Remember, a bottle of white out should be used to correct documentation, not to alter or destroy evidence. Destroying evidence would be a violation of your ethical duties as an attorney. On the other hand, correcting documentation before presenting it to the court is your ethical duty. You are always supposed to ensure that evidence that could be put before the court is genuine and that documents contain the correct facts.
You may feel a little awkward the first time that you have to correct all the dates on invoices for a specific chemical to show they were bought between three days earlier, and twelve years, three months, and two days earlier than the original documentation shows. It may also be a little suspicious that the chemical was banned by the EPA twelve years, three months, and 1 day before the date on the latest of the original invoices. But, in the end, it's best to think of the situation this way: what are the odds that a chemical company your firm has been advising for the last twelve years and three months, would just now realize that they were importing something that had been illegal to import for all that time.
It is especially unlikely that they would do so when your firm has a copy of a letter from the company specifically asking about a new regulation of that particular chemical and one of the firm's most prominent partners (who has been there for 13 years) has initialed the letter to indicate that he called the client twelve years, two months, and twenty-eight days ago to resolve the question.
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