Terms of Service

1. Definitions

• Workspace— a Customer’s tenant within the Service. All Customer data belongs to a workspace, and access is limited to that workspace’s active members.
• Authorized User — an individual the Customer has invited to a workspace (roles: owner, admin, or member).
• Case — a litigation matter the Customer creates within a workspace to organize uploaded data and analyses.
• Customer Content — data the Customer or its Authorized Users upload to or enter into the Service, including timekeeping records and case details, and the Analysis Results derived from that data.
• Analysis Results — the figures, charts, tables, and exports the Service computes from Customer Content, such as counts of potential violations and potential exposure figures.
• Usage Data — information about how the Service is accessed and used (described in the Privacy Policy), which is distinct from Customer Content.

2. The Service; closed alpha

Illuminare is an analytics platform for California wage-and-hour litigation. Customers upload employee timekeeping data and related case information; the Service processes that data and presents quantitative analyses — for example, counts of potential meal-period violations and potential exposure figures — computed under parameters the Customer selects. The methodology behind every figure is documented at /methodology.

The Service is currently in a closed, invitation-only alpha. During the alpha: access is by invitation, and we may decline, limit, suspend, or revoke access at our discretion; features may change, be replaced, or be removed without notice, and the Service is provided without any uptime or support commitment; and unless we agree otherwise in writing, the Service is provided free of charge (see Section 4).

3. Accounts and workspaces

• You must be at least 18 years old and use the Service for professional or business purposes only. The Service is not offered to consumers.
• Accounts must be registered by a human. Accounts registered by bots or automated methods are not permitted.
• You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. Notify us immediately at hello@illuminare.app of any unauthorized use.
• You must provide accurate account information (including a valid email address) and keep it current.
• Workspace owners and admins control membership: they may invite, suspend, or remove Authorized Users. Invitations are bound to the invited email address. The Customer is responsible for ensuring its Authorized Users comply with these Terms and for the consequences of the access it grants.

4. Fees and subscriptions

The Service is offered free of charge during the closed alpha unless we agree otherwise in writing. We intend to charge for the Service on a per-case subscription basis after the alpha. When paid plans launch:

• Fees, billing frequency, and payment methods will be stated in our published pricing or in an order form we agree with the Customer, and we will give existing customers at least 30 days’ notice before any fee first applies to them.
• Fees are exclusive of taxes; the Customer is responsible for applicable sales, use, and similar taxes, excluding taxes on our income.
• We may suspend access to a workspace for accounts with overdue fees after reasonable notice.
• Refund terms will be stated in the published pricing when paid plans launch.

An upgrade from the free alpha to a paid plan will never happen silently: paid access will require an affirmative purchase or written agreement.

5. Customer Content

• You own your data. The Customer retains all rights, title, and interest in Customer Content. These Terms do not grant us any ownership of it.
• Our license from you. The Customer grants us a non-exclusive license to host, store, transmit, process, analyze, and display Customer Content as needed to provide, secure, and support the Service, and to create de-identified, aggregated data from Customer Content. This license ends when the Customer Content is deleted (see Section 9), except that de-identified, aggregated data — which no longer identifies the Customer, its clients, or any individual — may be retained and used as described in Section 7.
• Your responsibilities. The Customer is responsible for its Customer Content, and represents and warrants that: it has all rights, consents, and lawful bases required to upload the Customer Content and have it processed as described in these Terms and the Privacy Policy; its use of the Service with data produced in litigation complies with all obligations attached to that data — including protective orders, confidentiality agreements, and applicable discovery rules and court orders; and it will not upload data it is prohibited from disclosing to third-party service providers.
• Minimum necessary. The Service analyzes timekeeping data — employee identifiers, shift punch times, and related pay information. We encourage Customers to omit fields the analysis does not require (for example, government identification numbers, contact details, or health information) before uploading.

6. Analysis Results are not legal advice

Illuminare is an analytics tool, not a law firm, and no attorney-client relationship is created by using the Service.

• Analysis Results are objective, quantitative computations from the data and parameters the Customer supplies. Figures such as “potential violations” and “potential exposure” describe data points that match criteria the Customer configured — they are not legal conclusions, findings of liability, or predictions of any case outcome. Only a court can adjudicate a violation.
• Analysis Results depend on the quality, completeness, and accuracy of the uploaded data and on the parameters selected. The documented methodology, including its assumptions and limitations, is available at /methodology.
• Our users are legal professionals, and the Customer remains solely responsible for its professional judgment — including verifying any figure before relying on it in a filing, mediation, negotiation, or any other proceeding.

7. AI, data use, and automated processing

• The Service’s analyses are deterministic, rules-based computations: the same data and parameters produce the same figures, per the documented methodology. Analysis Results 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 operate, develop, and improve the Service — including training artificial-intelligence, machine-learning, and large-language-model features. De-identification removes information that identifies the Customer, its clients, and the individuals appearing in the data, and we do not attempt to re-identify it.
• We do not use identifiable Customer Content to train AI or machine-learning models.
• The Service does not make automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about any person; its outputs are figures that a professional interprets.

8. Acceptable use

You agree not to, and not to permit anyone to:

• use the Service for any unlawful purpose or in violation of any court order, protective order, or professional obligation;
• upload content you do not have the right to upload, or content containing malicious code;
• probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Service, or attempt to access another workspace’s data or circumvent workspace isolation, authentication, or any other security measure;
• interfere with or disrupt the Service, or impose an unreasonable load on it;
• reverse engineer, copy, or create derivative works of the Service, or access it to build a competing product;
• resell, sublicense, or provide the Service to third parties outside the Customer’s organization, except analyses shared in the ordinary course of the Customer’s legal work; or
• misrepresent Analysis Results as the output or opinion of Illuminare rather than a computation from the Customer’s own data and parameters.

We may investigate violations and suspend or terminate accounts involved in them (see Section 15).

9. Deletion and data retention

The Customer controls its Customer Content:

• Authorized Users (per their workspace role) may delete uploaded files, cases, and analyses from within the Service.
• When a file is deleted, the Service permanently deletes the stored file, the raw and processed data rows derived from it, and the analysis results computed from it.
• We retain metadata about deleted uploads— such as the file’s name, row count, upload and processing timestamps, processing-status history, and which Authorized User uploaded it — to preserve workspace history, support, and audit needs. Metadata does not include the contents of the file.
• We also retain de-identified, aggregated data derived from Customer Content (Sections 5 and 7); it no longer identifies the Customer or any individual and is not deleted with the source content.
• Deleted content may persist in encrypted backups for up to 30 days before those backups cycle out.
• Usage Data is retained as described in the Privacy Policy.

On termination of the Customer’s account or deletion of a workspace, we will delete the workspace’s Customer Content in the same manner within 60 days, except where retention is required by law.

10. Confidentiality

We treat Customer Content as the Customer’s confidential information. We do not access the contents of Customer Content except: to provide the Service (including its automated processing pipeline); to respond to a support request from the Customer; to investigate a suspected abuse, security incident, or technical problem; or where required by law. Human access is limited to what the situation requires. Our handling of personal information is described in the Privacy Policy.

11. Privacy

Our collection and use of personal information — including account information, Usage Data, and personal information contained in Customer Content — is described in the Privacy Policy, which is part of these Terms.

12. Our intellectual property; feedback

The Service — including its software, design, methodology documentation, and all content we provide, but excluding Customer Content — is owned by Illuminare or its licensors and is protected by intellectual-property laws. We grant the Customer a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service during the term of these Terms.

If you send us feedback, ideas, or suggestions about the Service, we may use them without restriction or obligation to you. Feedback never includes Customer Content.

13. Third-party services

We use third-party infrastructure providers (subprocessors) to operate the Service — for hosting, data storage, processing orchestration, and email delivery. The current list, and what each provider does, is in the Privacy Policy. We remain responsible to the Customer for the Service.

14. Disclaimers; limitation of liability

Disclaimers.The Service is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, or uninterrupted or error-free operation. Without limiting Section 6, we do not warrant that Analysis Results are complete, accurate, or suitable for any particular legal purpose — they are computations from the data and parameters the Customer supplies.

Limitation of liability.To the maximum extent permitted by law: (a) neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, punitive, or exemplary damages, or for lost profits, revenues, or data, even if advised of the possibility; and (b) our total liability arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms is limited to the greater of the amounts the Customer paid us for the Service in the 12 months before the event giving rise to liability, or US $100. These limits do not apply to liability that cannot be limited by law, or to either party’s willful misconduct.

15. Term, suspension, and termination

• These Terms apply from your first use of the Service until your account and workspaces are closed.
• The Customer may stop using the Service and close its account at any time by deleting its workspaces or contacting us at hello@illuminare.app.
• We may suspend or terminate access immediately for a material violation of these Terms (including Section 8), for overdue fees after notice, or where required to protect the Service or comply with law. During the alpha we may also terminate for convenience on reasonable notice.
• On termination, Customer Content is deleted as described in Section 9. On request before termination, we will provide a reasonable opportunity to export Customer Content using the Service’s export features.
• Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including Sections 5 (license ends with deletion), 6, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 17) survive.

16. Indemnification

The Customer will defend and indemnify Illuminare against third-party claims arising from Customer Content, from the Customer’s use of the Service in violation of these Terms, or from the Customer’s violation of law or of a court or protective order — provided we promptly notify the Customer of the claim and reasonably cooperate.

17. Governing law and venue

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules. The state and federal courts located in California have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes arising out of these Terms, and each party consents to personal jurisdiction there.

18. Changes to the Service and these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. For material changes, we will notify Customers at least 30 days before the changes take effect — by email to the workspace owner or by prominent notice in the Service. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance. The change history of this document is preserved in our records.

19. General

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any order form, are the entire agreement between the parties regarding the Service. If any provision is unenforceable, the rest remain in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. The Customer may not assign these Terms without our consent, except to a successor in a merger or sale of substantially all assets; we may assign them to an affiliate or successor. Neither party is liable for delays caused by events beyond its reasonable control. Notices to us go to hello@illuminare.app; notices to you go to your account email.

20. Contact

Questions about these Terms: Illuminare · hello@illuminare.app

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