REDACTED FOR PRIVILEGE
Lawyers use redaction as a technique to avoid producing privileged information to the other side during litigation.
Does that mean that anything containing information that needs redaction won’t get produced in discovery?
No it does not.
Only parts of documents that contain privileged information get withheld; that’s the whole point of using redaction as a technique.
People tend to get into trouble here when they assume that an attorney’s presence on a document and the presence of that lawyer’s legal advice shields the entire document.
How can you avoid this? Keep your communications pertaining to legal advice separate and distinct from other, unrelated, non-privileged information. If you’re consulting with an attorney that “wears multiple hats,” make it clear that the communication regards legal advice and the discussion with the attorney is within their legal capacity.
I often see attorneys that assume a document is privileged because an attorney is present giving advice or answering questions, but they’re not legal in nature. Many lawyers provide advice relating to business, finance, sales, etc. And the fact that they’re licensed to practice law doesn’t morph those correspondences into legal advice.