It's 4pm. Opposing counsel needs a signed retainer, a redacted witness statement, and a bundled discovery pack — all as PDFs, all before close of business. You don't have time to wrestle with a desktop suite that wants a licence renewal.
This is the toolkit that actually gets a legal practice through the day. No bloat, no upload-to-someone-else's-server roulette, no per-seat pricing that punishes growth.
Redaction that actually redacts
The single most expensive mistake in legal PDF work is fake redaction — black rectangles drawn on top of text that anyone can copy out underneath. Real redaction removes the underlying text and image data so it never reaches the recipient. Flint's redact PDF tool burns redactions into the file, not on top of it. For witness statements, affidavits, and disclosure, that distinction is the difference between a clean filing and a regulatory headache.
Signing retainers and engagement letters
Print, sign, scan, send is dead. Clients expect to sign on a phone in two taps. Send for signature lets you upload a retainer, drop name and date fields where they go, and email the link. The audit trail — who signed, when, from what IP — is captured for you. For internal sign-off on memos or court papers, the same flow handles initials, dates, and multiple signers in any order.
Bundling — the unglamorous backbone
Trial bundles, hearing bundles, discovery packs. They all live or die by ordering. Merge PDF handles the join, and reorder PDF pages lets you drag thumbnails until the index makes sense. Skip the temptation to do this in Word — pagination drifts, fonts substitute, and you'll lose half a day to formatting. PDF in, PDF out, pages exactly where you put them.
Sealing it up
Confidential drafts going to leading counsel? Password protect the file before it leaves your machine. Sharing a recorded transcript that mustn't be edited? Flatten annotations so comments can't be removed. None of this replaces a proper DMS, but it stops the obvious leaks — a junior associate forwarding a draft, a client emailing a settlement figure to the wrong address.
Where Flint fits in the firm
Flint isn't trying to be your case management system. It's the layer that sits between drafting (Word, your DMS) and delivery (court portals, email, client extranets). Use it for the awkward middle bit — the redacting, signing, merging, compressing — without leasing yet another enterprise tool. Most lawyers we hear from open Flint a dozen times a day for thirty-second jobs.
FAQ
Is Flint suitable for confidential client material?
Files are processed for the duration of your task and not retained for training. For especially sensitive matters, you can password-protect outputs before sharing and redact in-browser so the unredacted file never leaves your machine.
Can I Bates-stamp a bundle in Flint?
Yes — you can apply numbered stamps to every page of a bundle. Most firms use this for discovery, exhibit packs, and trial bundles where every page needs a unique reference.
Does Flint replace DocuSign for legal signatures?
For straightforward retainers, NDAs, and engagement letters, the built-in sign PDF flow handles audit trails and multiple signers. For enterprise-level workflows with templates and bulk send, dedicated platforms still have an edge.
Can I redact metadata, not just visible text?
When you flatten a redacted PDF, the underlying text layer is removed for the redacted regions. For more comprehensive metadata stripping, export to a clean PDF and re-import — Flint will not carry author tags across.
Most legal PDF work is small jobs done a hundred times a week. The win isn't a better master tool — it's a faster path through the dozen tiny tasks between drafting and filing. Open Flint, pin it in your bookmarks bar, and you'll feel the change inside a fortnight.