Privacy Policy
Last updated: June 6, 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.
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.
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 Pro 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.
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 data: Retained while your account is active and for a reasonable period thereafter.
- 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.
- Analytics data:Subject to each analytics provider's retention policies.
- Payment records: Retained as required by tax and accounting obligations.
- 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. If an uploaded decision is incorporated into minicounsel, the public decision text and related case metadata are not removed solely because the uploader later requests deletion.
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 your personal information;
- File a complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada if you believe your privacy rights have been violated.
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, we will take steps to delete it promptly.
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