the market.