The ability to redact, commonly defined within the scope of litigation as the action of selectively removing, withdrawing or masking portions of content as a result of privilege or confidentiality, is a critical skill to develop and understand within the legal process. This task is especially important for document reviewers, attorneys who are routinely engaged in the evaluation of client material(s), paralegals, database administrators and litigation support professionals. While dedicated software suites can perform this function with ease, such as within the IPRO suite/viewer, Concordance Imager or your production or processing application du jour, Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro also includes the ability to professionally redact portions of a PDF. While it could not replace the ease of use when redacting batches of documents within a full document review, the ability to quickly redact a portion of a PDF couldn’t be easier within Acrobat.
Understanding redaction, from both a technical and legal sense, is an important skill to hone. Essentially, redaction is the act of selectively removing visible information from an original version, and saving concealed portions based on a series of selective factors. Redactions are usually created by drawing boxes, bars or an image over portions of data, typically as a result of an issue of privilege, trade secret, relevance or confidentiality. It is an alteration of the presentation and depiction of data. These alterations, depending on your work environment and stage of production, can be removed by the specific application used to create the redaction, or “burned in” to an actual image. A classic example of redacted information can be found in many government provided documents that involve classified or sensitive information. Redactions can be symbolized in a variety of ways, from solid black lines to white boxes with x’s, or text that states “redacted.”
There are a variety of software applications which support redaction. Commonly, production utilities such as IPRO, LAW, TrialDirector and Sanction each support the redaction of information, albeit in their own specific ways. Redactions are often not only applied at the image level. Data is often stored within a database (i.e. in Concordance, a redlines.dcb) that tracks the redactions prior to them being “burned” or applied to a set of images to be produced. The database can often store the values and logic for the material to be redacted, such as the coordinates on a page or the selected color of the redacted marking itself.
In response to the growing needs of litigation professionals, and perhaps their desire to expand their offering to the legal community, Adobe Acrobat has included a redaction feature since version 8.0.
To access the Redaction toolbar, select View – Toolbars – Redaction.
How do you redact material within a PDF?
1. Open the PDF that includes the material to be redacted.
2. Navigate within the PDF to the specific page, portion or region to be redacted. You can move through the pages via the scroll bars on the right hand side or through Page Up & Page Down keys on your keyboard.
3. From the Redaction toolbar (via View – Toolbars – Redaction), left click and select Mark for Redaction.
4. You will notice that your mouse pointer is now a cross-hair. Draw a box, beginning from the upper left hand corner of the area to be redacted, across the portion of the information that you would like to redact. If this is your first time using the tool, or you’ve unchecked the “Don’t Show this Again,” you’ll notice that a pop-up dialog box appears. This is a prompt intended to remind and reinforce the concept that redactions need to be “applied” within the PDF in lieu of just saving the PDF as-is. This is the equivalent of “burning in” the redactions into the image. This is critical to do if you plan on transmitting the PDF to another party – if you haven’t “applied” the redactions, the receiving party could remove your redactions and view the content you’d intended to redact.
5. 
After you have drawn the rectangle/square/box around the area to be redacted, move the mouse away – doing so should then reveal the area that has been selected for redaction. When the mouse is not hovering over the area, the default view for redacted material is to turn that area solid black. To customize the redacted area, you can right click anywhere within the shape you’ve just drawn and can select “Properties” from the right click menu that appears. To delete the redaction, select “Delete” from the right click context menu.
There are a variety of options in the redaction dialog boxes, as well as within the right click context menu.
The three tabbed “Properties” dialog box enables the user to perform a variety of functions, not all of which are necessary for redaction itself but assist in customizing specific preferences should they be needed. The Appearance tab allows the user to select the redaction color, if any text should be applied over the redacted portion, alignment and coding sets. Next to the OK/Cancel buttons are two key checkboxes. 
“Locked” and “Make Properties Default” determine whether or not the settings that have been selected in the Properties panel are fixed or the default settings for every redaction made. In most instances, the manner in which redactions are performed within an organization are set standards, so after the settings have been configured many users select these options and rarely return.
In the second “General” tab, 
the user can select who was the author of the redaction and if a subject should be applied. This can be useful for large teams that need to track whether something was redacted as a measure of privilege, court order, confidentiality, trade secret etc. In the third “Review history” tab, 
the user can see which individuals have entered entered and/or changed comments within the redacted field. This can assist in team collaboration by labeling which individuals have reviewed/manipulated/redacted the actual data.
The “Search and Redact’ button on the Redaction toolbar assists the user in locating specific text that needs to be redacted within a searchable PDF (i.e. a Social Security number). Once all redacted material has been established and set, select “Apply Redactions” to burn the redactions onto the page. Once you press the “Save” button, you will be prompted to then save the newly redacted PDF as another file name. It is important to note that a best practice, and method of protection, is to redact on a COPY of the document, and not the only digital version of the file that you might have.
The full version of Acrobat 9 Pro retails for $449, and in many ways this is an essential tool for legal professionals. While it could not replace bulk document review applications with integrated redaction ability, for a quick, on the fly redaction of a contract, exhibit or document to be produced, Acrobat can make light work of the task.
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