NOTHING IS UPLOADED — OPEN YOUR NETWORK TAB AND WATCH

Before it leaves
the firm

Document metadata has produced real disclosures in real filings. A short checklist prevents almost all of them.

Drop a file to see what is inside it

Get a privacy score, a plain-English list of what it gives away, and a clean copy. Read from your disk, never uploaded.

JPEG · PNG · HEIC · WEBP · PDF · DOCX · XLSX · PPTX

What you would actually see

An illustration of a typical result. No real file, name or location is used.

Before — what you would be sending
settlement-draft.docxDOCX
  • Tracked changes 31 insertions and 24 deletions — internal positions readable
  • Named editors r.mehta, j.okafor, a.whitfield
  • Comments Reviewer comments are still in this document
After cleaning
settlement-draft-clean.docxDOCX
  • Tracked changes removed
  • Named editors removed
  • Comments removed
Processed on your device. Privileged material is never uploaded anywhere.

The three that cause the trouble

Tracked changes carrying internal negotiating positions. Redactions applied as a shape over text rather than a removal of it. Document properties naming a colleague, a client or a matter number that the other side was not meant to have.

A working sequence

Finish the document. Accept or reject every tracked change. Delete all comments. Remove content properly rather than covering it. Export a fresh PDF rather than sending a working copy. Confirm the author field is empty. Then attach it.

Received files deserve the same attention

The check runs both ways. A document that arrives from the other side may carry its own tracked changes and properties. Reading them may be improper depending on your jurisdiction and rules of professional conduct — but knowing they are present is the first step to handling them correctly.

Why in-browser matters here

Privileged material should not be uploaded to a third-party service for processing, whatever its retention policy says. This page never transmits the file. You can verify that in the browser's network tab before you trust it with anything.

In practice

The redaction failure in detail

A black rectangle in a PDF is a filled shape placed on the page. The text sits underneath, unchanged, and remains selectable, copyable and searchable. This has produced disclosures in filed court documents and published government reports repeatedly, and it keeps happening because the result looks correct on screen. True redaction removes the underlying content and then flattens the document so nothing can be recovered.

A firm-level habit that works

Individual vigilance fails eventually. What holds is a rule applied to a category: every document leaving the firm is exported fresh to PDF rather than sent as a working file, without exception and regardless of how minor it seems. Exporting resolves tracked changes, drops comments and produces a document with no accumulated history, which removes the three most common failure modes in one step that requires no judgement.

Received documents

Metadata in a document from the other side may be privileged, may be inadvertent, and may carry an obligation to notify rather than examine. The rules differ by jurisdiction and bar association. What is uncontroversial is that knowing whether metadata is present is different from mining it, and that forwarding a received document onward without checking risks passing on someone else's disclosure.

Common questions

Is it improper to read metadata in a document received from opposing counsel?

The rules vary by jurisdiction and bar association. Check your local guidance. Detecting that metadata is present is a separate question from mining it.

Why do redactions in PDFs keep failing?

Because a black rectangle is a drawing placed over text, not a removal of it. The text stays selectable underneath.

Is it safe to check privileged documents on this page?

The file is read locally and never transmitted. You can confirm this with the browser's network tab.