By Sean Doherty
Law.com technology editor
The primary purpose of redaction for lawyers is to remove information from documents that you do not want others to see -- because they would use it against you or your client. That is a simple enough concept, but many "miss" redacting important data. They are either not using the right tools or using the right tools in the wrong way.
Today, most all documents are in electronic format and their redaction requires the correct application of software. And, in the event you have a multitude of documents to review and redact, automation -- but less than a fully automated process.
Technology has relieved us of many manual tasks, but it often stops short of fully automating some tasks due to the inherent risks in, well, full automation. For example, I doubt there are many lawyers who would fully automate the task of redacting documents without the opportunity for human review and intervention. The risk that privileged communication or private client information may be passed to an opponent, or the public, is great.
This sets the stage for some minimum requirements in redaction tools for lawyers: software that redacts what you want, where you want it, and makes it easy to review and verify redaction. In regard to software, lawyers like it easy-to-use, with full support for Microsoft Windows and Office environments. In regard to redaction, it must support all the various file types that lawyers and their clients use in the course of business like DOC, XLS, TIFF, and PDF -- which naturally leads us to Adobe.
Adobe Acrobat 9 supports redaction, but that is not its raison d’être. If you already have Adobe, you may as well get your money’s worth. Because it can perform searches in multiple PDF files and engage them for redaction as well as search for patterns like Social Security Numbers, dates, credit card number, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. But realize Adobe can’t make use of macros and templates in redaction to semi-automate the process. For that, you may need a specialized redaction tool like Informative Graphics Corp.’s Redact-It Desktop.
Redact-It Desktop made it easy for me to remove sensitive content and privacy information from documents and e-mail messages. In fact, IGC included handy scripts to semi-automate the process and provided an easy view of it from a simple, well-designed user interface. Redact-It also logged all my redaction and enabled me to leave specific reasons for each redaction, or “redactup,” on the final, redacted, document that is published as a PDF or TIFF document. Redact-It leaves the original file intact.
INSTALLATION
When I installed Redact-It on a Lenovo ThinkPad T43 (Windows XP SP3), it did not detect “Net-It Now,” which is used help redact Microsoft Office documents. So it installed both Redact-It and Net-It Now onto approximately 150 MB of the hard disk. The installation also placed "Add-Ins" (Redactit.dot, Netitnow.dot) in the start-up folder of a copy of Microsoft Office 2007. With the Add-Ins, I exported documents directly from Office to Redact-It and published "content sealed format" files using Net-It Now.
For the purposes of this review, CSF files are products of IGC’s Visual Rights technology. They should not be confused with Adobe’s color settings files. Visual Rights technology can render documents, images, and CAD files into an encrypted, content sealed format that embeds persistent usage controls, aka digital rights management. With Net-It Now, you can export Office documents into a CSF file and read it with Redact-It or the free Brava! Reader.
A CSF file is a neutral, two-dimensional format that is a text-searchable replica of the source file, with identical images, graphics, layout, and more. Using Redact-It or the Net-It Now Office Add-In, you can embed print banners and watermarks in CSF files; publish them with permanent markups and redaction; set passwords and expiration dates; and prohibit print, copy, markup, and other file actions on the published CSF files.
From the "Add-Ins" menu in MS-Word, I published this file using Net-It Now. A dialog box opened with myriad options to secure the file. See Figure 1, below.
Figure 1. Net-It Now options when publishing a CSF file from MS-Word.
Note that if you use Office without enabling macros, the Redact-It template documents are disabled. To fix that, I enabled macros and “trusted” all documents from IGC.
TRACTION FOR REDACTION
Redact-ItDesktop.exe required a minimum of 1080 KB of physical memory to run on my computer. One of the first things I noticed from Redact-It's user interface was the efficient use of screen real estate. Redact-It has access to handy tools in the upper left-hand portion of the UI where you can easily click to redact an area; allow an area within a redacted area; redact privacy information; find an item and redact it; redact using a predefined script, e.g., account numbers; redact an entire page; add a bate stamp number; and selectively choose the redactups identified on a page. See Figure 2, below.
Figure 2. Redact-It user interface with potential redactups ready for review.
In the center of the screen is a page of a document set for redaction; to the right of that is a tabbed view of (1) clickable, thumbnail graphics of each page; (2) bookmarks; and (3) a navigation tool to survey the potential redactions identified in the document. Note that when you search a document for character strings to redact, the thumbnail images will display a red exclamation point next to the pages that satisfy your search criteria.
Since privacy needs to be preserved in many online filings, I first looked at Redact-It’s script to redact selected privacy information. A dialog box appeared with various options to redact Social Security Numbers, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, dates of birth, and names -- but not just one name. I could enter a list names or load them from a CSV file. See Figure 3, below.
Figure 3. Redact-It Desktop options to engage a redaction script for privacy.
I checked the boxes for "telephone numbers" and "e-mail addresses" and added names in fields for first, middle, and last name. Redact-It did not restrict itself to the specific name of an individual as a character string, but found all instances of the first, middle, and last names, separately. In effect, the search was conducted as if an implicit Boolean operator OR was used between the field values.
Redact-It also found every instance of a telephone number and e-mail address in the document -- including that information in my letterhead. Note that there was a handy "exclusion" option for field searches to reduce "false positives." That was impressive, but if the search function had the option to do a "fuzzy" search for name variations like "Jon" for "Jonathan" and common errors like "Shawn" for "Shaun" or "Sean," it would allow for human errors in document creation.
When the results were in, I turned my attention to the navigation tab in the right pane of the UI. There, I saw the total number of redactups. I reviewed them in linear fashion using an arrow button that placed them into context in the document view where I could verify whether or not I wanted to redact the "hit." It would be nice if, in the lower part of the tabbed display, Redact-It listed the redactups so a reviewer could move through them in a nonlinear fashion. Regardless, another way to review redactups was available from the top of the GUI.
Redact-It has a handy "verify" button for redactups, image areas, or the entire document. Using the “verify” option, I easily moved from one redactup to the next to verify each item set for redaction. If Redact-It finds a redactup that does not warrant redaction, you can easily de-select it by pressing the delete key. In effect, you are deleting a proposed redaction -- that was so intuitive I almost missed it.
While verifying redactups, I sometimes enlarged or reduced the size of the redaction. Managing the size of a redaction is just like resizing a window in Windows using the computer’s mouse. In all instances, I labeled the reason for the redaction that was superimposed over the redaction on the finished product. Note that you can create your own reason codes or use the default codes supplied by Redact-It focused on the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act.
After I was done reviewing the potential redactups, I clicked on the "finalize" button at the top of the document and published it to a TIFF format (PDF was another option). From that button, I also had the option to apply a water mark or bates numbering scheme to the document.
When I "finalized" my redacted document, I formatted the page size, decided whether or not I wanted to include hyperlinks, and added a redaction summary for a reviewer. Note that if the output file was PDF, I could also password-protect the file. But since I selected TIFF, I had some other options, e.g., configure the color and pixel size of the document. I saved the document to disk and e-mailed it directly from Redact-It. My default mail program, Outlook, opened a new message with my finished document attached.
SCRIPTED REDACTION
When I selected the redaction tool with the folder in the upper left-hand corner of the icon, a dialog box gave me options to automatically find and redact items in the document using predefined scripts. I started with account numbers.
From the view in Figure 2, you can see the variety of ways Redact-It found an account number embedded in a file. Primarily, it focuses on the existence of a preface to the number itself in some variation of "account" or "number." Note, however, that Redact-It assumes that an account number will be contiguous and not broken up by dashes or spaces. So if you find account numbers in your documents that do not fit the standard search pattern, you can write your own script to find them, or any other information that does not fit a script.
After I opened a document using the script tool, Redact-It searched through it to find numbers prefaced with some form of "account" and/or "number" and presented them as redactups for verification. Once verified, I clicked on "finalize" and published the redacted document; this time, to PDF.
Redact-It Desktop is a viewing application only, so there is never any editing performed on the original document. Any redactup actions that are performed are saved to an external file that is overlaid on the document view and then published to PDF or TIFF as a new, i.e., redacted document. An added benefit to creating a new file is the fact that no metadata is transferred from the original document to the redacted version.
By default, the final redacted document uses the same file name as the input file, except that Redact-It distinguishes the redacted file by appending a "-r" to the end of the file before the file extension. Of course, you can easily change that default behavior.
My favorite script tool redacted information situated between brackets. Redact-It searched through text and marked for redaction all the information I placed between brackets. This made it easy for me to review a document and mark text for redaction that would be performed by a paralegal.
REDACTION BY TEMPLATE
In addition to scripts, another way to semi-automate redaction to use a template file. Template files can be used on multiple files that are similar in size and content. I placed a number of similar documents in a folder. Then I redacted the first document in a series and saved it as a template. Once done, I recalled that template for other, similar documents and Redact-It automatically applied the redactups saved in my template file to the other documents.
I printed an e-mail in XPS format and saved it to a file on my hard disk. I copied that file multiple times. Then I opened the original file and redacted the subject line and the body of the message and annotated the redaction reason: "Attorney-Client Privilege." I left the rest of the message header intact to make it easy to authenticate. Then, I saved the redaction as a template.
Using the handy arrow keys at the top of the UI, I then clicked the "right" arrow and Redact-It assumed I wanted to load the next document in the folder where the current document resided -- which was correct. Copy (2) of my e-mail message appeared. I then clicked on the "template" icon in the GUI and selected my redacted e-mail template. Once the template loaded, the subject line and the body of Copy (2) of my e-mail message was redacted. I clicked "finalize" to export the document to TIFF and clicked the right arrow key for the next message in the folder. I repeated this template procedure for each document in the folder.
There are a few things to note about redaction by template. The file to redact and the template must contain the same number of pages; the template must have been authored using a similar file format, e.g., XPS or TIFF; and the file and template must be of the same general layout for the redactup entities to overlay the proper locations. One more note on the use of XPS files, you need the .NET Framework version 3 installed on your computer.
CONCLUSION
I found Redact-It very easy to use with highly configurable ways to automate the redaction of multiple documents. And, it supports all the file formats that my clients and I use on a regular basis. For all it's worth in time-saving features, the cost of $195 per user is a bargain.
ADDITIONAL READING
“Clumsy Redaction Can Spell Negligence,” by Craig Ball, Law Technology News.
“GE Suffers a Redaction Disaster,” Law.com Legal Technology.
“How to Properly Redact Documents,” by Christine Musil, director of marketing at
Informative Graphics Corp.
PRODUCT
Redact-It version 1.1
$195.00 per user
Free 15-day trial
PC REQUIREMENTS (SORRY MAC)
Windows 2000, XP SP2, XP SP3, Windows 2003 Server, or Windows Vista; 150 MB available disk space for installation; Net-It Now 4.0 (included with Redact-It Desktop installation); and 512 MB virtual memory for print publishing through Net-It Now.
CONTACT
Informative Graphics Corp
4835 E. Cactus Road, Suite 445
Scottsdale, Arizona 85254-3548
Phone: (602) 971-6061
E-mail: info@infograph.com
Web: www.infograph.com
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