Legal

Redaction review for case files, discovery, and evidence.

Prepare filings, productions, and exhibits with a reviewer-controlled workflow that spans scanned bundles, office files, and recorded statements, and keeps the reasoning behind each document mark visible.

Request a DemoExplore document redaction
Legal recordsReviewer-led

  • Personal identifiers

  • Privileged material

  • Third-party information

  • Recorded evidence

FormatsDocuments (primary format)Audio

Who this is for

Legal teams redact under two pressures at once: withholding what is privileged or protected, while producing everything the other side, the court, or the public is entitled to see. Over-redaction invites challenge; under-redaction cannot be undone once a production is served.

  • Litigation support and e-disclosure teams
  • Paralegals preparing filings, bundles, and exhibits
  • In-house counsel responding to disclosure obligations
  • Court and tribunal staff publishing judgments or records

Sensitive information

  • Personal identifiers

    Names of minors and witnesses, dates of birth, home addresses, identity and account numbers.

  • Privileged material

    Legal advice, correspondence with counsel, and internal case strategy inside otherwise disclosable files.

  • Third-party information

    Details about people who are not parties to the matter but appear in emails, statements, or exhibits.

  • Recorded evidence

    Spoken names, addresses, and account details in interview recordings, voicemail, and recorded calls.

Practical challenges

  1. 01

    Privilege depends on context

    A detector can recognise a pattern such as a name or a number. It cannot decide whether a paragraph is legal advice. That call stays with a reviewer, and the reason for it should stay attached to the mark.

  2. 02

    Productions mix formats

    A single disclosure set can hold scanned bundles, native office files, voicemail, and recorded interviews. Moving each format through a different tool fragments the review record.

  3. 03

    Visible masking is not removal

    A black box drawn over a page can leave the underlying text selectable or searchable. The file that leaves the firm has to be checked as a file, not judged by how the screen looked.

  4. 04

    Redactions get challenged

    When the other side disputes what was withheld, the team needs to show what was marked and why, item by item, long after the production was prepared.

Relevant workflows

Each workflow lists the capabilities that apply, with the conditions that affect them in practice.

Documents (primary format)

Pleadings, bundles, and discovery sets

Open PDFs directly and convert supported office files for review. Run OCR on image-only pages, assess candidate findings, add text or area marks for privileged passages, and record a reason against each decision before rendering the production copy.

Supported capabilities

  • Open PDFs, images, and supported office formats for review.Non-PDF formats are converted at import; some formats require LibreOffice.
  • Run OCR on scans and image-based pages when OCR tooling is configured.Recognition quality depends on the source and installed OCR tooling.
  • Surface candidate sensitive information for reviewer assessment.Available categories and engines depend on local model or optional job configuration.
  • Add text and area redactions directly on a document page.
  • Review, edit, approve, reject, and record reasons for redaction marks.
  • Re-open and inspect supported document output before it is used.Output checking supports review; it is not a guarantee that every sensitive item was found.
  • Create a report describing reviewed redaction actions.
Document redaction workflow
OpenRedakt workspace panel listing a project's files with their preparation status, and the action to add files. File and project names are blurred.
Audio

Recorded statements and calls

Mark the spans where a witness names a third party or reads out an identifier, choose a supported effect such as mute or tone, and listen back before the recording is exported for service.

Supported capabilities

  • Draw, adjust, and review manual redaction ranges on an audio timeline.
  • Apply supported effects including mute, tone, silence, and noise masks.Effect availability and output formats depend on configured media tooling.
  • Preview supported audio effects before export.Preview depends on a decodable source and configured media tooling.
  • Render reviewed audio ranges to a supported output format and inspect the result.Export requires configured media tooling and representative output review.
Audio redaction workflow
The OpenRedakt audio workspace: masking effects and range controls beside a recording's waveform and transport controls

Capability boundaries

  • OpenRedakt records review decisions and reasons for document marks. It does not determine whether material is privileged or whether a redaction is legally sufficient.
  • Rules on what must be removed from court filings differ by court and jurisdiction. Confirm the applicable rules with counsel before production.
  • Audio redaction is manual-first: reviewers mark each span on the timeline and listen to the rendered recording before it is served.
  • Inspect the rendered production files, not only the working project, before they are served or filed.

Continue exploring

Feature workflows

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Frequently asked questions

Legal redaction questions

Answers reflect the current product boundary, including the configuration and review conditions that matter in practice.

Legal Redaction Software for Case Files & Evidence | OpenRedakt