Terms of service

Counselcite checks the citations in a document against published citation rules and a public record of court decisions, and shows you what it finds. It is a tool, not a lawyer. You decide what to do with every finding, and you remain responsible for anything you file. Your documents are read in memory and discarded unless you choose to save one. Use the service lawfully and do not try to break it, copy it, or overload it. We provide it as it is, we may change or withdraw it, and our liability to you is limited as set out below.

Counselcite operates the service at counselcite.com. In these terms, “we”, “us” and “our” mean Counselcite, and “you” means the person or organisation using the service. For anything about these terms, write to legal@counselcite.com.

By using the service, whether or not you create an account, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

You must be at least sixteen years old. If you use the service on behalf of a firm, court, agency, journal or other organisation, you confirm that you have authority to bind it, and “you” includes that organisation.

Our privacy policy explains what we collect and what we never keep. It forms part of these terms.

The service reads a document you provide, identifies the legal citations in it, and reports where a citation departs from the citation rules you selected, together with the rule concerned and, where possible, a corrected form. For case citations, it also looks the citation up in an index built from the public court record and reports whether an opinion is on record at that citation and whether the name, year and court agree with what you wrote.

It can also produce a table of authorities from the citations it found, and, where you accept a correction, write that correction back into a copy of your document for you to download.

The citation rules applied are those of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, in the edition you select, and, where offered, the citation rules of a particular court. The rule library on this site describes each check in our own words. It does not reproduce the text of the Bluebook.

The service does not provide legal advice, and using it does not create an attorney–client relationship with us or with anyone. It is not a substitute for the professional judgment of a lawyer, and it is not a guarantee that a document complies with any court's rules.

A finding is a suggestion. You may accept it, change it, or ignore it. Whether a citation is correct, whether an authority supports the proposition it is cited for, and whether a document is fit to file are your decisions and your responsibility. Nothing the service reports relieves you of the duty of candour, the duty of competence, or any other obligation you owe a court or a client.

Counselcite is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or licensed by the publishers of The Bluebook. Bluebook is a registered trademark of the Columbia Law Review Association, the Harvard Law Review Association, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and The Yale Law Journal, and is used here only to identify the citation system the service checks against.

The checker applies rules as we have written them into it. Rules have exceptions, editions differ, courts adopt their own conventions, and a parser can misread unusual text. A finding can therefore be wrong, and a citation the service passes can still be wrong. We do not promise that every error will be found or that every finding is correct.

The court record the service consults is an index built from public data published by the Free Law Project through CourtListener, refreshed periodically. It is a snapshot. It is not complete: many decisions carry no reporter citation in the source data, official reporters lag by years, and recent decisions may be absent. For that reason, “not confirmed” means only that the index holds no opinion at that citation. It does not mean the case does not exist, and the service never says that it does not. A citation the service confirms is one where an opinion is on record at that citation and its details agree with yours; it is not a warranty that the authority says what you cite it for.

The date of the record used is shown with every result. You should verify any authority you rely on against the primary source before filing.

You keep every right you have in the documents you provide. You give us only what we need to run the check: a limited, non-exclusive licence to read, process and, if you ask us to, store your document for the sole purpose of providing the service to you. That licence ends when the check ends, or, for a document you chose to save, when the document is deleted.

Unless you are signed in and choose to save a document, it is held in memory for the duration of the request and discarded when the results are returned. It is not written to disk, not logged, not sent to a language model or any other outside service, and not used to train anything.

You are responsible for having the right to upload what you upload. If a document contains privileged, confidential or personal information, you decide whether to provide it. The design described above is how we honour that information; it is not a substitute for your own obligations, which remain yours.

You do not need an account to check a document. If you create one, give us accurate information, keep your password to yourself, and tell us promptly if you believe your account has been used without your permission. You are responsible for what is done through your account. An account is for one person; do not share it.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, that we reasonably believe has been compromised, or that has not been used for a long time, and we will tell you if we do unless the law prevents it. You may close your account at any time from your account page, and doing so deletes it.

Use the service only as these terms allow and only for lawful purposes. In particular, you agree not to: use the service to break any law or to infringe anyone's rights; upload anything that contains malicious code; attempt to gain access to any part of the service, or to any other user's account or data, that you are not authorised to reach; probe, scan or test the service for vulnerabilities without our written permission; interfere with the service or place an unreasonable load on it, including by automated means; copy, scrape, extract or index the rule library, the court-record index, or any other part of the service by automated means; reverse engineer, decompile or attempt to derive the source of the service; remove or alter any notice of ownership; or resell, sublicense or offer the service to third parties as your own.

We may set limits on how much may be checked, how large a document may be, and how often the service may be called. Those limits are part of the service and may change.

The plans and their prices are published on the pricing page, which forms part of these terms. A free plan is available with the limits stated there; paid plans are billed in advance, monthly or yearly as you choose, and may be cancelled at any time from your account page, with access continuing to the end of the period paid for. We may change prices, and will publish a change before it takes effect; nothing already provided free will be charged for retroactively. Fees are stated exclusive of taxes, which you are responsible for where they apply.

The service, including its software, its design, the rule library written for it, the name Counselcite, and the marks and logos of the service, belongs to us or to those who license it to us. These terms give you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive and non-transferable right to use the service as it is provided. They give you no other right in it.

The corrected documents and tables of authorities the service produces from your documents are yours. The rule descriptions in the rule library may be read and linked to freely; they may not be copied in bulk or republished as your own.

If you send us a suggestion or a report about the service, you agree that we may use it without obligation to you.

The service links to sources it does not control, including CourtListener, Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute, and the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations. Those sites have their own terms and policies, and we are not responsible for their content or availability. The court-record data the service uses is provided by the Free Law Project under its own licence; our use of it does not make the Free Law Project responsible for the service.

We work to keep the service available, but we do not promise that it will be available at any particular time or without interruption, and we may take it down for maintenance. We may change the service, add or remove features, change which rules or editions it applies, or withdraw it altogether. Where a change materially reduces what the service does, we will try to give notice on this site in advance.

You may stop using the service at any time. We may suspend or end your access if you break these terms, if we are required to by law, or if we withdraw the service. On termination, your right to use the service ends and any saved documents in your account are deleted. The sections of these terms that by their nature should survive, including those on intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification and disputes, survive termination.

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY WARRANTY THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE ACCURATE, COMPLETE, UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE, OR THAT ANY FINDING, CORRECTION, CONFIRMATION OR TABLE OF AUTHORITIES IT PRODUCES IS CORRECT OR SUFFICIENT FOR ANY PURPOSE. YOU USE THE SERVICE, AND RELY ON ANYTHING IT REPORTS, AT YOUR OWN RISK.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL OR OPPORTUNITY, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS, HOWEVER CAUSED AND UNDER ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. THIS INCLUDES ANY SANCTION, FEE AWARD, ADVERSE RULING, DISCIPLINARY CONSEQUENCE OR CLAIM ARISING FROM A DOCUMENT YOU FILED OR RELIED ON, WHETHER OR NOT THE SERVICE CHECKED IT.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, OUR TOTAL LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US FOR THE SERVICE IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AROSE AND ONE HUNDRED UNITED STATES DOLLARS.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain warranties to be disclaimed or certain liabilities to be limited. In those jurisdictions, the disclaimers and limits above apply to the fullest extent the law allows, and nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold us harmless from any claim, loss, liability, cost or expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising out of or connected with your use of the service, any document you provide to it, any document you file after using it, or your breach of these terms or of any law or right of another person.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these terms or the service will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Cook County, Illinois, and you and we each consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts. Before starting proceedings, each of us agrees to write to the other describing the dispute and to try in good faith to resolve it within thirty days.

We may change these terms. When we do, the date at the top of this page changes with them. A change that materially affects your rights will be announced to signed-in users by email before it takes effect. Continuing to use the service after a change takes effect means the changed terms apply to you. If you do not agree to a change, stop using the service.

These terms, with the privacy policy, are the entire agreement between you and us about the service and replace any earlier agreement. If any part of them is held unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. Our not enforcing a term is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these terms without our written consent; we may assign them to a successor to the service. Notices to you may be sent to the email address on your account; notices to us go to the address below. Nothing in these terms creates a partnership, agency or employment relationship. You will comply with any export laws that apply to your use of the service.

Questions about these terms go to legal@counselcite.com.