BASALT · JOURNAL
How to redact exhibits before filing them
Exhibits are where careful pleadings acquire careless disclosures. They arrive from banks, clients, hospitals, email exports, and old scans, then get assembled under deadline. The safest method is to treat each exhibit as evidence with its own inventory, not as pages appended to the main filing.
Make an exhibit inventory first
List the proposed exhibit number, source filename, page count, confidentiality status, and identifiers expected in it. Add a column for the controlling reason for each redaction. This catches two common production failures: an exhibit omitted from review and a redaction nobody can later explain.
Work on copies. Keep received originals unchanged and access-controlled. Give each working copy a stable name before you add exhibit labels or Bates numbers, because renaming files midway makes review records hard to reconcile.
Search values, then review page furniture
For every person or account in the matter, search spelling variants, initials, date formats, shortened numbers, email addresses, and phone-number formats. Then examine running headers, footers, fax strips, endorsement stamps, and repeated account blocks. Those areas are visually predictable and easy to stop seeing after a few pages.
Scanned exhibits need OCR for search, but OCR does not replace page review. Handwriting, faint dot-matrix print, skewed pages, and text inside photographs may not be recognized. A scanned driver's license or check also contains portraits, signatures, barcodes, and machine-readable zones that require image redaction.
Apply redaction before numbering
The clean order is usually: inspect, OCR if needed, mark and apply redactions, verify, then add exhibit labels or Bates numbers. Numbering first can put new text under a later redaction or force you to redo numbering when a page is removed. Flatten forms and resolve comments before release, but remember that flattening is not redaction; stored field values must be removed too.
Review the assembled filing
Verification happens twice: once on each exhibit and once after assembly. Combining PDFs can reintroduce bookmarks, filenames, attachments, or metadata. Open the exact combined file intended for upload, search the complete identifier list, inspect every mark, and confirm the page count and exhibit sequence.
See redacting personal identifiers from a court filing for the package-level review and how to verify a PDF redaction for independent checks.
Frequently asked questions
Should I redact an exhibit before or after combining it with the filing?
Redact and verify each exhibit first, then combine the package and verify the combined output again. This makes errors easier to locate while still catching anything introduced during assembly.
Can OCR find every identifier in a scanned exhibit?
No. OCR is a useful search aid, but handwriting, degraded text, barcodes, and text inside complex images can be missed. Every scanned page still needs visual review.
Should Bates numbers be added before redaction?
Usually no. Apply and verify redactions first, then add final numbering so deleted or replaced pages do not create gaps and new stamps cannot sit under redaction marks.
Doing it in Basalt
Basalt can OCR scans, search across an exhibit, remove text and image pixels, sanitize hidden data, and verify the written result before it is saved. The same workflow can then combine files and apply continuous Bates numbers with a manifest. Processing happens locally in a no-network engine. Download it from basaltformac.com.
Redaction that proves itself
Basalt destroys the content you mark, then re-opens the file it wrote and proves the content is gone before it saves anything. Your documents never leave your Mac.