How Can Lawyers Redact Sensitive Information Before an Email Leaves? Introducing Redact in the Litera Platform
A client’s account number, a settlement figure, a witness’s home address: once the email is sent, none of it is coming back.
The short answer: Lawyers can redact sensitive information before an email leaves by redacting attachments inside Outlook, at the moment of sending, instead of in a separate PDF editor. Redact in the Litera Platform finds sensitive data in Word and PDF attachments and lets the lawyer confirm every finding. It then replaces the originals with redacted, flattened PDFs without leaving the email.
What Is Redaction in Legal Work?
Redaction removes sensitive information from a document so the recipient can’t read it. In legal work, that might mean personal details, financial data, or confidential client information that the recipient doesn’t need to see.
Redaction protects what a reader can see on the page. Metadata cleaning protects what they can’t see, such as tracked changes, comments, and file properties. A document leaving a law firm usually needs both.
Why Is Redacting Email Attachments So Hard Today?
For most lawyers, redacting an attachment means leaving the email:
- Save the file locally
- Open it in a PDF editor
- Find and redact each sensitive detail by hand
- Save a new version
- Reattach it and hope it’s the right one
Every step costs time against a deadline, and every step is a chance to send the wrong version. There’s also a quieter risk. A black box drawn over text isn’t a redaction if the text underneath is still in the file.
What Is Redact in the Litera Platform?
Litera already helps law firms remove hidden metadata from attachments across every Outlook experience with Litera Clean+, which cleans 300+ metadata types. Redact extends that protection to the sensitive data a reader can see on the page.
Redact in the Litera Platform works inside the Outlook compose flow. It’s included with Clean+ and runs in classic Outlook, new Outlook, Outlook on the web, and Outlook for Mac. Lawyers redact where they already send documents, with no new application to open and no file to save and reattach.
How Does Redact Work?
Redact takes four steps, all without leaving the email:
- Select: open the Redact tab and choose the attachments to scan
- Choose: pick the personal, financial, and other data types to find
- Review: preview every finding and uncheck anything that should stay
- Redact: redact every selected attachment in one pass, and flattened PDFs replace the originals
Because Redact handles several attachments in a single session, a lawyer sending a full set of documents doesn’t have to repeat the process file by file.
Does Redact Use AI?
No. Redact detects sensitive data with pattern-matching and dictionary rules, not probabilistic AI. The same document returns the same findings every time, and the lawyer confirms every finding before anything is redacted.
That’s a deliberate choice. On confidential documents, a detection method that guesses differently from one run to the next is a risk no firm should accept. Rules-based accuracy has been the foundation of Litera’s legal technology for 30 years, and Redact applies it to the moment of send.
What Can Redact Handle Today?
| Area | What Redact supports |
|---|---|
| File types | Word (DOCX) and PDF attachments |
| Output | Flattened PDFs that replace the original attachments, so Word files go out as PDFs |
| Volume | Multiple attachments in a single session |
| Outlook | Classic Outlook, new Outlook, Outlook on the web, and Outlook for Mac |
| Data processing | In the region where the firm’s Litera tenant is provisioned |
| Not supported | Password-protected files; scanned or image-based PDFs return no findings |
Why Does Redacting at the Moment of Send Matter?
The cost of a disclosure isn’t measured in minutes. It’s measured in client trust. When a client’s sensitive details reach someone who shouldn’t have them, the conversation that follows is about the relationship, not the tool.
Redacting inside Outlook changes the odds. Protection happens at the one moment every document passes through, so it doesn’t depend on a lawyer remembering an extra step at the end of a long day. It also gives the firm a consistent control at the point of send that it can explain to clients in security questionnaires and panel reviews. Lawyers get back the time the round trip through a PDF editor used to take.
Find and Redact Sensitive Data Before It Leaves the Email
Every document that leaves your firm carries your clients’ trust with it. See how Redact fits the way your firm already sends documents. Talk to your Litera account team, or explore it at litera.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Redact Use AI?
No. Redact uses deterministic pattern-matching and dictionary rules, and a lawyer confirms every finding before anything is redacted.
Which File Types Can Redact Process?
Redact processes Word (DOCX) and PDF attachments. Password-protected files aren’t supported, and scanned or image-based PDFs return no findings.
What Happens to a Word Attachment After Redaction?
Redact replaces it with a redacted, flattened PDF, so the recipient receives a PDF rather than an editable Word file.
Which Versions of Outlook Does Redact Support?
Redact works in classic Outlook, new Outlook, Outlook on the web, and Outlook for Mac.
Can I Redact Several Attachments at Once?
Yes. Lawyers can select multiple attachments and redact them all in a single session.
Where Is Data Processed?
Data is processed in the region where the firm’s Litera tenant is provisioned.
Who Can Use Redact?
Redact is available to customers with a valid Litera Clean+ license.
