For litigation and conveyancing
Exhibits, bundles and redaction that stay on your machine
Disclosure is the one job where uploading the file is the problem. A bundle going to the other side is privileged until the moment it is not, and a free web tool is a third party you did not brief, did not retain and cannot indemnify. Everything below runs inside the page already open in front of you.
The work that brings people here is nearly always the same afternoon: an exhibit bundle has to go out, one page in it names a person who is not party to the proceedings, and the file is 180 MB of scanned correspondence that the court’s filing portal will not take.
Three separate problems, and the usual answer to each is a website that wants the file first. That is the part worth stopping on. Handing a privileged document to an unknown third party to make it smaller is a disclosure you did not intend to make, and it is not cured by the site’s promise to delete it afterwards — you have no way to check that, and no contract with them if it turns out to be untrue.
These tools do the same jobs without that step existing. The page holds the file, does the work and hands it back. There is no size limit and no file count limit, because there is no server being paid for: a folder of four thousand scanned letters is the same job as one letter, only longer.
What to use
- Redact a PDFRemoves the text underneath, not just a black rectangle over it. A drawn box that leaves the words selectable has ended careers; this deletes the content and you can confirm it by searching the output.
- Bates numberingStamps a continuous reference across a bundle so every page can be cited in a witness statement and found again by opposing counsel.
- Assemble a bundleOrders exhibits into one file in the sequence the index promises, rather than eleven attachments the judge has to reconcile.
- Compare two draftsShows what moved between an engrossment and the version that came back, when the covering email says "minor amendments".
- Inspect and strip metadataA document carries its author, its revision history and sometimes the name of the firm that drafted it. Read what is in there before it leaves.
- Do it across a whole folderDisclosure arrives as a folder, not as one file. Point at the folder and run one operation over all of it.
What this will not do
Worth reading before you put a client’s file through it.
- — It is not legal advice and it does not know your jurisdiction’s rules on disclosure, retention or certification.
- — Redaction removes what you select. It cannot find what you did not — read the document, then check the output by searching it.
- — Nothing here signs anything with legal weight. The signature tool places a visible mark; it is not a qualified electronic signature.
- — No audit trail is kept, because nothing is stored. If your matter needs a chain of custody, that has to come from your practice management system.
Check it rather than trust it
Turn off your wifi and use any tool here. If the work still happens, the file is not going anywhere — that is a proof you can perform in three seconds, and it beats anything we could write. The longer version, with the protocol and the result, is on the proof page.
Everything here is free, MIT-licensed and has no account, quota or watermark. It is maintained by one person, unpaid. If it saves you an afternoon, you can support the work.