Check every document, and every summary or note made from one, against four questions: Was it obtained through a court process (discovery, subpoena, notice to produce, inspection)? Is it legally privileged or a settlement communication? Is it under a suppression or non-publication order? Does it contain other people's personal information? A yes to any of them means it does not go in without advice. Privacy settings, redaction or a public source do not by themselves give permission. In the NSW Supreme Court, SC Gen 23 paragraphs 9A and 9B set conditions on AI use of restricted material; this site's rule, that compelled material never goes into an AI tool, is stricter than that and is our policy. No tool may generate, alter or rephrase affidavit or witness evidence. Where permission is unresolved, do the task by hand.
You are about to inspect a received file or send one beyond the safety of your own computer.
An untouched original, a checked sending PDF and no accidental comments from Draft Tuesday.
A privacy and professional conduct lawyer advising litigants on documents.
When a legal letter arrives, do not open the attachment yet
Your nervous system may treat a lawyer’s letter as an immediate physical threat. Reading it in that state can make every sentence feel equally urgent and make it harder to understand what the letter actually requires.
If the letter has just arrived and your body is reacting, use the stabilisation sequence in The First 48 Hours before beginning this document-safety workflow.
Do not open the attachment merely to stop the uncertainty. When you are ready to handle it calmly:
- Save every attachment, unopened, into the correct matter and issue folder. Keep each received filename exactly as supplied.
- Print the covering email to PDF and save it in the same folder.
- Start the email PDF’s filename with
[EMAIL], followed by the email’s subject line. - Keep the original email in the mailbox. The PDF is a convenient working record, not a replacement for the original message.
Letter to Jordan Lee re Preservation and Inspection (819884581.1).pdf
You still do not need to read the entire letter yourself. If you use an AI chat that already has the matter’s context, give it a working copy and ask for a calm first-pass briefing.
Complete the permission check at the top of this page before uploading anything, then check the service’s privacy settings; settings alone are not permission. Use a redacted working copy where appropriate. An AI summary can omit or misread a deadline, so verify every urgent item against the original letter when you are calm—or ask a trusted person or lawyer to verify it.
“Not urgent” is a tool for calming your body, not a conclusion about the document. Nothing requires panic, but a court date, limitation period or short response deadline may still require prompt action. The first calm task is deadline triage; the full emotional and substantive reading can wait.
Work differently with yours and theirs
Clean only a sending copy of a document you created. Never clean, overwrite or resave a file you received from somebody else.
Metadata is information stored with a file rather than printed on the page. It may include an author or organisation name, title, dates, the person who last saved the document, software details, comments, tracked changes, hidden text or embedded material.
The examples in this guide use fictional names and case-file details. The document-safety method is the part to keep.
Cleaning a sending copy must never remove metadata or native files that an order, a disclosure direction or a discovery protocol requires you to produce; keep the original untouched and produce what is required. And if a received document turns out to contain the other side's advice or internal notes, stop reading, tell them, and get advice.
1. Clean your metadata
Keep your editable Word master and its numbered versions. When the document is finished, create a separate copy for sending. Cleaning can remove information permanently, so the sending copy is the only file you clean.
For Sending\261225 - Letter to Doyle Stroud re Site Inspection_v03.docx
- Finish the text in Word.
- Accept or reject tracked changes deliberately. Do not merely hide the markup.
- Delete comments that are not intended for the recipient.
- Save a separate copy in a For Sending folder.
- Inspect and clean that copy.
- Print or export the cleaned copy to PDF.
- Inspect the PDF before it leaves your control.