Draft for attorney review. Not yet in effect.
1. Overview
This Privacy Policy explains how Sidebar Legal, LLC ("Sidebar Legal," "we," "us," or "our") collects, uses and protects personal information through the Sidebar Legal website and platform (the "Platform").
We are a law firm. Beyond this policy, information about your legal matters is protected by our duty of confidentiality under the rules of professional conduct and, where it applies, attorney-client privilege. That duty applies from your first message, even if we don't end up representing you.
The short version: we use your information to check for conflicts, provide legal services and run the Platform. We don't sell it, we don't use it for advertising, and our AI providers may not use it to train their models.
2. Information we collect
Information you give us:
- Account details: your name, email address, organization, phone number and billing address.
- Conflict-check information: the names of the other people and businesses involved in your matter.
- Matter information: your messages with our intake assistant and attorneys, answers to intake questions, the matter profile, and documents you upload.
- Engagement records: when you accept our engagement letter, we record your typed signature, the version and a fingerprint of the exact text you accepted, the date and time, your IP address and your browser's description of itself (user agent).
- Payment information: payments are handled by Stripe. We receive and store a card label (such as the card brand and last four digits), payment amounts and status, and Stripe's reference numbers. We never receive or store full card numbers.
Information collected automatically:
- Sign-in cookies that keep you signed in. These are necessary for the Platform to work.
- Technical information our hosting and database providers record when you use the Platform, such as IP address, browser type, pages requested and error logs, used for security and to keep the service running.
- If you start typing a request on our website before signing in, your browser keeps that draft locally so it is waiting when you return. It isn't sent to us until you submit it.
We don't currently use advertising cookies, analytics trackers or social media pixels. If that changes, we'll update this policy first.
Information from others: the other side of a matter, or people you work with, may share information about you with us in the course of a matter.
3. How we use information
- To check for conflicts of interest before and during a representation.
- To provide legal services, including reviewing documents, preparing work product and communicating with you.
- To run the Platform: creating your account, signing you in, storing your documents and showing your matters.
- To place holds on and collect payments, and to keep billing records.
- To keep the Platform secure and to prevent fraud and misuse.
- To meet our legal and professional obligations, including record-keeping.
- To send you messages about your matters and your account. We'll only send marketing emails if you agree, and you can opt out at any time.
4. AI processing
We use AI models provided by Anthropic to help gather intake information, summarize your matter and prepare first-pass document reviews for your attorney. To do this, the relevant parts of your messages and documents are sent to Anthropic for processing.
Anthropic processes this information under commercial terms that do not permit it to use your information to train its models. [Confirm and describe the provider's current data retention period.]
An attorney reviews AI output before anything is delivered to you. We don't use AI to make decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects without human review.
6. How long we keep information
We keep client files, including documents, communications and billing records, for as long as the rules of professional conduct and other laws require after a matter ends ([X] years), and then securely delete or return them.
If you start an intake but don't submit it, we delete it, with its messages and uploaded files, 30 days after the last activity on it. We keep conflict-check information (the names you gave us), as the rules require, to identify future conflicts.
Engagement acceptance records and payment records are kept for as long as needed for legal, tax and professional purposes.
7. Security
We protect information with encryption in transit and at rest, access controls that limit each person to their own matters, private document storage with short-lived download links, and secure sign-in. Only you and our attorneys and staff can see a matter's contents.
No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a breach affecting your information, we'll notify you as the law and our professional obligations require.
8. Your choices and rights
You can ask us to access, correct, delete or provide a copy of your personal information by emailing [privacy@sidebarlegal.ai]. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under state privacy law, and we'll honor them as the law requires.
Some information can't be deleted on request. For example, we must keep client files and conflict-check records as the rules of professional conduct require, and we can't delete information about a matter while it is ongoing.
We'll verify your identity before acting on a request, and we won't treat you differently for making one.
9. Children
The Platform is for businesses and adults. It is not directed to children under 18, and we don't knowingly collect their personal information through it.
10. Where information is stored
We and our service providers store and process information in the United States. [Confirm the region of each provider.]
11. Changes to this policy
We'll update this policy when our practices change and change the effective date above. For material changes, we'll give notice through the Platform or by email before they take effect.
12. Contact
Questions or requests: [privacy@sidebarlegal.ai], or Sidebar Legal, LLC, [Office address].