Legal
Expert and Vendor Portal Terms
Effective September 15, 2026 · Version v1.24
Version v1.24 · Effective September 15, 2026 · Published September 15, 2026
Legal
Effective September 15, 2026 · Version v1.24
Version v1.24 · Effective September 15, 2026 · Published September 15, 2026
These Expert and Vendor Portal Terms and Conditions ("Terms") govern the use of the Octicase Expert and Vendor Portal ("Portal") by independent contractors who provide services to law firms through the Platform. These Terms are divided into Part A (Experts), Part B (Vendors), Part C (Common Provisions, which apply alike to Experts, Vendors and Listed Professionals), and Part D (Claiming a Listing), which also applies to Listed Professionals. If you also hold an Octicase subscription or a paid listing or feature under the Terms of Service, the Terms of Service and the Schedule for your Customer Type govern that commercial relationship, and these Portal Terms supplement them; if the two conflict, the Terms of Service control, except that Section C.9 (Dispute Resolution) of these Terms prevails over Section 16 of the Terms of Service as to any dispute arising out of your use of the Portal or your listing, and except that a Platform Engagement is governed by the Expert and Consultant Services Agreement or Partner Agreement and the Default Engagement Terms (each defined below), which prevail over the Terms of Service and these Terms in respect of it.
What Octicase is, and what it is not, for the experts and vendors who use this Portal. In respect of you, Octicase is a platform and a professional directory. Provider does not place you with law firms, and does not act as your staffing agency, broker, employment agent or referral service. Provider does not select, recommend, endorse or match experts or vendors to law firms or to cases; law firms find you through your listing and contact you themselves. Provider may in future offer a staffing service for case managers under Section 2.9 of the Terms of Service, which is not available today; that is a distinct service, the individuals placed under it are not Portal experts or vendors, and nothing in it involves you or your engagements. Provider does not negotiate, draft, review or approve the engagement between you and a firm, and takes no commission on your fees, except where you opt in to Platform Engagements under the Expert and Consultant Services Agreement or a Partner Agreement, under which Provider publishes the Default Engagement Terms for those engagements (for a partner, they fill the gaps in the terms the partner publishes), collects payment as your limited agent and charges the Platform Fee stated in the commercial schedule of that agreement; in all other respects these Terms apply unchanged. Every contract and legal arrangement involved in working with a law firm - the engagement agreement or retainer, the scope of work, your fees and payment terms, confidentiality undertakings, and compliance with any protective order, court rule or professional standard that applies to your work - is yours to negotiate, accept and perform directly with that firm. For direct engagements, Provider is not a party to any of those arrangements, receives nothing contingent on them, and is not responsible for the firm's performance or payment to you, nor to the firm for yours.
Definitions. In these Terms: "Platform" and "Services" mean the Octicase platform and services described in the Terms of Service; "Platform Fee" means the percentage of the Service Amount that Provider charges the Seller on a Platform Engagement, as the commercial schedule of the Expert Agreement or of the Partner Agreement states; "Platform Engagement" means a defined scope of your services or, from a partner, a continuing service for successive service periods, that a law firm purchases through the Platform, as the Expert and Consultant Services Agreement (the "Expert Agreement") or, for a Vendor who offers services through the Platform as a partner, the Partner Agreement between Provider and that Vendor (a "Partner Agreement") provides; "Default Engagement Terms" means the terms so titled that govern a Platform Engagement between you and the firm; each is available from Provider on request and, from the date the Services launch, at trust.octicase.com. "Directory" means the public professional directory within the Services; "Provider" means OCTICASE, INC., a Delaware corporation; and "Portal" has the meaning given above. A professional who claims a listing under Part D and is neither an Expert under Part A nor a Vendor under Part B, such as a treating provider who does not testify, is a "Listed Professional"; the Common Provisions and Part D apply to a Listed Professional, and Parts A and B apply only if the Listed Professional later offers the services they describe.
These terms apply to medical doctors, life-care planners, economists, vocational rehabilitation specialists, and other expert witnesses ("Expert") who use the Portal to accept and manage expert engagement requests from law firms.
You represent that you are a qualified expert in your stated field. If you are a licensed healthcare provider or professional, you represent that you hold valid, current licenses. Where your profession is licensed or registered, you must provide your National Provider Identifier (NPI) or professional license number(s). Provider may verify credentials with licensing boards. Failure to provide accurate information may result in suspension or termination.
You are an independent contractor, not an employee, partner, or joint venturer of Provider or any law firm. You set your own rates, terms, and schedule. Law firms contact you directly through the Portal. You are responsible for all taxes, insurance, and business expenses. Provider does not provide benefits, equipment, or employment protections.
You set your own fees (hourly rate, flat fee, or other) on your profile. Where a law firm engages you directly, payment terms are agreed between you and the engaging law firm and Provider does not take a commission on expert fees, does not receive or forward those funds, and is not a party to the engagement. Where you have opted in to Platform Engagements, a law firm may also purchase a defined scope of your services through the Platform at the rates you publish; those engagements are governed by the Expert and Consultant Services Agreement (which provides, among other things, for prepayment, Provider's limited payment-collection agency and the Platform Fee) and by the Default Engagement Terms between you and the firm. Opting in is optional, is recorded separately from your listing, and does not restrict direct engagements. Before you opt in, the Portal will show you the Expert Agreement, the Default Engagement Terms, the Platform Fee percentage, and a plain description of the prepaid flow (the firm's payment method is authorized when it purchases and charged when you accept, at which point Provider remits your amount, Provider acts as your payment-collection agent and does not hold funds pending delivery, and information returns are issued as the Expert Agreement provides), and will record your opt-in as a separate acceptance with its date and the versions shown. Provider has not enabled the functions through which a Platform Engagement is bought. Until it does, no Platform Engagement is formed and no amount is charged, collected, remitted or refunded under this Section, as Section 3.7 of the Expert Agreement and Section 4.8 of the Partner Agreement provide, and the description of a function in this Section is not a statement that the function is available today. Once those functions are available you may opt out at any time from your account settings; opting out takes effect for new engagements only, and engagements already accepted continue under the Expert Agreement and the Default Engagement Terms, as they do if your Portal access is suspended or terminated under Section C.7.
Law firms may contact you through the Portal to request your services. Any engagement is solely between you and the law firm. Provider is not party to the engagement. You are responsible for negotiating terms, scope, deliverables, and payment with the law firm. Provider does not mediate disputes between you and law firms. This Section describes direct engagements; a Platform Engagement purchased through the Platform is governed as Section A.4 states.
Ownership of expert reports, opinions, testimony and other work product you create in an engagement is a matter for the engagement agreement between you and the engaging firm; Provider is not a party to that agreement and does not allocate that ownership. You grant Provider a non-exclusive license to store, transmit and display your deliverables in the Portal for the purposes of the engagement.
You may electronically sign engagement letters, retainer agreements, and reports through the Portal. By signing electronically, you consent to electronic signatures under the ESIGN Act and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, as described in Provider's ESIGN/UETA Consent and Disclosure.
These terms apply to vendors and service providers ("Vendor") such as records retrieval services, court reporters, process servers, translators, private investigators, case-management, intake and administrative staffing, litigation-support, technology and software, insurance and other business service providers who use the Portal to market services and accept jobs from law firms.
You represent that you are authorized to provide the services you advertise. If licensed (court reporter, process server, etc.), you must provide valid license numbers. Provider may verify credentials. You must maintain accurate insurance and liability information. False information may result in termination.
You are an independent contractor. You are not an employee of Provider or law firms. You set your own rates and terms. Law firms negotiate directly with you. You are responsible for all taxes, insurance (including the coverage described in Section C.3), and business expenses.
You agree to provide services in a professional manner consistent with industry standards. Law firms rely on your accuracy and timely performance. Failure to perform may result in negative reviews and reduced business opportunities. Provider does not guarantee payment for your services; payment is between you and the law firm, except for a Platform Engagement purchased under a Partner Agreement, which is paid as that agreement provides.
You may have access to protected health information (PHI) and sensitive case information through the Portal, including material subject to the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine. You agree to treat all such information as confidential and to use it only for the engagement for which it was made available to you. Access to features that involve PHI is conditioned on your acceptance of the Business Associate Agreement as that agreement provides, and you shall comply with HIPAA in respect of that PHI. Where you receive medical information, whether under an authorization or under one of the disclosures Cal. Civ. Code Section 56.10(c) permits, Section 56.13 forbids you from disclosing it again except under a new authorization that meets Section 56.11, or as another provision of that chapter or other law requires or permits; that duty is yours directly, it does not depend on your agreement with the firm, and it survives the end of the engagement. You shall not disclose information except as authorized by the law firm. Unauthorized disclosure may result in suspension and legal liability. In respect of PHI you receive, you will use and disclose only the minimum necessary for the engagement; will not engage a subcontractor to handle it unless that subcontractor is bound in writing to the same restrictions; will return or destroy it at the end of the engagement as the firm instructs, subject to any retention the law requires; and will notify Provider at security@octicase.com and the firm without unreasonable delay, and in any event within the period the Business Associate Agreement states, of any use or disclosure not permitted or any security incident affecting it. The Portal presents the Business Associate Agreement for your separate acceptance, on the claim screen of Part D or at first access to a feature that involves PHI, and records who accepted, which version and when; a professional that also holds a subscription accepts it once.
You agree to comply with all applicable laws, professional standards, and ethical requirements in your jurisdiction. For healthcare providers, you must comply with HIPAA. For other professionals, you must comply with applicable licensing and regulatory requirements.
Experts (Part A) must maintain errors-and-omissions insurance with limits of not less than $1,000,000 per claim that expressly covers forensic, consulting and expert-witness services, since many professional liability policies exclude them. Vendors must maintain general liability insurance with limits of not less than $1,000,000 per occurrence. You must provide a certificate of insurance on request. Provider provides no insurance coverage for you or for any engagement. A Partner Agreement may require additional coverage for Platform Engagements.
You agree to maintain accurate profile information, including qualifications, experience, rates, and contact information. You are responsible for updating your profile within 30 days of any material changes (new credentials, rate changes, etc.). You will notify Provider within five (5) business days if any license, registration or certification shown on your profile lapses, is suspended, restricted or revoked, or becomes the subject of a disciplinary action that is public. Provider may re-verify license status against the records of the licensing body at any time and may suspend or annotate a listing on the basis of those records.
You may use the Portal to market your services to law firms through your profile and responses to job requests. However, you shall not: (i) spam law firms with unsolicited messages; (ii) advertise services outside the scope of your profile; (iii) directly solicit other professionals' clients; or (iv) engage in deceptive marketing. Violations may result in suspension.
Where the Portal accepts reviews of your performance, the framework of Section 4.13 of the Terms of Service applies: reviews are moderated only under the published Review Moderation Policy, applied identically to every profile; a review submitted by a person with a material connection to you must disclose that connection; reviews may not be purchased; and Provider does not compute, display or publish an aggregate rating, average score, star rating or ranking. You may use the error-reporting route to correct a factual inaccuracy in a review; that route corrects facts and does not remove unfavorable opinion. Reviews remain the opinion of the reviewer. You will not post or solicit a review of yourself, have an employee, family member or anyone with a material connection post one without disclosing the connection, offer any incentive for a review, or screen reviewers by expected sentiment; you will not ask a client or firm to agree not to review you. Where such a term appears in a form contract imposed on an individual, it is void under the Consumer Review Fairness Act (15 U.S.C. Section 45b); wherever else it appears, it breaches this policy and Provider may suspend your listing. Provider will not remove a review at your request except under the published Review Moderation Policy.
Provider may suspend or terminate your Portal access if you: (i) violate these Terms; (ii) provide false credentials; (iii) fail to maintain required insurance; (iv) engage in unlawful conduct; or (v) receive multiple complaints from law firms. Whether any fee prepaid for a paid listing or feature under the Terms of Service is returned on suspension or termination is governed by the Refund Policy (a claimed listing under Part D is free unless a fee is accepted under Section D.4); amounts relating to Platform Engagements are governed by the Expert and Consultant Services Agreement or Partner Agreement, not by the Refund Policy.
You agree not to circumvent the Portal to directly solicit law firms you meet through the Platform, if such solicitation violates any agreement between you and the law firm. For a Platform Engagement, Section 3.6 of the Expert Agreement or Section 4.7 of the Partner Agreement applies in place of this Section.
C.9.1 Informal resolution and small claims. Disputes with law firms are handled between you and the firm; Provider does not mediate them, and for a Platform Engagement the dispute route is the one the Default Engagement Terms provide. For a dispute with Provider regarding the Portal or these Terms, contact legal@octicase.com first and allow thirty (30) days for informal resolution; that period tolls any applicable limitation period from the date the notice is given until the period ends. Either party may instead bring a claim that falls within the jurisdiction of a small claims court in that court.
C.9.2 Where you are an entity: arbitration and class waiver. A dispute not resolved informally shall be finally resolved by binding arbitration seated in Wilmington, Delaware, administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Commercial Arbitration Rules before a single arbitrator, applying the laws of the State of Delaware; judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction. You may opt out of this arbitration commitment by written notice to legal@octicase.com within thirty (30) days after your first acceptance of these Terms; opting out changes nothing else. Each party waives the right to bring or participate in any class or consolidated action, subject to any right to public injunctive relief that cannot be waived under applicable law and to Section C.10.
C.9.3 Where you are a natural person: courts, no arbitration and no class waiver. There is no mandatory arbitration and no class or representative waiver. A dispute not resolved informally may be brought by either party in the state or federal courts of the county in which you reside or maintain your principal place of business, and both parties submit to the jurisdiction of those courts.
C.9.4 If the arbitration commitment does not apply to you. Where the arbitration commitment in this Section does not apply to you, because you opted out, or is unenforceable as to you for any reason, a dispute not resolved informally may be brought by either party in the state or federal courts for the place in which you reside or maintain your principal place of business, both parties submit to the jurisdiction of those courts, and no class or consolidated waiver applies to you.
C.9.5 Equitable relief and changes. An application by either party for provisional, injunctive or other equitable relief to protect intellectual property or confidential information may be made to any court of competent jurisdiction. No change to this Section applies to a dispute that had accrued, or of which Provider had notice, before the change took effect.
Nothing in these Terms waives any protection of the law of the state in which you are licensed or based that cannot be waived by contract, and any provision purporting to do so is severed as to you; this applies in particular where you are licensed or based in California. Nothing in these Terms limits or alters your own professional, licensing, or ethical obligations.
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, subject to Section C.10.
Provider retains all intellectual property rights in the Portal and its features. You retain ownership of your profile information; ownership of deliverables is a matter for your engagement agreement with the firm, as Section A.6 states for Experts. You grant Provider a non-exclusive license to display the listing content you enter under Section D.3 to law firms, to their clients and to consumers, for as long as the listing exists.
Provider's aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Portal is limited to the greater of the fees you paid Provider for Portal access, for a listing or for an optional feature in the twelve (12) months before the event giving rise to the claim, excluding any amount Provider collected from a firm as your payment-collection agent and any Platform Fee deducted from it, or one hundred dollars ($100). Provider is not liable for lost profits, data, or business interruption. Amounts Provider collects as your payment-collection agent under the Expert Agreement or a Partner Agreement are a payment obligation and are not limited by this Section. These limits do not apply to: (i) Provider's gross negligence, willful misconduct or fraud; (ii) liability for willful injury or violation of law that Section 1668 of the California Civil Code does not permit to be limited; (iii) Provider's infringement of your intellectual property; or (iv) any liability where the law does not permit a limitation.
You indemnify Provider for claims arising from: (i) your use of the Portal; (ii) your violation of these Terms; (iii) your services or deliverables; (iv) your breach of professional standards; or (v) your infringement of third-party intellectual property rights.
For questions about these Terms, contact legal@octicase.com; for help with the Portal, contact support@octicase.com.
Your Portal access consists of the full Directory, including the listings of other professionals, and your own work area for profiles, engagement requests and, where you have opted in, Platform Engagements. It does not include the video library or any other part of the Services. Provider does not guarantee that any firm or client will view your listing, contact you or engage you, and a listing is not a representation by Provider of demand for your services.
Inquiries and messages sent to you through the Portal are visible to you and to the sender (and, where the sender is a firm, to that firm's users with access to the matter); Provider's personnel may access them for support, safety, fraud prevention and legal purposes, and Provider retains them as the Data Retention and Deletion Policy provides. An inquiry is not confidential as between you and the firm that sent it. Inquiries through the Portal come from law firms and other business Customers as defined in the Terms of Service, not from consumers; the Services do not carry messages from consumers to professionals (other than an anonymous public question under a question-and-answer feature, where offered, as the Acceptable Use Policy provides), and an unclaimed listing does not receive inquiries through the Portal. A consumer who wishes to contact you does so directly using the contact details on your listing, outside the Services.
The Directory includes listings that Provider creates from public sources, including government registries such as the National Provider Identifier registry and licensing-board records, and from business directories licensed for that use. A pre-loaded listing contains only business information from those sources, such as name, practice or business name, address, specialty and license or registration number. Provider does not add fee schedules, lien terms, office hours or any other information a professional has not supplied. A pre-loaded listing appears in the Directory marked as unclaimed and, as Section C.17 states, without the Portal's inquiry function, and is not an endorsement, a representation of availability, or a statement that the professional works with law firms. Every pre-loaded listing shows the category of source it came from and the date the data was last refreshed, together with a statement that the information has not been confirmed by the professional and may be out of date, and a link to the correction route of Section D.5.
Provider may contact the professional named in a pre-loaded listing to invite them to claim it, by email, telephone or text message to business contact details only, without automated dialing or artificial voice, disclosing any recording, with a working unsubscribe in every email, and will honor a request not to be contacted again immediately for calls and text messages and within ten (10) business days for email. A listing is claimed by registering for an account, entering the unique identifier Provider supplied for that listing (or, where none was supplied, by a match that Provider confirms), completing the identity step Provider requires, which may include confirmation through the contact details of record with the licensing body or registry, and accepting these Terms on the claim screen. Provider records who claimed the listing, which version of these Terms they accepted, and when, and notifies the professional of record. By claiming a listing you represent that you are the professional named in it or are authorized by that professional or practice to act for them; where staff claim on a professional's behalf, the professional is bound, is the owner of record of the listing, and may take direct control of it at any time from Provider on request. Claiming a listing you are not entitled to is a ground for termination under Section C.7 and an indemnified event under Section C.14, and a contested listing is handled under Section D.7.
One listing corresponds to one individual identifier (for healthcare providers, the individual National Provider Identifier). An organization may claim the listing that corresponds to its own organizational identifier and may link the listings of the clinicians who practice with it only with each clinician's consent recorded on the Platform; a clinician may unlink their listing at any time, including on leaving the organization. Locations appear as the claimant enters them, and each location must be one at which the professional actually practices.
On claiming, you may complete the listing with your locations, office hours, contact details, fee schedule, whether you accept liens and on what terms, and whether you are available as a consultant or as an expert witness. Everything you add is self-reported: you represent that it is accurate and not misleading when entered, you will keep it current and update it within thirty (30) days of any material change as Section C.4 requires (and within five (5) business days for the licensing events Section C.4 lists), and you acknowledge that firms and clients rely on it. A listing displays the labels "claimed" and, where you have completed the fields the Platform identifies, "complete"; those labels record what you have done and are not a verification, rating or endorsement by Provider. Provider does not label any listing as verified except where Provider has itself confirmed a specific fact, such as license status, and then only as to that fact. Your listing is visible to law firms, to their clients and to consumers, and is advertising: you are responsible for its compliance with the Federal Trade Commission Act, the California Unfair Competition Law and False Advertising Law, and, for healthcare providers, Business and Professions Code Section 651 and the rules on specialty, certification and testimonial claims, and no patient information of any kind, including patient testimonials, may appear in it; Directory content is business information about the professional only. The lien field is a summary of your standard written lien agreement and must match it; a lien is created only by that written agreement between you and the client and firm, the summary is not an offer, and the Platform displays it with Provider's standard notice that lien terms affect a client's net recovery and should be reviewed with the client's attorney, and, before you accept an engagement to be paid from a future recovery, the Platform shows you Provider's standard notice that Provider does not guarantee that you will be paid, does not hold funds for you, does not enforce your lien and is not a party to it. For every item you enter about another person, including staff, affiliated clinicians and references, you represent that you have that person's authority and any consent the law requires.
Claiming and maintaining a listing is free of charge today. Provider may introduce fees for listings, optional features or sponsored placement in the future, and will give you at least thirty (30) days' notice by email before any fee applies to you; until you accept a fee you will not be charged, and your listing will remain in the free form then available; any fee you accept is charged under the Terms of Service and the Refund Policy, as Section C.7 states. Provider will never charge a provider of medical care or treatment any fee or other consideration for a listing, feature or placement, and the Platform Fee that applies where you opt in to Platform Engagements compensates the services Provider furnishes for that engagement and never the listing, will never charge a provider of medical care or treatment any fee or other consideration for a listing, feature or placement. Provider will not offer sponsored placement or any paid prominence to such a provider, receives no compensation from any person for a patient's or client's selection of a provider, and will not offer a purchasable verification badge to anyone. Where you opt in to Platform Engagements, the Platform Fee compensates only the services Provider furnishes for that engagement, and never the listing, the placement or any selection or referral of you.
The information in your listing remains on the Platform for as long as the listing exists, and is retained and deleted as the Privacy Policy and the Data Retention and Deletion Policy describe. A professional named in a pre-loaded listing who does not wish to appear may ask Provider to remove the listing by writing to support@octicase.com; Provider removes it from the Directory within five (5) business days and retains only a suppression record so that the listing is not re-created. A claimed listing may be closed by its owner at any time from the account settings, is removed from the Directory within five (5) business days, and is not re-published in pre-loaded form without the professional's fresh consent; engagement records relating to Platform Engagements remain exportable as the Expert Agreement or Partner Agreement provides. Provider corrects a factual error in a pre-loaded listing within ten (10) business days of a request with the correct information. The notice at collection for the business-contact information in pre-loaded listings, including the categories of source, is in the Privacy Policy, which also describes the rights of the professional named.
Provider may correct, annotate, suppress or remove any listing, claimed or pre-loaded, where the information is shown by a reliable source to be inaccurate or out of date, where a license or registration shown is inactive, suspended, restricted or revoked, where Provider ceases to use a source of pre-loaded data or that source's terms no longer permit the listing, where a legal demand or court order requires it, where the listing breaches these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy, or where a well-founded complaint is received; these grounds are applied identically to every listing, and Provider gives the owner of a claimed listing notice of the action and the ground, except where the law prohibits it. Provider may remove a pre-loaded listing at any time. Provider does not otherwise edit the content a professional has entered, and does not reorder, promote or demote listings for consideration. Sponsored placement introduced under Section D.4 is labeled as such, is shown separately from the ordinary results, does not change the order of those results, and is never offered to a provider of medical care or treatment.
Where two persons claim the same listing, or a practice and a clinician disagree about a listing or a link, Provider will freeze the listing in its current state, ask each for documentary proof of identity and authority, decide on that proof within fifteen (15) business days, and act on its decision; Provider may instead keep the listing frozen until the parties agree or a court decides. Provider is released from any claim arising from a decision made in good faith under this Section.
By accessing the Portal, you acknowledge that you have read and agree to these Terms.