Privacy policy

Your documents are checked and then deleted, unless you ask us to keep one. We do not sell personal data, share it with advertisers, or send your documents to any outside service. Your data is your own: you can delete any of it, or all of it, at any time.

Counselcite operates the service at counselcite.com and is the controller of the personal data described here. For anything in this policy, write to legal@counselcite.com.

This policy applies to the website, the citation checker, and any account you create. It does not cover other websites this site links to, including the Bluebook's publishers, Cornell LII, the eCFR and CourtListener, each of which has its own policy.

When you check a document without signing in, or while signed in without choosing to save it, the document is read in memory for the length of the request and discarded when the results are returned. No part of it is written to disk, and no copy remains on our servers after the check.

If you are signed in and choose to save a document, it is stored so you can return to it. You choose the retention period when you save it — seven days, thirty days, or until you delete it — and you make that choice for each document, not once for the account. What we store is encrypted with a key derived for your account alone, and the decisions you made while reviewing it are encrypted the same way. When the period ends the document is deleted immediately and permanently, and the line in your history stays behind to say it is gone. You can delete a saved document yourself at any time before then, and deleting your account deletes every document saved under it.

Checking happens on our own servers. The text of your document is never sent to a language model, a search engine, an advertising network, or any other outside service, and it is never used to train anything.

Documents you check may be privileged or confidential. The design above is our way of honouring that: nothing is kept unless you ask for it, and what you ask us to keep is encrypted under a key that exists only for your account. It is not a substitute for your own professional obligations, and you remain responsible for deciding what to upload and what to keep.

Account details. A name, an email address, and a password hash, so we can sign you in and send the emails an account requires: confirming your address, resetting your password. We do not send marketing email.

Your check history. If you are signed in, we record each check you run so it is there on your Documents page: the name of the file, when you checked it, the rules and edition you chose, its length in words, how many findings came back, and how many you applied. This is your own record of your own work — nobody else sees it, it holds no part of the document itself, it is deleted with your account, and you can switch it off in Settings, which also deletes what is already there.

Usage counts. For each check: when it ran, the country the request came from, whether the input was a file or pasted text, its size in bytes and words, the profile and edition chosen, and how many findings were reported. These records contain no filename, no document text, and no IP address. If you are signed in, the record is linked to your account: that is how your plan's allowance of checks is counted, and it lets us see how many checks each account has run. The link is removed when you delete your account. If you are not signed in, we keep in place of an address a hashed identifier whose key changes every day, so a visitor's records from different days cannot be joined. We use these counts to keep the service running and to see what is used.

Server logs. Like every web server, ours keeps standard access logs for security and to diagnose faults. They record the address a request came from, the page requested, the time, and the browser's self-description. They contain nothing about the content of a document. They are kept for a short period and then discarded.

Reports you send. If you flag a finding as wrong, we receive what you choose to include in that report. Send only what you are comfortable sending.

Where the law asks us to name one: we process account details and saved documents to perform our contract with you; we keep usage counts and server logs for our legitimate interest in running a secure, working service; and we send account emails because they are necessary to provide the account. Where the law requires it, analytics cookies are set only with your consent, which you can withdraw on this page. We do not rely on consent for anything else that this policy does not describe as your choice.

Technical cookies: the cookie that keeps you signed in, the cookies that protect the sign-in form from forgery, and a cookie that records which country the site thinks you are visiting from, so it knows whether to ask you about the next kind. These are strictly necessary and need no consent.

Analytics cookies: we use Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages are read. It sets cookies in your browser that tell Google's servers one visit apart from another; it receives the page address, your browser's self-description and an approximate location, and never anything about a document or an account. In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland it sets nothing until you accept in the banner, and a decline is kept for six months. Elsewhere, including the United States, it runs without a banner. No advertising cookie is set by us or by anyone else on this site.

Nobody sees the content of your documents. The personal data we do hold is processed by the providers we need to run the service and by no one else: the company that hosts our servers, the email provider that delivers account emails, a network provider that carries traffic to the site, and Google, which provides the analytics described under Cookies. Each of them processes data on our instructions, under a written agreement, and only to provide their service to us. We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

We would disclose personal data if the law required it, for example under a valid court order, and we would tell you unless the law forbade it. Because we hold no document text, an order could not reach the content of anything you checked and did not save.

Our servers are located in the United States. If you use the service from elsewhere, your data is transferred to and processed there. Where the law requires safeguards for such a transfer, we rely on standard contractual clauses with our providers.

Documents you do not save: not at all. Documents you save: for the retention period you chose, or until you delete them, whichever comes first. Your check history: until you delete an entry, switch the history off, or delete the account. Account details: for as long as the account exists. Usage counts: a signed-in check stays linked to the account until the account is deleted, when the link is removed; a signed-out check carries only that day's hashed identifier. Server logs: a short period, then discarded.

Traffic to the site is encrypted in transit. Passwords are stored as salted hashes, never in a form we can read. Sign-in tokens are signed with a key generated on the server and never written into the code. Access to the servers is limited to the people who operate them. No method is perfect; if we learn of a breach affecting your personal data we will tell you and, where required, the relevant authority, without undue delay.

Wherever you are, you can ask to see the personal data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, receive a copy of it in a usable form, object to how we use it, or restrict that use. Under the GDPR and similar laws these are legal rights; under the California Consumer Privacy Act you also have the right to know what we collect and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising any right. We do not sell or share personal data as those terms are defined in California law, so there is nothing to opt out of.

You can delete a saved document or your whole account from your account page. For anything else, write to legal@counselcite.com. We will answer within thirty days, and sooner where the law requires it. We may ask you to confirm you are the account holder before acting. If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom you may also complain to your data protection authority.

The service is for legal professionals and students of law. It is not directed at children under sixteen, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child has created an account, write to us and we will delete it.

We do not track visitors across websites, so a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal changes nothing: the answer is already no.

If this policy changes, the date at the top of this page changes with it. A change that affects how your data is handled will be announced to signed-in users by email before it takes effect. Continuing to use the service after that date means the new policy applies.