Terms of Use

1. Agreement to Terms

By accessing or using minicounsel.ca (the “Service”), operated by minicounsel inc. (“minicounsel,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Use (“Terms”). If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

You must be at least 18 years of age to use the Service. By using the Service, you represent and warrant that you are at least 18 years old.

2. Description of Service

minicounsel is an Ontario case law research platform that provides searchable access to publicly available Canadian court decisions, along with judge and lawyer profiles and analytics.

The Service is offered in the following tiers:

• Free: Search and browse court decisions, judge profiles, and lawyer profiles at no cost.
• Plus: All free features plus AI-assisted search, audio case summaries, full-decision audio, and voice AI assistant. Case projects are not included in Plus at this time.
• Pro: All Plus features, plus case projects (10 projects, 100 documents/notes, 20 project AI searches per 30 days) and the ability to research your projects, documents and notes in ChatGPT/Claude.
• Max: All Pro features with the highest case-project limits (200 projects, 2,000 documents/notes, 200 project AI searches per 30 days).
• Firm: Paid organization access for multiple users with unlimited seats and centralized billing. Firm Plus includes all Plus features (no case projects). Firm Pro and Firm Max add case projects as a single shared allowance pooled across the whole firm: Firm Pro = 100 projects, 1,000 documents/notes, 100 project AI searches per 30 days; Firm Max = 1,000 projects, 10,000 documents/notes, 500 project AI searches per 30 days.

3. Account Registration

To access certain features, you must create an account using Google, LinkedIn, email, or enterprise single sign-on. You agree to:

• Provide accurate and complete information;
• Maintain only one account per person;
• Keep your login credentials secure and not share them with others;
• Notify us immediately at a@minicounsel.ca if you suspect unauthorized access to your account.

You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account.

4. Subscriptions & Billing

Paid subscriptions are billed in Canadian Dollars (CAD) at the following rates:

• Plus: $99 CAD per month, or $999 CAD per year.
• Pro: $199 CAD per month, or $1,999 CAD per year.
• Max: $299 CAD per month, or $2,999 CAD per year.
• Firm: $999 CAD per month, or $9,999 CAD per year.

Plus subscriptions include a 7-day free trial. You will not be charged until the trial period ends. You may cancel at any time during the trial to avoid being charged. Pro and Max subscriptions begin and are charged immediately (no trial).

Subscriptions automatically renew at the end of each billing period unless cancelled before the renewal date. You may cancel your subscription at any time, but all sales are final and no refunds or pro-rated credits will be issued for the current billing period.

Payments are processed by a third-party payment processor. minicounsel does not store your payment card information.

We reserve the right to change subscription prices with at least 30 days' notice. Price changes will take effect at the start of your next billing period following the notice.

5. Free Tier

The free tier is available without payment or a subscription. minicounsel reserves the right to modify, limit, or discontinue free features at any time without notice.

6. AI Features

Paid subscribers (Plus, Pro, Max, and Firm) have access to AI-powered features including AI-assisted search, a voice AI assistant, and audio case summaries generated by text-to-speech technology. These features are provided as tools to assist your legal research.

AI outputs may contain errors, omissions, or inaccuracies. AI-generated content, including search results, summaries, and voice responses, is produced by third-party language models and text-to-speech services. minicounsel does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any AI-generated output.

You are solely responsible for independently verifying all AI-generated content before relying on it for any purpose, including legal research, advice, or proceedings.

7. No Legal Advice

minicounsel is a research tool, not a law firm, and does not provide legal advice. Nothing on the Service—including case summaries, AI-generated content, judge or lawyer analytics, or any other information—constitutes legal advice or creates an attorney-client relationship.

You should consult a qualified lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction before making any legal decisions based on information found through the Service.

8. Acceptable Use

You agree not to:

• Scrape, crawl, or use automated means to access the Service, except through our authorized MCP integration;
• Redistribute, republish, or resell bulk data obtained from the Service;
• Upload, submit, or otherwise provide sealed cases, cases subject to publication bans or restricted access orders, confidential client documents, altered court decisions, malware, or any document you do not have the lawful right to provide;
• Circumvent rate limits, access controls, or security measures;
• Impersonate another person or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity;
• Use the Service for any purpose that is unlawful or prohibited by these Terms;
• Interfere with or disrupt the Service or the servers and networks connected to the Service;
• Attempt to gain unauthorized access to any part of the Service, other accounts, or computer systems.

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate your access for any violation of these restrictions.

9. Intellectual Property

Court decisions published on the Service are public records or otherwise lawfully publishable court records under the open court principle and Crown copyright provisions. minicounsel claims no ownership over the text of court decisions themselves, including court decision text submitted through case-law uploads.

However, minicounsel's compilation, organization, indexing, summaries, analytics, AI-generated content, user interface, design, code, and branding are the proprietary property of minicounsel inc. and are protected by intellectual property laws.

Subject to your compliance with these Terms, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access and use the Service for your personal or professional legal research purposes. This licence does not include the right to reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from our proprietary content.

10. User Content and Case Law Uploads

You may submit content to the Service, including lawyer profile claims, profile photographs, uploaded documents, and PDF copies of legitimate court decisions that are not yet available on minicounsel (“User Content”). You retain any rights you have in your User Content, but by submitting it you grant minicounsel a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to use, store, display, reproduce, and distribute your User Content in connection with operating the Service.

You represent and warrant that you have the right to submit any User Content and that it does not infringe the rights of any third party. minicounsel may remove any User Content at its sole discretion.

By uploading a case decision, you affirm that the file is a genuine court decision, has not been tampered with, is not subject to a sealing order, publication ban, restricted access order, confidentiality obligation, or other restriction that would prohibit publication or indexing, and that you have the lawful right to provide it to us.

minicounsel may review, verify, store, extract text and metadata from, transform, index, summarize, display, reproduce, distribute, and otherwise use uploaded case decisions in connection with operating and improving the Service, including adding them to the searchable case law database. We may decline, remove, or delay any upload at our discretion. Recent decisions from the courts we currently support are typically processed and published much more frequently. Other accepted uploads—such as older decisions or decisions from courts we do not yet fully support—are often processed and released in periodic batches, so they may not appear in the public database for some time.

11. Public Court and Tribunal Records

minicounsel publishes Canadian court and tribunal decisions that are public records or otherwise lawfully publishable. They are presented under the open court principle, which supports public access to and reporting on judicial proceedings. The Supreme Court of Canada has recognized a strong presumption of openness and explained that ordinary inconvenience or embarrassment is generally not enough to overcome it. See Sherman Estate v. Donovan, 2021 SCC 25, and the Department of Justice Canada's overview of victim privacy and the open court principle.

• Legal publication restrictions: minicounsel does not knowingly publish information contrary to a sealing order, publication ban, anonymization requirement, restricted-access order, statute, or other binding legal restriction. Where a decision may lawfully be published in anonymized or redacted form, minicounsel may publish that permitted version.
• Anonymized decisions: Where a court has anonymized a decision, minicounsel presents it in its anonymized form. We do not reverse or circumvent court-ordered anonymization.
• Searchability and discoverability: Decision text, case titles, names, and accurate case-derived metadata may be searchable on minicounsel and discoverable through external search engines.
• No takedown or de-indexing on request: minicounsel does not remove, redact, or anonymize a lawfully published decision or accurate case-derived reference, or block its indexing by external search engines, solely because a person named in it asks us to do so. Privacy, embarrassment, reputational, employment, or other personal concerns arising from lawful publication do not, by themselves, create an entitlement to removal or de-indexing.
• Account data is separate: Closing a minicounsel account, withdrawing consent for account-related processing, or requesting deletion of account data does not affect public legal records that minicounsel obtained independently from public sources.
• Limited reports: Reports concerning a binding court or tribunal order or statutory restriction, an official corrected, replaced, withdrawn, or anonymized decision, mistaken identity or a mismatch with the official source, or an error introduced by minicounsel in its summaries or metadata may be sent to a@minicounsel.ca. Requests to change the contents of an official decision must be directed to the court or tribunal that issued it.

If minicounsel makes a correction required by law or to match an official source, copies previously stored by external search engines may remain in their caches temporarily. Those caches are controlled by the external search engines, not minicounsel.

12. Third-Party Services

The Service may contain links to third-party websites, including court websites, CanLII, and the Law Society of Ontario. minicounsel is not responsible for the content, accuracy, or practices of any third-party website. Your use of third-party services is at your own risk and subject to their respective terms.

13. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, minicounsel and its officers, directors, employees, and agents shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or any loss of profits, data, or goodwill, arising out of or in connection with your use of or inability to use the Service.

In no event shall minicounsel's total aggregate liability exceed the amounts you have paid to minicounsel in the twelve (12) months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim. If you have not paid any fees, our liability shall not exceed fifty Canadian Dollars ($50 CAD).

14. Disclaimer of Warranties

The Service is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis, without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory. minicounsel disclaims all warranties, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free, or that any content—including court decisions, case summaries, or AI-generated output—is accurate, complete, or current.

15. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless minicounsel and its officers, directors, employees, and agents from and against any and all claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or in connection with: (a) your use of the Service; (b) your violation of these Terms; (c) your User Content; or (d) your violation of any rights of a third party.

16. Termination

minicounsel may suspend or terminate your access to the Service at any time, with or without cause, and with or without notice, if we believe you have violated these Terms or for any other reason at our sole discretion.

You may close your account at any time by emailing a@minicounsel.ca.

Upon termination, your right to use the Service will immediately cease. Sections 6 through 10, 13 through 15, and 17 through 21 shall survive termination.

17. Dispute Resolution

Please read this section carefully. It affects your legal rights, including your right to file a lawsuit in court.

Informal resolution: Before initiating any formal dispute proceeding, you agree to first send a written notice describing the dispute to a@minicounsel.ca. You and minicounsel will attempt to resolve the dispute informally for at least thirty (30) days from the date the notice is received.

Binding arbitration: If the dispute is not resolved informally, it shall be finally resolved by binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (“AAA”) under its Commercial Arbitration Rules. The arbitration shall be conducted by a single arbitrator and shall be seated in Wilmington, Delaware. The arbitrator's decision shall be final and binding and may be entered as a judgment in any court of competent jurisdiction.

Individual claims only: You and minicounsel agree that any dispute shall be brought in your individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, consolidated, or representative proceeding. You waive your right to participate in a class action or class-wide arbitration.

Small claims exception: Notwithstanding the above, either party may bring an individual claim in small claims court in the State of Delaware if the claim qualifies for small claims court jurisdiction.

Each party shall bear its own costs and expenses in connection with any arbitration proceeding.

18. Governing Law

These Terms and any dispute arising out of or related to the Service shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Delaware, United States of America, without regard to its conflict of laws principles.

19. Changes to Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you by email or by posting a notice on the Service at least fifteen (15) days before the changes take effect. Your continued use of the Service after the changes take effect constitutes your acceptance of the revised Terms.

20. General Provisions

• Severability: If any provision of these Terms is held to be unenforceable, the remaining provisions shall remain in full force and effect.
• Entire agreement: These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and minicounsel regarding the Service.
• No waiver: Our failure to enforce any right or provision of these Terms shall not constitute a waiver of that right or provision.
• Assignment: minicounsel may assign these Terms in whole or in part at any time without notice. You may not assign your rights or obligations under these Terms.
• Force majeure: minicounsel shall not be liable for any failure or delay in performance resulting from circumstances beyond our reasonable control.

21. Contact

minicounsel inc.
1309 Coffeen Avenue, 1200
Sheridan, WY 82801
a@minicounsel.ca