Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) form a binding agreement between you and Matter Desk Pty Ltd (ACN to be advised) (“Matter Desk”, “we”, “us”). By creating a Matter Desk firm workspace, signing in, or using any part of the Matter Desk service (the “Service”), you agree to these Terms on behalf of yourself and the law firm you represent (the “Firm”).

1. The Service

Matter Desk is an AI-powered legal workbench for Australian small and mid-sized law firms. The Service provides matter management, legal research, document analysis and drafting assistance, deadline tracking, and related workflow tools. Every substantive AI action is scoped to a matter the Firm controls.

The Service is a tool for Australian-qualified legal professionals. It is not a substitute for the professional judgment of a lawyer admitted to practise in the relevant jurisdiction. Matter Desk does not provide legal advice, does not enter into solicitor-client relationships, and is not authorised to do so under any applicable legal practice legislation.

2. Eligibility and accounts

You may use the Service only if you are at least 18 years old and have the authority to bind the Firm to these Terms. You are responsible for keeping your sign-in credentials confidential and for all activity under your account. Notify us immediately if you believe an account has been compromised.

The Firm controls its workspace. The first user to create the workspace is designated the partner administrator and may invite, deactivate, and grant or revoke roles for additional users.

3. Trial, subscriptions, billing

New firms receive a free trial period at the plan tier they select at sign-up. After the trial, paid plans bill on the cycle you choose (monthly or annual) through our payment processor. You authorise us to charge the payment method on file for all subscription fees, applicable taxes, and any add-on usage incurred by the Firm.

You may upgrade, downgrade, or cancel a subscription at any time from the billing settings in your workspace. Cancellations take effect at the end of the current billing period. We do not provide pro-rata refunds for partial periods, except where required by Australian Consumer Law or the non-excludable consumer guarantees under it.

We may change subscription pricing or plan composition with at least 30 days notice to the Firm’s billing email. Continued use after the change takes effect constitutes acceptance.

4. Acceptable use

You must not, and must not permit any user to:

• use the Service to engage in unlawful conduct, including unauthorised legal practice, money laundering, fraud, or breach of professional conduct rules in the relevant jurisdiction;
• upload content the Firm does not have the right to share, or that infringes a third party’s rights;
• attempt to reverse engineer, scrape, or circumvent rate limits, authentication, or any security control of the Service;
• re-sell, sublicense, or expose the Service to persons outside the Firm without our prior written consent;
• use the Service to train a competing AI legal product, or extract model outputs in bulk for that purpose; or
• use the Service in any way that interferes with or disrupts our systems or other firms’ workspaces.

5. Customer Content and confidentiality

Documents, matter notes, communications, and other content the Firm uploads or generates inside the Service (“Customer Content”) belong to the Firm. The Firm grants Matter Desk a limited, non-exclusive licence to host, process, and display Customer Content solely as needed to provide the Service to that Firm.

We treat Customer Content as confidential. We do not use Customer Content to train shared or third-party AI models. We do not sell Customer Content to advertisers or data brokers. Engineering access to Customer Content is restricted, logged, and used only to operate, secure, and support the Service.

You are responsible for ensuring the Firm has the necessary client consents to upload client material, particularly where the material is legally privileged or contains personal information.

6. AI-generated output

The Service produces drafts, summaries, research answers, citations, and other AI-generated output (“AI Output”). AI Output is provided to assist a qualified Australian legal professional and must be reviewed by a human before any reliance is placed on it.

Where the Service cannot verify a citation, statutory reference, deadline, or factual claim with high confidence, it returns the phrase “Authority not verified”. Treat that phrase as a signal that independent verification is required before the AI Output is relied on for advice, court filings, or correspondence.

Calculated dates, limitation periods, and procedural deadlines produced by the Service are not active until a human user explicitly confirms them in the Firm’s deadline register. We do not guarantee the completeness of any deadline calculation; the Firm remains responsible for diary management.

7. Intellectual property

Matter Desk owns all right, title, and interest in the Service, including software, design, trade marks, and aggregate insights derived from operating the platform. The Firm retains all right, title, and interest in Customer Content and in any AI Output the Firm post-edits and incorporates into its work product. Nothing in these Terms transfers ownership of either party’s pre-existing intellectual property to the other.

8. Privacy

Our handling of personal information is governed by our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms. We comply with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles.

9. Warranties and disclaimers

We provide the Service with reasonable skill and care and undertake to keep it available, secure, and current. To the extent permitted by law, the Service is otherwise provided on an “as is” basis without warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that AI Output is accurate, complete, current, or fit for any particular legal matter.

Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts, or modifies any right or remedy under the Australian Consumer Law that cannot be excluded, restricted, or modified by agreement.

10. Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, neither party is liable for indirect, special, incidental, or consequential loss, including loss of profits, loss of clients, loss of data (other than our obligation to maintain backups under our security commitments), or loss of business opportunity, arising in connection with the Service.

Our total aggregate liability to the Firm under or in connection with these Terms in any 12 month period is capped at the amount the Firm paid us for the Service in that 12 month period. This cap does not limit liability that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law.

11. Indemnity

The Firm will indemnify Matter Desk against losses, damages, and reasonable costs (including reasonable legal fees) arising from third-party claims that relate to the Firm’s breach of these Terms, the Firm’s misuse of the Service, or the Firm’s Customer Content. We will indemnify the Firm against losses arising from a third-party claim that the Service, used as permitted under these Terms, infringes that party’s Australian intellectual property rights.

12. Term and termination

These Terms apply for as long as the Firm has an active workspace. Either party may terminate by notice if the other materially breaches these Terms and fails to remedy the breach within 14 days of written notice. We may suspend or terminate immediately to protect the Service, other firms, or to comply with law.

On termination, the Firm may export Customer Content for 30 days. After 30 days we may permanently delete Customer Content from active systems, subject to retention required by law and to backups that cycle out under our standard schedule.

13. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be notified to the Firm’s billing email at least 30 days before they take effect. Continued use of the Service after the effective date is acceptance of the updated Terms.

14. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia. The parties submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New South Wales and the federal courts of Australia sitting in Sydney. Before commencing court proceedings, the parties will attempt to resolve any dispute through good-faith negotiation, followed by mediation administered by the Australian Disputes Centre.

15. Contact

Questions about these Terms can go to legal@matterdesk.ai.