The legal redaction process involves the removal or obscuring of sensitive or confidential information from legal documents to protect privileged information, maintain confidentiality, and comply with legal regulations. Legal redaction is essential to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information and to uphold client confidentiality, particularly in legal proceedings where documents are shared between parties.

Here is a general overview of the legal redaction process:

Identification of Sensitive Information: The first step in the legal redaction process is to identify the sensitive information within the document. This may include personally identifiable information (PII) such as names, addresses, social security numbers, financial information, medical records, confidential business information, trade secrets, privileged communications, and other sensitive data.

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PID refers to Personally Identifiable Data. Frequently redacted PID includes

Personally Identifiable Data (PID) refers to information that can be used to identify a particular individual. Examples of PID that are frequently redacted include: date of birth, social security number, loan number, account number, FHA number, FHA account number, FHA case number, MERS phone number, SIS number, APN, parcel number, non-recording bar codes, assessor/tax ID, and handwriting that contains any sequence of digits or dates (except page numbers). Control Number and any unidentified sequence of numbers that may be considered PID are exceptions to this, except for Merger docs.

PHI refers to protected health information. Frequently redacted PHI includes

Protected health information (PHI) includes personal details of patients such as their names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, social security numbers, and medical record numbers. Other sensitive information such as account numbers, health plan beneficiary numbers, certification/license numbers, vehicle identification numbers, serial numbers, device identification numbers, names of relatives, and biometric identifiers like fingerprints and full face x-rays are also considered PHI. Such information is frequently redacted to protect the privacy and security of patients.

Frequently used forms with redactions include

Frequently used file formats that require redactions include JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group), JPEG-XR (Windows Media Photo / HD Photo), and PNG (Portable Network Graphics). Other file types that may require redactions include PDF (Adobe Portable Document Format), RTF (Rich Text Format), TXT (ASCII Text), DOC (Microsoft Word Document), DOCX (Microsoft Word Document 2007 & above), XLS (Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet), and P (Portable Network Graphics).

If you are unable to find the required file format for redaction, please contact us and our IT department will work to support your software requirements. We may also be able to incorporate your file format. For further details, please feel free to inquire with us.

Redacted document types include, but are not limited to

Document redaction is a common practice that involves hiding or removing sensitive information from certain types of official documents. The types of documents that are commonly redacted include, but are not limited to: court records, legal discovery documents, UCC filings, deed of trust documents, notes, escrow statements, banking statements, credit card statements, financial statements, shipping and transit receipts, medical records, progress notes, mental health records, police reports, emails, and education records.