48
Mention of a company, product, or service does not indicate recommendation or endorsement by the American Bar Association or the author
Page 7
cover sheet as well as inserting a firm logo and other information, either using the first
document in the portfolio or creating one within Adobe.
Metadata Removal
What is Metadata? Word processing files, spreadsheets, presentation files, and
almost all files that exist electronically – even those that have been scanned in – contain
metadata. Metadata is the information stored about a document that helps the computer
store, share, and find that document. It is similar in concept to an old fashioned library card
catalog. Library patrons can find a book, picture, video, or some other material by looking in
a card catalog. The card reveals information about the physical object – subjects, authors,
publication date, publisher, and more. Metadata is the library catalog card for each file in a
computer. Take a look at any Microsoft Word document under “file” “properties” to see
information including author, location, file name, document title, date created, date modified,
date last accessed, and editing time. This metadata describes the computer file, and may or
may not be something you want to share with people you send that file to electronically.
Other types of hidden data can appear in MS Word documents – tracked changes,
comments, hidden text, versions, and more. In Microsoft Excel spreadsheets metadata
includes formulas and in MS PowerPoint notes and comments might be resident. Corel
WordPerfect reveals document properties, as well as allowing recipients to go to previous
versions of the documents via “undo” button. In the course of collaborating on electronic
documents with staff, co-counsel, and clients, a tremendous amount of metadata can be
created for each file. If this file were sent to opposing counsel, revealing comments, tracked
changes, and other document history the results could be disastrous. For instance, after
collaborating on a real estate closing in which the requested price of the property had been
negotiated via tracked changes with the client, an attorney sends the document via email to
the potential buyer and her attorney. The savvy attorney turns on track changes to see that
the initial dollar amount was significantly lower then the final document and uses this as a
bargaining chip. Say that a client compared his lawyer’s invoice for work on a contract and
then reviewed the metadata in the contract to reveal that the editing time in the metadata
was significantly less than the billing statement. Although the metadata is not always
accurate, and there can be many extenuating circumstances, most attorneys would not
want to have to explain this to their clients. Metadata gaffes have made headline news,
exposing trade secrets, plagiarism, social security numbers, corporate strategy and much
more. (http://www.metadatarisk.org/news/news_overview.htm
)
For attorneys who wish to share a document with opposing counsel, or other third parties
for which metadata exposure is a risk, converting a document to PDF prior to sending it is a
way to remove all of the information that could prove most damaging – tracked changed,
document versions, notes, comments, formulas and other embedded text. In Adobe Acrobat
Standard or Professional 9.0 users can choose to “examine document” and remove all
metadata, including most of the document properties associated with the file. The “examine
document” can even be used to remove comments and other reviewing functions in an
existing PDF. The process unfortunately “breaks” certain rights for those with the Adobe
Reader only, such as commenting, the Typewriter tool, and digital signatures. The “examine
document” function also renders the ability to remove added Bates numbers. However,
removal of the metadata entirely may offer more rewards than drawbacks. The tool offers
58--7
46
Mention of a company, product, or service does not indicate recommendation or endorsement by the American Bar Association or the author
Page 8
“granular” removal, so that a user has some control as to what stays and what goes. The
“examine document” can be configured to prompt a user to remove metadata for each
document saved or emailed via the “preferences” menu. There is a batch removal tool for
metadata in Adobe Acrobat 9.0, however it will not remove hidden text.
Securing PDF Documents
Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional and above provide a range of security features from simple
to quite sophisticated. From encryption to digital signature authentication to password
protection, Acrobat 9.0 Pro users have many options. Ethical duties to protect client’s
confidential information can be fulfilled by taking steps to secure PDFs, as well as removing
metadata. Even if the document does not contain sensitive or confidential information, some
attorneys may want to restrict rights for copying, extraction, or printing to keep work product
protected. Acrobat 7.0 and higher allow creation of security policies. Some attorneys may
want to create a policy called “client review” which would allow recipients of that document
to use commenting tools, but disallow copying, extraction, and printing. Another policy could
be called “Shared with opposing counsel” which could strip metadata and restrict rights to
copy or print. Finally, for very sensitive documents a policy could be created to encrypt and
digitally sign documents. In Adobe Acrobat 9.0 professional, security policies can be applied
through a batch process. Additionally security policies can be set up individually, or can be
available for an entire firm. For those who create PDF portfolios, be mindful of how security
is applied. Because the portfolio is a container, applying password security to the container
does not protect the individual documents. Users can use the Security Envelope function to
secure multiple documents inside a portfolio.
PDF for Archives
Today over 90% of documents are created electronically. These documents are created in
many different types of software and many versions of software. Many have already
experienced the difficulties of opening a Microsoft Office 95 document in Microsoft Office
2007, or converting an older WordPerfect document to a current version of Microsoft Word.
Older digital documents suffer as formatting is lost, characters don’t display, and files
become corrupted. Long term storage of digital records poses so many challenges that law
firms may consider printing the records to avoid dealing with migration issues. One option
that is available is converting documents to PDF, as the format is a de facto standard due to
the popularity of the free Reader and its backwards compatibility. However, for entities like
the government and the courts, a de facto standard is not enough – they require de jure
standards. The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) has developed
an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard called PDF/A. This
standard creates assurances of long-term compliance and readability. There are two types
of PDF/A. The full type, PDF/A-1a is intended for electronic documents such as word
processing, spreadsheets, etc. The minimal type, is for scanned documents and is called
PDF/A-1b. The specifications for PDF/A is that the documents should be self-contained,
unfettered, device independent, and tagged. Simply put, the PDF/A document will use
embedded font and standard colors, cannot be secured, contains metadata, and does not
allow external links, embedded files or multimedia elements. These restrictions allow a
PDF/A document to be opened by a Reader many years into the future. To create a PDF/A
58--8
47
Mention of a company, product, or service does not indicate recommendation or endorsement by the American Bar Association or the author
Page 9
in Acrobat 9.0 Professional, a user can choose to “print” to PDF and choose the PDF/A-
1b:2005(RGB) from the Properties button. Alternatively, uses can use the one button PDF
creators buttons in MS Office applications, but will need to change the conversion settings
first. Any file saved to PDF/A can be checked to see if it conforms with the ISO standard.
This operation is accomplished in the Advanced menu, under “preflight”. Converting existing
PDFs to PDF/A is challenging, and if a firm chooses to use the standard it will likely be
easier to apply it going forward.
Redaction
When documents must be produced but contain information that cannot or should not be
made public or seen by the opposing party, that information must be redacted. Personal
identifiers in “protected health information,” account and Social Security numbers, financial
information and the like all must be protected from disclosure in various circumstances.
Horror stories abound and embarrassing examples of unsuccessful efforts to redact
sensitive information in electronic files can readily be found through Internet searches. We
can assume that you do not wish to add to those stories and examples. With paper
documents, sensitive information was redacted with overlay tapes or more commonly using
a felt-tip marker. When the documents to be produced are PDF files, sensitive information
can be removed using the Redaction Tool in Acrobat 9. The Redaction function in Acrobat
9 permits the marking and removal of both text and any portion of image-only PDF files.
When working with image-on-text files, words, phrases or any string of characters can be
searched for and automatically marked for redaction. The redaction process, generally
speaking, involves two steps: 1) information within a document is “marked” for redaction;
and, 2) the redaction is applied. In Acrobat 9, the redaction process can be initiated in
several ways. One method involves selecting the Advanced menu and choosing Redaction.
The preferred method would be to display the Redaction Toolbar. This can be done by
selecting the Advanced menu, then Redaction, and highlighting Show Redaction Tool Bar.
The Redaction Toolbar can also be displayed from the View menu by selecting Toolbars
and Redaction.
To manually mark areas of a PDF file for redaction, click on the Mark for Redaction tool on
the Redaction Toolbar or from the Advanced menu, after selecting Redaction. Notice that
the Redaction tool is “smart.” It appears as a cross-hair when over an image-only area, and
looks something like a book (an icon meant to represent text) when over a text area. With
the Redaction Tool active, move through the PDF file selecting text or areas of the image to
mark them for redaction. To select text, place the redaction tool at the beginning of the text
to be marked, left-click and hold down the left mouse button while dragging the tool across
the text to be marked. For finer control when selecting text you may want to click just in front
of the text to be selected then use the up-down and left-right arrow keys to exactly position
the cursor. Once in the desired location, with the Mark for Redaction Tool active, you can
select text by holding down the Shift key and moving the cursor via the up-down and left-
right arrow keys. You can hold down the Shift and Control keys together to select whole
words (or any character strings that are separated by one or more spaces). If the area to
be marked is image-only, place the Redaction Tool cross-hair up and to the left of the area
to be selected, then hold down the left mouse button and drag down and to the right.
Alternatively, you can place the cross-hair down and to the right of the area to be marked,
58--9
51
Mention of a company, product, or service does not indicate recommendation or endorsement by the American Bar Association or the author
Page 10
hold down the left mouse button and drag up and to the left. When working with image-on-
text PDF files, words, numbers and phrases can be searched for, found and marked for
redaction. Search and mark for redaction will NOT work on image-only PDF files. Keep in
mind that image-on-text files created by OCR may (will) contain some recognition errors,
which means that searches may hit false results or more likely, miss intended targets. To
search and mark for redaction click on the Search and Redact button on the Redaction
toolbar. Click Okay to dispose of the warning and a Search box appears. You can search
within the current PDF file or all PDF files within a specified folder. By default, the search
window displays the MyDocuments folder. The drop-down menu allows you to select local
or network drives or, at the bottom of the list you can select Browse for Location. Selecting
Browse for Location produces a Browse for Folder window from which you can navigate to
and select an appropriate folder containing the PDF files to be searched and marked for
redaction. After selecting whether to search the currently open file or PDF files contained in
a specific folder, type the word or phrase that you want to search for then click the Search
and Redact button. When the search finishes the results will be displayed in the search
window. At this point, Acrobat has found the search term in the current file or all of the PDF
files in the specified folder but nothing has been marked for redaction. To mark all of the
found word or phrase results, click the Check All button (or, you can manually check each
box in the search results list). After you have checked some or all of the search results the
Marked Checked Results for Redaction button becomes active; click that button to mark for
redaction the selected results. All checked instances of the search results will be marked for
redaction. Up to this point you have only marked items for redaction; redaction has not been
applied. Before applying redaction you may want to visit the Redaction Tool Properties.
Acrobat allows you to select the redacted area fill color and add a text overlay. If you check
the Use Overlay Text box then you have the option to specify text properties (font, size,
color, alignment, etc.). There are also code sets that can be applied that specify sections of
the federal Freedom of Information Act or the Federal Privacy Act. After all areas within a
document have been marked for redaction the document can be saved and closed. This is
not a required step but may be appropriate if say one person marks the file for redaction
while another approves and applies the redaction. For example, a paralegal may review
and mark files for redaction, save them, then pass the files along to an attorney in the office
who will approve and apply the redactions. If you save the PDF file before applying
redaction a text box will appear warning that the document contains redaction marks that
have not yet been applied. To apply the redactions click on the Apply Redactions button on
the Redaction Toolbar or from the Advanced menu select Redaction then Apply Redactions.
At this point a very important, but far from foolproof, message appears. The warning
message suggests that you will be prompted at the next save to use a new file name but the
prompt does not warn you that failure to do so will result in the total and final loss of all
redacted information. After redaction marks have been applied and the file saved THE
REDACTED INFORMATION CANNOT BE RETRIEVED! If you quickly hit Ctrl+S and click
Yes to permit over-writing the existing file, whether you intended to or not you will have
irrevocably removed all redacted information. USE WITH CAUTION. A good practice would
be to create copies of files to be redacted and save them with a new name or in a different
folder before beginning the redaction process. When you are sure that you are ready to
apply redaction click OK in the warning and the specified redaction will be applied to all
marked areas or search terms, and information removed from, in the file or files. When
redaction has been applied a text box appears telling you that redactions have been
successfully applied and asking whether you want to examine the document for additional
58--10
Documents you may be interested
Documents you may be interested
