User Agreement

This is an early version, and we will expand it as the service grows.

This agreement is about how you use Empath Legal and what we ask of you when the service researches people on your behalf. The Terms of Service cover the commercial side — your account, credits and payment. This one covers conduct, and it exists because of who the research is about.

Why this document exists

The people the service researches are not our customers. They did not sign up, they did not agree to anything, and most of them will never know we looked. We think that obliges both of us to be careful, so the conditions below are part of being allowed to use the service.

Use it for your matters

Research the people connected to a case you are actually working on. Do not use the service to look up anyone else — not acquaintances, not opposing parties outside a matter, not out of curiosity. If a person has no connection to a case in front of you, they are not a subject for this service.

What we ask of you

• Follow the rules that apply to you. Courts and professional bodies set rules about researching and contacting jurors, and those rules differ between places and change over time. Knowing and following the ones that bind you is your responsibility. We do not advise on them, and nothing the service does should be read as telling you a thing is permitted.
• Do not use the service to reach anyone. Do not contact, approach, follow, or attempt to interact with a person because of what you found here, and do not use it to intimidate or harass anyone.
• Do not use it to discriminate unlawfully. The service is built to help you understand a panel, not to select against people on grounds the law forbids.
• Keep the results inside your case team. Treat what the service produces as confidential material about identifiable people. Once you export something, what happens to it is on you.
• Keep your account to yourself. Do not share your sign-in details or let someone else work under your account.

Treat the research as a starting point

What the service produces is assembled from background-check and public-records providers and from publicly available sources, which may include images, and parts of the analysis are produced by automated systems. That means it can be incomplete, out of date, or about a different person with a similar name.

Verify anything before you act on it, and never treat a result as a finding about a person. The service does not decide who to strike, and it is not a substitute for your own judgement or for asking the question in the room.

If someone asks about their information

Anyone who believes we hold information about them can write to us at [email protected], whether or not they are a customer. If such a request reaches you about research you ran, tell us.

If this is broken

We may suspend or end access where the service is used in a way this agreement does not allow. Some of the conditions above exist to protect people who cannot protect themselves from us, and we take them seriously.

Questions

Write to us at [email protected].