Website Terms of Use

1. About These Terms

These Website Terms of Use ("Terms") govern your use of the Octicase public website and the consumer features available on it, including the professional Directory and Understand My Options. The website is operated by OCTICASE, INC., a corporation organized under the laws of the State of Delaware ("Octicase", "we", "us").

By using the website you agree to these Terms. Where a feature asks you to accept them before you use it - for example, before you start Understand My Options - using that control is your agreement. If you do not agree, please do not use the website. If you register to open a link someone sent you through the website, completing that registration is also your agreement to these Terms.

Different terms apply elsewhere. If you are a law firm or other organization that subscribes to our services, your relationship with us is governed by the Terms of Service and the Acceptable Use Policy. If you access a client portal through an invitation from a law firm, the Client and Consumer Portal Terms apply. If you create an account or subscribe as an individual, the Consumer Terms of Service govern that account and subscription; these Terms continue to govern your use of the public website. If there is a conflict, those agreements control over these Terms.

2. What Octicase Is and Is Not

This Section is the most important one on this page. Please read it.

Octicase is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. Using this site does not create an attorney-client relationship.

We do not represent you. We are not your lawyer. Nothing on this website is legal advice about your situation, and nothing you send us is protected by attorney-client privilege.

Octicase is a professional directory. We do not refer, recommend, or endorse any listed professional. Listings are self-reported by the professional or, where marked as unclaimed, compiled by us from public registries and licensed business directories and not yet confirmed by the professional (an unclaimed listing shows the category of its source and the date it was last refreshed, and may be out of date); except where a fact is expressly marked as verified, we have not checked it, and "claimed" or "complete" is not verification. Please conduct your own due diligence before retaining any professional.

We do not select a professional for you, we do not rank or rate professionals, and we do not tell you who is right for your situation. Where we mark a fact as verified, we have verified only that specific fact. For attorneys, that means we confirmed current license status with the State Bar of California:

We confirm license status only. Confirmation of licensure is not an endorsement.

Fee arrangements are between you and the attorney and are not guaranteed by Octicase.

We also do not provide medical advice:

Octicase does not provide medical advice and does not endorse any provider.

3. The Directory and Understand My Options Are Separate

These are two independent tools and we deliberately keep them apart.

• You can browse the entire Directory without ever using Understand My Options.
• Nothing you enter into Understand My Options filters, sorts, ranks, or personalizes the Directory. We do not show you a "matched" or "recommended" set of professionals.
• We do not send your case information, your answers, or your summary to any attorney, law firm, or other professional -- by any channel, including email, and including manual sending by our staff. We will not do this on our own initiative or at any professional's request. The only exceptions are entirely in your hands: a link you create under this Section, which we deliver only to the person you name, and the Consumer Terms of Service (Section 8.2) let you direct us to transmit your information to a professional you have already hired and identified yourself.
• If you download or email yourself a copy of your Understand My Options summary, that copy is yours to send to whomever you choose. Where the product offers it, you can also create a link that lets a person you choose view or download your summary and files; that person must register with us (name, phone and a verified email address) to open it, and by registering accepts the Consumer Terms of Service for that access. Before that link exists you sign the Authorization to Share Your Medical Information, because Cal. Civ. Code Section 56.10(a) does not let us disclose your medical information to somebody else without an authorization, Section 56.11 is what makes one valid, and Section 56.07(b) says that asking us for your own copy is not one. Downloading or emailing yourself a copy needs nothing, and Section 56.07(a) requires us to provide it at no charge. We do not suggest recipients, we do not provide a list of professionals to send it to, and we do not send it for you. If you do not create an account, what you submit (your answers, your summary and anything you upload) is deleted thirty (30) days after you submit it; until the automatic process is in place we run that deletion by hand, which can take longer than thirty (30) days and never happens sooner; when the automatic process is running we will tell you first, seven days before the first period ends, where we have a way to reach you that you have not asked us to stop using, and you will then be able to create an account, or to extend the period once by a further thirty (30) days, to keep it; that notice and that extension are not offered yet. What remains afterwards is your account record, if you created one, and aggregated counts (type of situation, county and month) that cannot be linked to you and that we never publish or license below a cell of ten people, as Section 4.8 of the Privacy Policy describes. If you gave separate permission on a screen of its own, we may also have kept a record of the facts of your situation under an identifier that is not your name; that record is personal information. Keeping it and training on it are two separate permissions, asked on two separate screens: we use it to train our own models only where you also said yes on the second screen, and if you allowed the keeping and refused the training the record stays for your own use and enters no training at all. We do not sell it today and would sell it only under a separate signed authorization naming the buyer, which expires after one year and which you may withdraw at any time, and we delete it when you ask us to, including from our backups within six (6) months of the request. Deleting it takes it out of the set we train on and puts you on a list so that nothing of yours enters any future training; software we had already trained is not undone by your request, and your request does not require us to retrain it or to discard it; we would retrain or withdraw it only where a court, a regulator or the law required it, and then we would, and we say this now rather than let you find it out later. We keep none for anyone under eighteen, and it never includes what videos you have watched. Section 8.5 of the Consumer Terms of Service and Section 4.8(f) of the Privacy Policy set out both layers.

If you want to contact a professional listed in the Directory, you contact them directly using the information on their listing.

4. Understand My Options

If you are in an emergency, call 911. This website cannot help with emergencies. This is general information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Octicase is not a law firm.

Understand My Options is free for you to use. It gives general educational information. It is not an evaluation of your claim. Specifically, it does not and will not:

• Tell you whether you have a valid claim.
• Show you a score, percentage, rating, or probability of success.
• Show you a dollar value or valuation of your claim. Where the product shows what cases of a general type have settled for, that is a published statistic about a category, with its source named and its limits stated; it is not a figure about your case, it is not a prediction, and no one at Octicase has looked at your situation to produce it.
• Advise you whether to accept or reject a settlement offer.
• Tell you the filing deadline for your situation. We can tell you the general rule -- in California, many injury claims are filed within two years -- but some claims have much shorter deadlines: a claim against a government entity can require a formal claim within six months, and medical malpractice has its own rules. That is exactly why only an attorney can confirm the deadline that applies to you.

Only a licensed attorney who has reviewed your specific facts can do any of those things. We encourage you to consult one. Where the platform applies an internal, advisory classification to a submission, that classification is reviewed by a person, is not shown to you, does not evaluate your claim, and does not by itself determine your access to the Services.

If we ask for a phone number, it is so that we can let you back into your saved information, tell you before it is deleted and deliver a link you ask for; giving it to us is not consent to calls or text messages from us or from any law firm, which require a separate box you can leave unticked, as Section 14 of the Privacy Policy explains.

4.1 Artificial intelligence

You are interacting with an AI assistant, not a person.

We tell you this before any AI interaction begins, and if you ask the assistant whether it is a person, it will tell you truthfully that it is not. AI output can be wrong, incomplete, or out of date, and you should not rely on it as a substitute for professional advice.

4.2 Your summary

You may download your Understand My Options summary or have it emailed to yourself. The summary itself carries this notice:

This summary contains information you provided and general educational information. It is not legal advice, is not an evaluation of your claim, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Octicase is not a law firm and has not sent this document to anyone except at your direction: to a professional you hired under the Consumer Terms of Service, or to a person you gave a link to under the Consumer Terms of Service.

5. Listings and How We Make Money

Claiming and keeping a basic listing on the Directory is free today, and no treatment provider is ever charged to be listed. No listing is a paid placement today. If any listing ever is, it will be at a flat price and we will say so on the pages where listings appear, with this notice:

Some listings on this directory are paid placements, and are marked as such; ordering does not depend on what anyone pays.

Any paid placement would be advertising. It would not be a recommendation or an endorsement. Nobody pays us today. When we do charge, our money will come from professionals' subscriptions and any flat listing fees, from paid consumer plans, and from fees that experts, consultants and partners pay us when law firms buy their services through the platform - never from you beyond any paid plan you choose under the Consumer Terms of Service, never from any attorney as a share of, or an amount measured by, legal fees, and never from any share of anyone's recovery. We do not currently offer sponsored or featured listings. If we ever do, they will be labeled as such, shown separately from the ordinary results, and never offered to any provider of medical care or treatment. The ordinary results are ordered without regard to whether a professional pays us.

6. Who May Use This Website

• You must be at least 18 years old to use Understand My Options or to create an account on your own behalf, including registering to open a link someone sent you.
• If you are under 13, you may not use Understand My Options or submit any personal information. We will block the submission and collect nothing further.
• If you are 13 to 17, a parent or guardian must complete any intake on your behalf.
• The website and its features are offered in the State of California only. We do not currently offer the website and its features elsewhere in the United States or internationally.
• We may suspend or block your access to the website or to any feature of it if you violate these Terms - including the scraping, review, impersonation and unauthorized-access rules - with notice where practicable. Separately, when an account is registered we run an automated fraud screening; where the score reaches the threshold we set, the account is suspended automatically and a person reviews it afterwards. That screening is used only to prevent, detect and investigate fraud and other unlawful or malicious activity, it is not a judgment about your claim or your legal rights, and it is not shared with any law firm or other professional. If your account is suspended that way you may ask us to have a person review it by writing to privacy@octicase.com, as Section 6 of the Privacy Policy describes. Sections 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 20 survive any suspension or termination of access.

7. Reporting Incorrect Information

If you believe information about a listed professional is inaccurate, tell us and a person will review it. Use the "report incorrect information" link on the listing, or email support@octicase.com. If your concern is about an attorney's professional conduct rather than the accuracy of a listing, the State Bar of California accepts complaints directly; the licensing boards of other professions do the same.

8. Intellectual Property

The website, its content, design, and underlying technology are owned by Octicase or its licensors and are protected by intellectual property law. We grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, revocable license to access and use the website for your own non-commercial purposes.

You may not copy, scrape, crawl, harvest, republish, or create a derivative work from the Directory or any other part of the website, or use automated means to extract data from it.

9. Content You Submit

You are responsible for anything you submit. Do not submit anything unlawful, infringing, or that you do not have the right to submit. Do not impersonate anyone or misrepresent who you are; do not submit information about another person unless you are authorized to act for them, as a parent or guardian under Section 6 or otherwise; and do not attempt to gain unauthorized access to the website or interfere with its operation. You grant us a non-exclusive license to host and process what you submit for the purpose of operating the website and providing the features you have asked for, as described in our Privacy Policy.

Reviews. The Directory does not accept reviews: you cannot review, rate or score an attorney or law firm listed in it, and we publish none. Where the Services accept reviews of an expert, consultant, vendor or partner who sells through the Platform: submit a review only about a genuine experience you actually had; disclose any material connection you have to the professional, such as employment, family relationship, or compensation; do not submit or accept anything of value for a review; and do not submit a fabricated review or one generated by software and presented as genuine. These requirements implement the Federal Trade Commission's Rule on Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 16 C.F.R. Part 465. Reviews are moderated only under the published Review Moderation Policy; the error-reporting route corrects factual inaccuracies and does not remove unfavorable opinion.

10. Copyright Complaints (DMCA)

If you believe material on the website infringes your copyright, send a notice containing the elements required by 17 U.S.C. section 512(c)(3) to our designated agent: John Cruvelier, Copyright Agent, OCTICASE, INC., 2140 S Dupont Highway, Camden, Kent County, Delaware 19934, c/o PARACORP Incorporated; legal@octicase.com; telephone 424-217-1292.

We will respond to valid notices and will terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances. If material you posted was removed because of a notice, you may send a counter-notification containing the elements of 17 U.S.C. section 512(g)(3), and where that section's conditions are met the material may be restored. A person who knowingly and materially misrepresents that material is infringing, or that it was removed by mistake, is liable for damages under 17 U.S.C. section 512(f).

11. Third-Party Links and Services

The website links to third-party websites, including professionals' own websites and the State Bar of California's public records. We do not control those sites and are not responsible for their content, their privacy practices, or anything you do there.

12. Privacy and Tracking

Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect and why. Two points are worth stating here:

• We do not load third-party advertising pixels, tag managers, session-replay tools, or third-party chat widgets on any page where you enter information about an injury, a medical condition, or a claim; on any page that plays video; or inside any signed-in area.
• If you are a California resident, you have rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act, including rights to know, delete, correct, opt out, and limit the use of your sensitive personal information. See the Privacy Policy, or contact privacy@octicase.com. If you are a resident of Washington or Nevada, or your consumer health data was collected while you were in either state, our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy covers that data separately and prevails over the Privacy Policy for the information it covers.

13. Accessibility

We aim to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA. If you encounter a barrier to using this website, contact support@octicase.com and tell us what you were trying to do. We will work with you to provide the information or complete the transaction through another means.

14. Disclaimers

The website is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the website will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, or that information in the Directory is complete or current.

Nothing in this section limits any liability that cannot be limited under applicable law, including liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any liability that California law makes non-waivable.

15. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or lost opportunity, arising from your use of the website, and our total liability for all claims relating to the website is limited to one hundred dollars ($100). These limits do not apply to liability arising from our gross negligence or willful misconduct, and they do not apply where the law does not permit an exclusion or limitation.

We are not responsible for the acts, omissions, advice, fees, or professional conduct of any professional listed in the Directory. Your relationship with any professional you retain is between you and that professional.

This section does not apply to any liability that cannot be excluded or limited under California law. See Section 17.

16. Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules -- subject to Section 17, which controls for California residents.

17. California Residents -- Rights That Cannot Be Waived

If you are a California resident, California law applies to the extent it gives you protections that cannot be waived by contract, and those protections control over anything in these Terms that conflicts with them. Specifically, nothing in these Terms waives, limits, or modifies:

• Your rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act. Any waiver is void under Cal. Civ. Code section 1798.192.
• Your rights under the Consumers Legal Remedies Act. Any waiver is void under Cal. Civ. Code section 1751.
• Your rights under the Unfair Competition Law, Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code sections 17200 et seq.
• Your right to seek public injunctive relief in any forum, consistent with McGill v. Citibank, N.A. (2017) 2 Cal.5th 945.

If any provision of these Terms is held to waive one of these rights, that provision is severed as to you and the rest of these Terms continues to apply.

Under Cal. Civ. Code section 1789.3, California users are entitled to the following notice: complaints may be directed to the Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs, 1625 North Market Blvd., Suite N 112, Sacramento, CA 95834, telephone (800) 952-5210. Use of the website and of Understand My Options is free; charges for consumer subscriptions are stated in the Consumer Terms of Service.

18. Disputes

Please contact us first at legal@octicase.com and give us thirty (30) days to resolve your concern. Most problems can be fixed without a dispute.

You are not required to arbitrate. If we cannot resolve your concern, you may bring a claim in the small claims court of the county where you live, or in any court of competent jurisdiction in your state of residence. We will not ask a court to move, remove, or dismiss your claim on the basis of a forum selection clause.

19. Changes to the Website and These Terms

We may change, add, suspend, or discontinue any feature of the website at any time; if we discontinue a feature you used, information you submitted remains governed by the Privacy Policy. We may also update these Terms. If a change is material, we will post notice on the website before it takes effect. The Last updated date above reflects the version currently in force. Continued use after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms. For account holders, changes to subscription terms are accepted as the Consumer Terms of Service provide.

20. Severability, Waiver, Assignment, and Entire Agreement

If any provision is held invalid, it is modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it valid, or severed if that is not possible, and the remaining provisions continue in full force. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, the Cookie Policy, the Review Moderation Policy and, for the information it covers, the Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the website. Where you hold an account, or where you sign the Authorization to Share Your Medical Information, the Consumer Terms of Service and that Authorization also apply and, as Section 1 states, control over these Terms to the extent of any conflict. Our not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets. Section headings are for convenience only. Where we provide a translation of these Terms or of website content, it is provided for convenience and the English version controls, except where a statute such as Cal. Civ. Code section 1632 requires otherwise for a consumer contract; how that statute is honored for subscriptions is addressed in the Consumer Terms of Service.

21. Contact

• General and support: support@octicase.com
• Legal: legal@octicase.com
• Privacy: privacy@octicase.com
• Security: security@octicase.com
• Mailing address: 2140 S Dupont Highway, Camden, Kent County, Delaware 19934, c/o PARACORP Incorporated

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