In a Formal Opinion issued by the Standing Committee on Ethics and Responsibility, the ABA indicates that Rule of Professional Conduct 4.4(b) does not require an attorney to return metadata or other embedded information within electronic documents, even where such transmission could be considered “inadvertent”. The opinion assumes that the receiving lawyer acted lawfully and ethically in obtaining the electronic documents, and advises that attorneys concerned about providing metadata might be able to “scrub” the document or provide an alternative version, so long as the attorneys are dealing with their own work product and not documents being produced by clients which have evidentiary value. See ABA Formal Opinion 06-442 (Aug. 5, 2006).