Privacy Policy

1. Scope: account data vs. Customer Content

Account and usage information — information about you, the professional using the Service (attorneys, paralegals, analysts), and about your use of it. For this information, Illuminare decides how and why processing happens, and this policy applies in full.

Customer Content — the timekeeping records and case details that you or your firm upload for analysis. These files typically contain personal information about employees of the parties to your matter— people who have no direct relationship with Illuminare. We process Customer Content solely on the Customer’s behalf and instructions, as a service provider (in the meaning of the California Consumer Privacy Act) or processor. The Customer — not Illuminare — is responsible for having a lawful basis to upload it and for responding to those individuals’ privacy requests (see Section 8).

If you are an employee whose data appears in an uploaded file: the law firm or organization that uploaded it controls that data. Please direct requests to them. If you contact us, we will refer your request to the responsible Customer and support their response.

2. What we collect and why

Account information. Name, email address, and password credential (managed by our authentication provider); the workspaces you belong to and your role in each; workspace and case names you create; invitation records (bound to the invited email address); and sign-in timestamps. We collect this to operate accounts, control access, and keep workspace membership auditable.

Customer Content. The files you upload and the data derived from them: timekeeping records (employee identifiers as they appear in your records, shift clock-in and clock-out times, and whatever other columns your files contain, which may include names or pay information); case details you enter (case name and number, description, filing date, pay-period configuration, and the analysis parameters you select); and the Analysis Results computed from the above. We process Customer Content for exactly one purpose: to provide the analyses you run and display their results back to your workspace.

Usage and log data. IP address, browser and device information, pages visited, and actions taken, as captured in application and infrastructure logs. We use this to operate and secure the Service, investigate incidents and abuse, and understand aggregate performance. We currently run no third-party advertising or marketing trackers. We may adopt product-analytics tools (such as PostHog or similar) to understand how the Service is used and improve it; any such tool that sets cookies will load only with your consent per the Cookie Policy, and the provider will be added to the subprocessor list in Section 5 before it is enabled.

Cookies. We use cookies strictly for authentication and session management (keeping you signed in) and to remember basic interface preferences. We do not use advertising cookies. The full inventory — and our commitment to ask for consent before any analytics or marketing cookie is ever introduced — is in our Cookie Policy.

Communications. If you email us, request an invitation, or send feedback, we keep the correspondence so we can respond and improve the Service.

Billing information (planned). The Service is free during the closed alpha. When paid per-case subscriptions launch, payment details will be collected and processed by a dedicated payment processor — we will update this policy and our subprocessor list before that happens, and we will not store full card numbers on our own systems.

3. How we use information

• To provide the Service: run the analyses you request, display results to your workspace, and deliver transactional email (such as workspace invitations).
• To operate, secure, and improve the Service, including debugging, monitoring, and abuse prevention.
• To communicate with you about the Service (transactional and support messages; during the invite-only alpha we send no marketing email to non-customers).
• To handle billing, once paid plans launch.
• To comply with legal obligations and enforce our Terms.

We use identifiable Customer Content only for the first purpose. We also create de-identified, aggregated data from Customer Content and usage patterns, and retain and use it to operate, develop, and improve the Service — including training AI features (Section 4).

4. AI, data use, and automated processing

• The analyses the Service performs are deterministic, rules-based computations — the same data and parameters always produce the same figures, per the published methodology at /methodology. The figures you see are not generated by a generative-AI model.
• We use AI tools in building and operating the Service (for example, in software development and internal operations).
• Data we retain and use for AI development. We retain and will use usage data, metadata, and de-identified, aggregated data derived from Customer Content to develop and improve the Service — including training artificial-intelligence, machine-learning, and large-language-model features. De-identified data no longer identifies you, your firm, your clients, or the individuals in uploaded files, and we do not attempt to re-identify it.
• We do not train models on identifiable Customer Content or on your personal information in identifiable form.

5. When we share information

We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We disclose information only:

To subprocessors that host and operate the Service on our behalf, under contracts limiting their use of the data to providing their service to us:

We will update this list before adding a subprocessor that processes Customer Content or personal information (a payment processor will be added when billing launches, and a product-analytics provider if we adopt one).

• Within your workspace, at your direction — the point of the Service is showing your data and results to the workspace members you authorize.
• As de-identified or aggregated information — we may use and share insights that do not identify any customer, workspace, case, or individual (for example, aggregate violation-rate benchmarks across matters).
• To investigate or prevent abuse or security incidents, limited to what the situation requires.
• When required by law — in response to a valid legal demand. Unless legally prohibited, we will notify the affected Customer before disclosing Customer Content so they may seek protection (particularly important where the data is subject to a protective order).
• In a business transfer — if Illuminare is acquired or merges, this policy continues to apply and we will notify you before information becomes subject to a different one.

6. Retention and deletion

You control Customer Content. Workspace members (per their role) can delete uploaded files, cases, and analyses at any time from within the Service. When a file is deleted, we permanently delete the stored file itself, the raw and processed data rows derived from it, and the analysis results computed from it.

What we keep: metadata.We retain metadata about deleted uploads — the file’s name, row count, upload and processing timestamps, processing-status history, and which workspace member uploaded it — to preserve workspace history and support auditability. Metadata never includes the contents of the file. Similarly, records of deleted cases and workspaces (names and timestamps) are retained as history.

De-identified and aggregated data. We retain de-identified, aggregated data — which is no longer personal information and identifies no one — indefinitely, and use it as described in Section 4.

Backups. Deleted content may persist in encrypted backups for up to 30 days before those backups cycle out.

Account and usage information.We keep account information while your account is active. When your account is closed, we delete or de-identify it within 60 days, except records we must keep for legal, security, or billing purposes. Application and infrastructure logs are retained on our providers’ standard rolling windows (typically 30–90 days).

7. How we secure data

• Every workspace’s data is isolated by database-enforced tenant controls (row-level security): a signed-in user can only reach rows belonging to workspaces where they are an active member.
• Data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest by our infrastructure providers.
• Human access to Customer Content is limited to what is needed for support you request, incident and abuse investigation, or legal compliance.
• No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure; if we learn of a breach affecting your personal information, we will notify affected Customers and authorities as required by law.

8. Your rights

California residents (CCPA/CPRA) have the right to know, access, correct, and delete personal information; the right to data portability; and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined in the CCPA, so no opt-out is needed. We extend these rights to all account holders regardless of location.

To exercise your rights over your account information, email hello@illuminare.app; we will verify the request via your account email and respond within the legally required time.

For personal information contained in Customer Content, we act as a service provider: we will refer requests to the responsible Customer and assist their response, and we support the Customer’s own compliance through the Service’s deletion and export controls.

Outside the United States. The Service is operated from the United States and our infrastructure is located there; by using the Service you consent to your information being transferred to and processed in the U.S. If you require processing terms for other regimes (such as the EU/UK GDPR), contact us before uploading data subject to them.

9. Children

The Service is a professional tool for business use and is not directed to anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. For material changes, we will notify account holders by email or prominent notice in the Service at least 30 days before the changes take effect, and we will update the date at the top of this document. The change history of this document is preserved in our records.

11. Contact

Questions or requests about privacy: Illuminare · hello@illuminare.app

Adapted from the Basecamp open-source policies (37signals LLC), used under CC BY 4.0. Substantially modified for Illuminare.