Privacy Policy

Last Updated: April 24, 2019

The security and privacy of your information is very important to us. If you have any questions or concerns about our policy below, please feel free to contact us at support[at]counselhq.com or write to us at: CounselHQ Inc., 222 W. Merchandise Mart Plaza Suite 1212, Chicago, IL 60654

This privacy policy describes the practices of CounselHQ Inc. ("CounselHQ", "we", "us" or "our") regarding information we collect through our software, website, add-ins, plug-ins and any desktop or mobile application, application programming interface (API), or other interactive feature or service that posts a link to this privacy policy (each, a "Service" and collectively, the "Services").

By using the Services, you agree to our collection, use, sharing, and protection of information as described in this privacy policy. Your use of our Services is also governed by our Terms of Use.

Note about children. Our Services are not intended for or available to children under the age of 13. We do not intend to or knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children of that age. If you know of a child providing information through our Services, please contact support[at]counselhq.com so we can take steps to remove that information.

What does this privacy policy cover?

This privacy policy applies to the information we collect via the Services, including personally identifiable information ("PII") and non-personally identifiable information ("Non-PII").

PII refers to any information that can be used to identify or contact a specific individual (such as your name or email address), while Non-PII refers to information that does not specifically identify you as an individual (such as your IP address or browser type). Non-PII that is combined with PII so that it becomes attributable to a particular person will be treated as PII.

Third-Party Services

This privacy policy does not apply to the practices of companies that we do not own or control (including any third-party websites, products, applications, or services (i) that we provide a link to, (ii) for which we provide an add-in, plug-in, or similar integration (each, an "Integration"), (iii) that are integrated with our Services, or (iv) that we otherwise utilize in connection with the Services), or to individuals that we do not employ (each, a "Third-Party Service" and collectively, the "Third-Party Services").

CounselHQ may link to or otherwise include or incorporate code from Third-Party Services in its own codebase (for example, to enable an Integration or use of our third-party payment processor), which may enable such Third-Party Services to collect certain information. CounselHQ does not control the type or extent of information collected by Third-Party Services, or how such information is collected or used by Third-Party Services.

The practices of Third-Party Services are dictated by their own policies.

What information does CounselHQ collect?

Broadly speaking, we collect information that allows us to personalize, improve, monitor, and operate our Services.

Information that you provide to CounselHQ

Information that we collect automatically

Like many other websites and online services, we automatically collect certain information whenever you access and use the Services. Such information includes:

We may rely on Third-Party Service providers (including third-party analytics providers such as Google Analytics) to help us automatically collect information. We, as well as these third parties, use a variety of technologies in order to collect such information, including:

Some of the information automatically collected contains personally identifiable information or may later be combined with personally identifiable information. As an example, if you are sent an automatic email from our Services, our Third-Party Service provider captures your email address along with the other information it automatically collects (such as whether you opened the email or clicked on any of its links).

Other Information we collect from third-parties

Advertisements: CounselHQ may work with network advertisers, ad agencies, or other vendors to serve our advertisements. These third parties may provide us with information that we can use to determine the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns. For example, if you click on a CounselHQ advertisement, these third parties may be able to tell us the advertisement you clicked on and where you were viewing the advertisement. These third parties may set and access their own tracking technologies (such as cookies or web beacons) on our Services or elsewhere online to collect certain information about you.

Interactions with other services: With your permission, our Services may permit interactions between our Services and a Third-Party Service, such as through an API. An example of this would be your granting CounselHQ access to certain documents or other files on your document management system. Such Third-Party Service may provide us with certain content or other information. Any information that we have already collected may be retained by us even if you later unlink, remove, or otherwise disable the interaction between our Services and the Third-Party Service, but remain subject to the terms of this privacy policy.

Other information from third parties. In general, we may also supplement any information we collect with outside records from third parties to enhance our ability to serve your needs and to improve our Services generally. We may combine the information we receive from those other sources with information we collect through the Services.

Billing Information

We use a third-party payment processor to process payments made to us through our Services. In connection with the processing of such payments, we do not retain your credit/debit card numbers or your card security code (CVV/CVC). Rather, such information (in combination with other billing information) is provided directly to our third-party processor, Stripe, whose use of your personal information is governed by their privacy policy, which may be viewed at https://stripe.com/us/privacy.

We may retain certain other information related to your payment method (for example, the cardholder name, expiration date, and last 4 digits of your card, among other information) and historical invoices/purchases.

Do you share my information?

We do not sell, trade, or rent any of your PII to third parties. However, there are certain circumstances in which we do share your information with third parties.

Upon Your Request or With Your Permission. Upon your request or with your permission, we may share information with third parties.

You share a CounselHQ account with other Users. If you belong to a CounselHQ account with multiple users (for example, if you are one of many employees registered to your company's account), those other users may have access to some or all of your information (which may include an audit log of your historical transactions with the Services).

Business-Related Functions and Professional Advisers. We, like many businesses, sometimes hire or engage with other people or companies to perform certain business-related functions. Examples of such functions include providing website analytics, maintaining and hosting our servers, databases, and logs, and processing payments. We may also engage and share information with our professional advisers, including our accountants, auditors, and lawyers, and other third-party contractors. When we utilize third parties to perform business-related functions, we only provide them with the information that they need to perform their specific function.

Business Transfers. As we develop our business, we might sell or buy businesses or assets. In the event of a corporate sale, merger, reorganization, dissolution or similar event, your information may be part of the transferred assets.

Legal, Security, and Technical Reasons. CounselHQ may disclose your information if we believe we need to in order to: (i) meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (ii) enforce our agreements, including investigation of potential violations, (iii) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (iv) protect against legal liability or harm to the rights, property or safety of CounselHQ, our users or the public as required or permitted by law (such reasons, collectively, "Legal, Security, & Technical Reasons").

Extra Sensitive Data

While the security and privacy of all your data is critically important, we maintain a stricter policy with respect to: (i) the names and content of your files, whether uploaded or added via webform (ii) the names of any tags and folders you create; (iii) the content of your notes; and (iv) the text of your searches (collectively, "Extra Sensitive Data"). Extra Sensitive Data excludes non-identifying metadata such as file types, page counts, word counts, and creation and last modified dates.

Employees of CounselHQ may not view your Extra Sensitive Data except (i) with your explicit permission, (ii) upon your request, or (iii) in connection with Legal, Security, & Technical Reasons.

While CounselHQ saves some information and metadata about your searches (for example, word counts, filter counts, number of results, how long the search took, and whether you searched paragraphs or sentences), we do not keep records of your search text.

How do you protect my information?

We take reasonable precautions and use industry standard techniques to protect against unauthorized access of your information. For example, we use Secure Socket Layer technology (SSL) to ensure that your sensitive information can be transmitted securely, and we take measures to protect against unauthorized access to our employees' computers. Furthermore, we ensure that our employees only use the information they need to maintain, operate, and improve the Services and to help you troubleshoot any issues.

However, no method of transmission of information over the internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your information, as in any real-life scenario, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

What is your Data Retention policy?

Upon your request, we will delete (or we will inform you how to delete) your information, subject to the following:

Please note that while CounselHQ regularly destroys its older log files and database backups (subject to the above), existing log files and database backups may still contain data that was otherwise deleted from our database. In addition, some data may be marked for deletion but not immediately deleted.

Consent to Transfer

The Services are operated in the United States. If you are located outside of the United States, please be aware that information we collect will be transferred to and processed in the United States. By using the Services, or providing us with any information, you fully understand and unambiguously consent to this transfer, processing and storage of your information in the United States, a jurisdiction in which the privacy laws may not be as comprehensive as those in the country where you reside and/or are a citizen.

What emails will you send me?

We ask that our users opt-in to any promotional communications from us.

Separately, there are some emails about our Services that you we need to send to you (like how to get access to your account in case you forget your password or key service changes). You cannot unsubscribe from these emails.

How can I access my information?

In general, if you are a registered user you can access information associated with your account by signing in to our Services. There may be certain circumstances where that is not the case (for example, you belong to a company or organization that removed such access), so please feel free to contact us at any time at support[at]counselhq.com with any questions.

California Residents

If you are a California resident, you can request, with respect to the preceding calendar year, a notice disclosing (i) a list of all third parties to which CounselHQ has disclosed certain categories of personal information, for the third parties' direct marketing purposes, and (ii) the categories of such personal information CounselHQ so shared. To request a notice, please send a written request to the following address:

CounselHQ Inc.
Attn: California Privacy Notice
222 W. Merchandise Mart Plaza Suite 1212
Chicago, IL 60654

Please include your name, street address, city, state, and zip code. We are not responsible for notices that are not labeled or sent properly, or do not have complete information.

What about Do Not Track?

CounselHQ does not currently commit to responding to browsers' "do not track" or similar signals with respect to our Services.

Will you change this privacy policy?

We may change this privacy policy from time to time. To notify you of those changes, we will typically just post the updated privacy policy on this page, but if there are significant changes, we may also post an announcement on our website or email you. By accessing or using our Services after any changes have been made, you agree to the revised privacy policy.