Did you know that electronic documents are often embedded with hiddent text that reveals information regarding authors, edits, text changes, and more? The information is called "metadata" and it has become the source of delight and disgust for many attorneys. This article first appeared in WI State Bar Section of Law Practice's Law Practice News, Summer 2004.

Catherine Sanders Reach, MLIS

There is data lurking in your data. Some people call it "invisible ink". Microsoft refers to it as "metadata". Either way, the reference is to information in an electronic document that is not always visible. Metadata, or "information about information", does serve a purpose. Metadata helps users save and retrieve documents more readily, by capturing information such as author, editor, "date created" and "date revised" in the hidden part of the document. However, other information about the document is also captured, such as additions, deletions, revisions, versions, comments, and other information about the document that an attorney may not want to share with others. Some cases to illustrate the point:

October 2000: The Wall Street Journal reports that a candidate running for the U.S. Senate began receiving anonymous emails containing messages written in MS Word criticizing and attacking the candidate. A savvy aide looked at the document properties and discovered they were authored by the chief-of-staff of the opposing party.

February 2003: A dossier on Iraq’s security and intelligence organizations, cited by Colin Powell and published by 10 Downing Street, is discovered to have been plagiarized from a U.S. researcher on Iraq. Since the dossier was published on their website in MS Word format, researchers also discovered the four people in the British government who edited the document. They were subsequently called to Parliament for a hearing.

March 2004: SCO Group, seller of UNIX and Linux, sent out a warning letter to 1,500 of the world’s largest companies threatening legal liability for using Linux if they failed to obtain a license from the Utah-based company. After filing suit against Daimler-Chrysler, metadata in a MS Word document revealed that the SCO’s attorneys had originally identified Bank of America as the defendant.

These are but a few of the highly publicized cases of how metadata inside electronic documents can have deleterious effects. Fortunately for attorneys, there are quite a few ways to get rid of this hidden information.

Microsoft is fully aware of the metadata within its popular Office applications. A simple search of the Microsoft website reveal numerous documents that provide step-by-step instructions to get rid of some of the most obvious metadata. In addition to adding features within the software to reduce and remove metadata, the company has published an add-on for Microsoft Word 2003/XP to strip the metadata.

Another solution to get rid of metadata is to convert the document to .PDF (Portable Document Format). This is an especially good solution if the document does not require editing by the recipient, or is to be posted on the firm’s website. Converting documents to .PDF has become a snap. In addition to Adobe Acrobat, free sites such as GoBCL will allow visitors to upload documents and receive the document via email in .PDF. The freely available OpenOffice will also convert a document to .PDF. Conversions using Adobe Acrobat may still carry some metadata. Make sure to check the conversion settings and properties of the new document, scrubbing any existing information.

Fee-based products can be installed at the server level, and work with a firm’s document management solution. Two products that have received accolades are Payne Consulting Group’s Metadata Assistant and Workshare’s Metawall. These products will strip MS Word and Excel metadata, as well as work within MS Outlook to strip attachments. Neither product is inexpensive, but having sensitive proprietary information revealed to clients or opposing counsel is a potentially embarrassing and expensive proposition within itself.

Metadata, or "invisible ink", should be eradicated from any documents before being sent out from the firm. Bob Blacksberg’s article in Woody’s Office Watch suggests that every time a document is to be sent outside the firm it is being "published". Just as no author would send a marked up, scribbled on document for publication, attorneys should "clean up" electronic documents before sending them to the world.

Catherine Sanders Reach is the Associate Director of the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center. She can be reached at sandersc@staff.abanet.org

* Mention of a company, product, or service does not indicate endorsement or support by the American Bar Association or the authors.