It appears that there is a bug in acrobat reader running while logged in with a network account.
It crashes a few seconds after opening. It also crashes when loading pdf's in safari

Has anyone found an elegant solution to this or is redirecting or simlinking ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Acrobat
to a local folder the only way?

I believe it is to do with acrobat reader using sqlite and is not able to work with network paths.
REF: http://serverfault.com/questions/37805/adobe-reader-wont-launch-when-logged-into-network-user-accounts-open-directory

You'll need to redirect the ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/9.0_x86 folder to the local HD.
I've done this in WGM
Action - deleteAndCreateSymblink
Destination Folder Path - /Users/Shared/9.0_x86/
Folder Path: ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/9.0_x86

But make sure that other users will be able to access /Users/Shared/9.0_x86, give it full write privileges (i.e. chmod ugo+w /Users/Shared/9.0_x86)