redaction

Redaction is the retroactive editing of a document to remove confidential material. Attorneys may often need to redact legal documents to protect attorney-client privilege and confidentiality . The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 5.2(a) protects this confidentiality and requires attorneys to redact client’s sensitive personal information and may only include the last four digits of a Social Security or tax ID number, the year of an individual’s birth, a minor’s initials or the last four digits of a financial account number. While redaction often conjures up images of black boxes over text, a Law Business Media article explain that proper redaction requires more than just a black box over a text, and often requires proper software or add-ons to properly redact.

[Last reviewed in December of 2020 by the Wex Definitions Team ]

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