Make scanned documents searchable
A scanned letter or exhibit turned into a PDF whose text can be searched, selected and read by the AI.
Screenshots are taken from the app on every release. Updated 13 October 2026.
The client has sent the old correspondence as scans, or the other side's exhibits arrive as image-only PDFs. Until a scan has text, nothing can read it: search does not find it, JuristIQ cannot answer from it, and an insight shows it as a red row. An OCR scan turns it into a searchable PDF.
The question that decides the route is one document or many? One letter or exhibit is quickest in the Document tool, as below. For a batch, scan them where you are already working with them (see the table further down).
Scan one document
Open the document from the matter's Documents and click OCR in the viewer's toolbar. The document opens in the Document tool, with the tools panel on the right.
Click OCR in the tools panel.
Under Select Language, choose the language the document is written in, so the scan reads the text as that language.
Click scan document. The button shows Scanning document while it runs, and the panel goes back to the list of tools when the scan is done.
Check the result: open the document again from the matter and search for a word you can see on the page. If the search finds it, the scan has given the document its text.
Where to scan
| Where the scans are | What to use |
|---|---|
| One letter or exhibit in the matter | OCR in the Document tool, as above |
| Red rows in an insight table | Get Insights, then OCR scan red rows and analyse their cells: see fill the gaps in a review table |
| Documents a timeline import found no events in | Scan and retry from the timeline: see handle documents the import could not read |
Tips from practice
- Scan early. Run OCR before you build the chronology or the review table, so the AI reads the text and not a picture of it.
- Pick the main language. For a letter in Danish with an English enclosure, choose the language most of the pages are in.
- Poor text from an earlier scan. Some PDFs carry text from an old, poor OCR. When you import those to a timeline with JuristIQ, turn on Force OCR Scan under Provide extra instructions to scan them again.
- Split the bundle as well. If the scan is many documents in one PDF, cut it into separate documents too: see split a scanned bundle into separate documents.