Privacy Policy
Last updated: October 2, 2026
1. Introduction
minicounsel inc. (“minicounsel,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) operates minicounsel.ca (the “Service”), an Ontario case law research platform. This Privacy Policy describes what personal information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices available to you.
By using the Service, you consent to the collection and use of your information as described in this policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.
2. Information We Collect
Account information
When you create an account using Google, LinkedIn, email, or enterprise single sign-on, we receive your name, email address, and profile photo (if provided by the identity provider).
Profile information
During onboarding, we collect your professional role (e.g., lawyer, paralegal, law student), areas of law of interest, and subscription tier preference.
Payment information
Payments are processed by a third-party payment processor. We do not receive or store your payment card number. We store a payment processor identifier and your subscription status to manage your account.
Search queries
When you search the Service, we log the search terms you enter, the number of results returned, and the time the query took to execute. For authenticated and unauthenticated searches, including searches made through connected AI tools, we may also log the IP address associated with the request for security, abuse prevention, rate limiting, and fraud detection.
Usage data
We collect information about how you use the Service, including pages visited, features used, bookmarks saved, judges and lawyers followed, and keyword alerts configured.
Connected AI hosts and private files
When you link minicounsel to an AI host, including ChatGPT or Codex, OAuth links that connection to your account, requested resource and authorized scopes. The connected host can send research queries and read or change research preferences. We return research results, functional identifiers, account-access messages and, where authorized, private-file text, page markers, captions and figure links. This material is sent to the connected host and is subject to that host's handling and retention policies.
Eligible Pro and Max accounts can access their own private document library. A case-law search may automatically retrieve files relevant to its query; ambiguous matches require a choice. We store uploaded files, extracted page text, figures, captions, processing metadata and search embeddings. Document processing uses OpenAI for text conversion and Voyage AI for embeddings. Queries are sent to search providers as needed. File matching uses the linked owner's library and relevance evidence.
MCP query logs store research queries, returned record identifiers and summaries, account identity, client and protocol information, IP and security metadata, timings and outcomes. Private document bodies returned in separate file-text blocks are not archived in these query logs; the documents and extracted text remain stored in your private library. A short-lived read ledger tracks delivered file parts and choices to avoid repeated delivery.
Our activity records keep file names, page and figure counts, AI questions, and project and note titles, so we can support you and see how these features are used. File text, note text and AI answers are not copied into them.
Lawyer verification data
If you are a lawyer claiming your profile, we collect your Law Society of Ontario (LSO) email address or LSO number to verify your identity. Once verified, we store the association between your account and the lawyer profile.
Public legal records
The Service collects and publishes lawfully available decisions and related information from courts, tribunals, legal databases, and other public legal sources. These records may contain names and other personal information about parties, witnesses, lawyers, and other people involved in a proceeding. This information is obtained independently from public legal sources; it is not information that minicounsel collects from the person merely because they are named in a decision.
Decision text, case titles, and accurate case-derived metadata may be searchable on minicounsel and discoverable through external search engines.
File uploads
You may upload case-law PDFs through the case law upload flow, and you may upload profile photographs through profile-related features. Uploaded files are stored by our file hosting provider.
If you upload a case-law PDF, we collect and store the uploaded file and related metadata, including file name, file size, storage key or URL, upload time, uploader account ID, any associated claimed lawyer profile ID, affirmation status, review status, and ingestion metadata. Uploaded decisions may contain personal information that appears in public court records.
Voice and audio data
If you use the voice AI assistant (a paid feature), your voice input is transmitted in real time to a third-party AI provider for processing. minicounsel does not store recordings of your voice interactions.
Device and technical data
We automatically collect technical information such as your browser type, operating system, screen resolution, referring URL, and IP address. We use this technical data to operate the Service, protect accounts, prevent abuse of free usage limits, enforce rate limits, and detect fraud.
We also create a device fingerprint in your browser to recognize an anonymous browser after a cookie is cleared. We send the fingerprint to our server and store only a versioned HMAC-SHA256 digest. We do not store the raw fingerprint or its browser components. We use this digest only to recover an exact, unlinked anonymous identity. We do not use it to join two accounts or to attach activity to an account.
Communication data
We send you emails related to your account (e.g., welcome messages, verification emails, subscription updates). We may track whether these emails are opened or links within them are clicked.
4. How We Use Your Information
We use the information we collect to:
- Provide, maintain, and improve the Service;
- Process payments and manage your subscription;
- Send transactional emails, including welcome messages, verification emails, and subscription updates;
- Personalize your experience, such as keyword alerts and followed judges or lawyers;
- Analyze usage patterns to improve the product and develop new features;
- Review, verify, deduplicate, extract text and metadata from, index, summarize, generate audio for, and add uploaded case-law PDFs to the case law database;
- Prevent abuse, enforce rate limits, and detect fraud;
- Respond to support inquiries;
- Comply with legal obligations.
6. Data Retention
- Account and private Service data: Retained while your account is active and for a reasonable period thereafter. You may ask us to delete personal information associated with your account and private use of the Service, subject to legal, security, fraud-prevention, backup, accounting, and other legitimate retention requirements.
- Search logs: Retained indefinitely for service improvement and abuse prevention. IP addresses and related security metadata in search, MCP, and technical logs may be retained long-term for abuse prevention, rate-limit enforcement, and fraud review.
- First-party analytics data: Anonymous visitor journeys, device fingerprint digests, account links, named product events, attribution, and full search text are retained indefinitely for product analysis, service improvement, and abuse prevention. Secondary analytics data is also subject to each provider's retention policy.
- Payment records: Retained as required by tax and accounting obligations.
- Private files and connections: Library files and extracted content are retained until deleted through the library or otherwise removed under our account-data processes. File deletion removes stored files and their derived document records, subject to backup and other legitimate retention requirements. Disconnecting an AI host does not itself delete library files, query logs or material already returned to that host. Figure links expire after one hour and may remain usable until expiry, including after disconnection. The file read ledger expires after six hours. MCP operational event logs rotate daily with up to 30 rotated files; edge logs rotate under size and seven-day age limits. These rotations do not delete the database search logs, which retain the existing indefinite retention described above.
- Case-law uploads: Source files, upload metadata, uploader identity records, affirmation records, and review or ingestion records may be retained as needed to operate, verify, audit, and maintain the case law database.
- Published legal records: Lawfully publishable court and tribunal decisions, case titles, and accurate case-derived metadata are retained as public legal content. They are not removed, redacted, anonymized, or blocked from external search-engine indexing solely because an uploader or person named in a record later requests deletion, objects to being identified, or closes a minicounsel account.
Inquiries about data retention may be directed to a@minicounsel.ca.
7. Data Security
We implement reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your personal information, including encryption in transit (TLS), access controls, and secure infrastructure.
No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. While we strive to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security.
8. International Data Transfers
Your information may be processed and stored in the United States and Canada. By using the Service, you consent to the transfer of your information to these countries, which may have different data protection laws than your country of residence.
9. Your Rights
Under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and applicable privacy laws, you have the right to:
- Access the personal information we hold about you;
- Correct inaccurate or incomplete personal information;
- Withdraw consent to the collection, use, or disclosure of your personal information, subject to legal or contractual restrictions;
- Request deletion of personal information associated with your account and private use of the Service that we no longer need, subject to legal and operational retention requirements;
- File a complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada if you believe your privacy rights have been violated.
These account and privacy rights do not entitle a person to the removal, redaction, anonymization, or external-search de-indexing of a lawfully published court or tribunal decision, its case title, or accurate case-derived references merely because the person is named in the record. Closing an account or withdrawing consent for account-related processing does not affect public legal records that minicounsel obtained independently from public sources.
Reports concerning a binding publication restriction, an official corrected or anonymized decision, mistaken identity, a mismatch with the official source, or an error introduced by minicounsel may be sent to a@minicounsel.ca. Requests to change the contents of an official decision should be directed to the court or tribunal that issued it.
For privacy inquiries: a@minicounsel.ca
10. Children's Privacy
The Service is intended for users who are 18 years of age or older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If we become aware that we have collected personal information from a person under 18 as a user of the Service, we will take steps to delete it promptly. This commitment concerns information collected from an underage user; it does not require removal of personal information that appears in a lawfully published court or tribunal decision.
11. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you by email or by posting a notice on the Service before the changes take effect. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page indicates when the policy was last revised.
12. Contact
minicounsel inc.
1309 Coffeen Avenue, 1200
Sheridan, WY 82801
a@minicounsel.ca