BASALT · JOURNAL
What a solo practitioner actually needs from a PDF tool
Feature comparisons are written for buyers with committees. A solo practitioner has a different problem: which of these hundreds of features do I actually touch, and does the cheaper thing do those.
The realistic list
From observing what small firm document work consists of, the recurring operations are short:
Combine several documents into one. Remove or reorder pages. Make a scan searchable. Redact before something goes out. Number pages for a production. Produce a privilege log. Fill and flatten a form. Sign something. Make a file small enough to email or file.
That is most of it. The advanced editing, preflight and accessibility tooling that occupies much of a professional suite is genuinely used by people whose work requires it, and largely untouched by everyone else.
What actually causes trouble
Not missing features. The recurring pain points in small firm document work are:
Redaction that did not remove anything, which is the one with real consequences.
Bates numbering across sessions, where continuing the sequence correctly is a bookkeeping problem rather than a stamping one.
The privilege log, which is usually rebuilt by hand from documents that have been deliberately made unreadable.
Large scanned productions, where tools that work fine on ordinary documents become unusable.
How to judge a tool
Test it on the four things above using your own worst document, not a sample. Then verify the output independently once: extract the text, read the metadata, count the revisions. That single exercise tells you more than any feature list.
On cost
A subscription for a professional suite is reasonable value if you use the professional suite. If your usage is the list above, the arithmetic is straightforward and unflattering.
Work out which you are from your own last three months rather than from what you might need one day. The features you might need one day are also available one day, and a monthly fee for that option is a decision worth making deliberately.
Where this argument fails
If you handle regulatory filings requiring PDF/A, accessibility compliance work, or complex form design, none of the above applies and you need the full product. That is a real subset of practice and worth knowing whether you are in it.
Frequently asked questions
What PDF features do solo lawyers actually use?
Combining and splitting documents, reordering pages, making scans searchable, redacting, Bates numbering, privilege logs, filling and flattening forms, signing, and compressing files to meet size limits. Advanced editing, preflight and accessibility tooling are used by those whose work requires them and rarely otherwise.
What causes the most trouble in small firm document work?
Redaction that did not remove anything, Bates numbering continued incorrectly across sessions, privilege logs rebuilt by hand from documents made deliberately unreadable, and large scanned productions that make otherwise adequate tools unusable.
How should I evaluate a PDF tool for legal work?
Test it on your most awkward real document rather than a clean sample, and verify its output independently at least once by extracting the text, reading the metadata and counting revisions.
When is a full professional PDF suite necessary?
When the work involves PDF/A regulatory filing, accessibility compliance tagging, or complex form design with calculations and scripting. Those have no equivalent in smaller tools.
Doing it in Basalt
Basalt is a native macOS PDF toolkit with eighteen tools in one window: merge, split, compress, OCR, Bates numbering, privilege logs, forms, signing, watermarks, comparison and more. Redaction destroys content rather than covering it, and an independent verifier re-opens every written file and proves the material is gone before the file is saved. If it cannot prove it, nothing is written. A one time $29 licence covers up to three Macs, it is free for the first 24 hours, there is no account, and the engine holds no network entitlement at all, which macOS enforces at the code-signature level. Download it at basaltformac.com.
Redaction that proves itself
Basalt destroys the content you mark, then re-opens the file it wrote and proves the content is gone before it saves anything. Your documents never leave your Mac.