Last updated: 21 December 2025
Service provider: Draft of Life, Lda., legal entity no. 518225887, with registered office at IPN Incubadora, Edifício C, Rua Pedro Nunes, 3030-199 Coimbra, Portugal (“ByTheLaw®”, “we”, “us”, “our”).
Trademark: ByTheLaw® — Registered 08/08/2025 — EUIPO No 019168769.
Contact: contact@bythelaw.com
These Terms and Conditions (“Terms”) govern access to and use of the ByTheLaw® platform (including website, applications, APIs, integrations and associated features) by the customer identified in the Proposal / Service Order or in equivalent written communication accepted by both parties (including e-mail), or by anyone who subscribes online (“Customer”) and by its authorised users (“Users”).
By accessing, creating an account, starting a pilot, accepting a proposal, or using the ByTheLaw® platform, the Customer declares that it has read, understood and accepts these Terms, Conditions and Definitions, binding itself and warranting that it has the authority to bind its organisation.
1.1. “Platform”: the ByTheLaw® platform, including interface, search features, chat, upload and analysis of documents, exports, integrations and other components, currently hosted at “app.bythelaw.com”.
1.2. “Services”: the services made available through the Platform, including (i) search and synthesis of legal information from external sources and (ii) additional functionalities contracted via external sources (such as management/organisation of internal knowledge, integrations, etc.).
1.3. “Customer Content”: all information submitted by the Customer/Users to the Platform, including prompts, queries, uploaded documents, attachments, and any internal data or content.
1.4. “Results”: answers, summaries, outputs, suggestions, texts, references, or any content generated by the Platform in response to requests, inputs or prompts from the User.
1.5. “Feedback”: comments, suggestions, improvement requests, error reports, ratings and other contributions regarding the Platform/Services (without inclusion of the Customer’s Confidential Information).
1.6. “Customer Tenant”: the logical (segregated) environment associated with the Customer, including data, configurations, permissions, and any model/algorithm components dedicated to the Customer.
2.1. The Platform provides a service to support legal activity, through search, analysis and drafting features using automated methods and artificial intelligence.
2.2. The Platform does not provide legal advice, does not replace consultation with a qualified professional, and the Results are informational and auxiliary in nature. The Customers and/or Users are solely responsible for verifying, validating, interpreting and applying any Result, and Draft of Life, Lda shall not, under any circumstances, be liable, directly or indirectly, for any damages caused by Results provided through the Platform.
2.3. The Platform may rely on external sources and/or third-party services (e.g., cloud providers, technical providers and, where applicable, AI components/models). The Customer acknowledges and accepts that the completeness/currency of external sources may vary.
3.1. Access is intended for persons capable of critically analysing and validating legal information, including lawyers, legal practitioners, trainees under supervision, and other professionals who, by virtue of their role, have the competence to assess Results and assume the corresponding verification and validation.
3.2. The Customer is responsible for:
a) ensuring that access to the Account is made exclusively by the Customer itself and/or by Users duly authorised by it, and that sharing, assigning, making available or using the Account or the respective credentials by unauthorised third parties is expressly prohibited, regardless of title or duration;
b) ensuring that each Account is for individual and personal use, and may not be used by more than one person, except in cases expressly authorised by the Provider;
c) keeping access credentials confidential, not allowing their use by third parties under any circumstances;
d) immediately notifying any suspicion or confirmation of unauthorised access, unauthorised use or security breach;
e) ensuring that use of the Account and associated services fully complies with applicable professional and legal duties, including duties of professional secrecy/confidentiality.
4.1. Upon acceptance of these Terms and, where applicable, payment, ByTheLaw® grants the Customer a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable licence to access and use the Platform during the contractual term, for the Customer’s internal purposes.
4.2. The Customer may not (and may not allow third parties to):
a) copy, modify, reverse engineer, decompile or attempt to extract source code;
b) circumvent security or access control measures;
c) use the Platform to develop a competing product;
d) exploit the Platform abusively (for example through massive scraping, deliberate overloading);
e) use the Platform for unlawful, defamatory, fraudulent purposes, or in ways that infringe third-party rights;
f) use the Platform to infringe or attempt to infringe third-party intellectual or industrial property rights.
5.1. Ownership. The Customer retains all rights over its Customer Content. ByTheLaw® does not acquire any ownership over Customer Content by virtue of these Terms, nor will it share such content with third parties.
5.2. Technical licence. The Customer grants ByTheLaw® a limited licence to process Customer Content exclusively to:
a) provide the Services and generate Results;
b) maintain security, prevent fraud/abuse and ensure operation;
c) comply with applicable legal obligations;
d) when expressly activated under Article 8.3, carry out local and/or federated learning as provided therein.
5.3. Customer warranties. The Customer warrants that:
a) it has the legal authority to provide the Customer Content;
b) submission of Customer Content does not breach secrecy, confidentiality, third-party rights or applicable law;
c) it has a legal basis, legitimate interest or express authorisation for processing any personal data included in the Customer Content, without prejudice to the duty not to send confidential or privileged information, or any kind of trade or professional secrets, and to anonymise such content prior to submission, where possible or applicable.
6.1. The Customer acknowledges the typical limitations of automated systems, including the possibility of errors, omissions, lack of context or outdated information.
6.2. The Customer must verify the Results (including references and citations) before any external use or decision-making.
6.3. The Customer is solely responsible for the use of the Results.
7.1. “Confidential Information” includes: Customer Content, credentials, non-public technical information, and any information identified as confidential or that, by its nature, should reasonably be considered confidential.
7.2. Each Party undertakes to:
a) keep Confidential Information secret;
b) use Confidential Information only for the performance of these Terms;
c) not disclose it to third parties, except with written consent, to subcontractors strictly necessary and bound by confidentiality, or where disclosure is required by law or by a lawfully competent authority.
7.3. The Customer may request the signature of a separate NDA. In the absence of an NDA, this clause applies.
8.1. The processing of personal data shall comply with applicable legislation (including the GDPR) and, where applicable, a Data Processing Agreement (DPA).
8.2. Default rule — No training with Customer Content.
By default, ByTheLaw® does not use Customer Content (including prompts, documents, attachments and Results) to train, fine-tune or improve general models that are reusable across customers.
8.3. Contractual option (opt-in) — learning within the Customer Tenant and contribution to global improvement (e.g., federated learning).
Subject to prior, express and written authorisation from the Customer (e.g., in a Proposal/Service Order, addendum, or acceptance email with unambiguous identification), the Customer may choose to activate one or both of the following modes:
(a) Local Learning in the Customer Tenant. ByTheLaw® may use Customer Content to carry out learning/adjustment exclusively within the Customer Tenant, with the aim of improving performance for that Customer (e.g., personalisation, improved retrieval, improved answers and workflows).
(b) Federated Learning / Contribution to the General Model. ByTheLaw® may use federated learning techniques (or equivalents) so that local learning contributes to improvements in the general model, without Customer Content leaving the Customer Tenant, by sharing model updates (e.g., gradients/parameters) instead of raw data.
8.4. Minimum safeguards for the option in Article 8.3.
Whenever the Customer opts for Article 8.3, ByTheLaw® undertakes to:
a) not extract or transfer Customer Content as a reusable “dataset”;
b) apply reasonable technical and organisational measures to reduce the risk of re-identification or reconstruction of information (e.g., secure aggregation, limitation of content logging, and, where applicable, additional techniques such as differential privacy);
c) maintain segregation by Tenant and access control;
d) allow the Customer to deactivate the option in 8.3 with future effect, by written notice.
8.5. ByTheLaw® may process technical data and usage metrics (e.g., logs, performance metrics, error indicators) for security, operation and service reliability purposes, seeking to minimise substantive Customer Content, except to the extent strictly necessary to diagnose incidents.
9.1. The Platform, including software, trademarks, know-how, designs, methodologies, and technical components, is the property of ByTheLaw® and/or its licensors and is protected by intellectual property rights.
9.2. Nothing in these Terms grants the Customer any ownership rights over the Platform, other than the limited licence to use it.
10.1. The Customer may provide Feedback, and should avoid including Confidential Information in such Feedback.
10.2. Ownership/assignment of IP over Feedback. To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Customer (on its own behalf and warranting that authorised Users accept the same) assigns to ByTheLaw®, irrevocably and free of charge, for the maximum term and worldwide, any rights it may hold over the Feedback, for the purposes of use, reproduction, adaptation, incorporation and commercial exploitation of the Platform and Services.
10.3. If and to the extent that the assignment set out in the previous paragraph is not valid or fully effective in any jurisdiction, the Customer grants ByTheLaw® a perpetual, irrevocable, free, worldwide and sublicensable licence to use and exploit the Feedback for any purposes related to the Platform and Services.
11.1. The commercial terms (plans, number of users, duration, price, discounts, integrations and any specific conditions) are set out in:
a) a Proposal/Service Order accepted by the Customer; or
b) online subscription/checkout; or
c) an exchange of e-mails with unambiguous confirmation by both Parties, identifying the Customer, the plan/scope, price (if applicable), duration and start date.
11.2. Pilot (if applicable). If a pilot is agreed, the Customer may test the Platform for the period and on the terms agreed under Article 11.1 (including via e-mail). Unless otherwise agreed in writing, the pilot:
a) is free of charge;
b) ends on the agreed date;
c) may be terminated early for justified reason (including security/abuse).
11.3. Payments. Under a subscription model, the Customer shall pay the amounts due at the agreed frequency. Non-payment may lead to suspension of access to the Platform.
11.4. Invoicing. The Customer shall provide correct details (including tax number) and keep information updated, authorising the processing of the following personal data for invoicing purposes:
a) Full name or company name;
b) Tax identification number (NIF / NIPC or equivalent);
c) Address or registered office.
12.1. ByTheLaw® will use reasonable efforts to ensure availability and security of the Services, but does not guarantee uninterrupted operation, since the availability of the Services provided by ByTheLaw may depend on third parties.
12.2. ByTheLaw® may update the Platform at any time, including fixes, improvements, security updates and functional evolutions or introduction of new features, without guaranteeing that such updates will be error-free or free from temporary unavailability (including due to the updates themselves), while committing to the continuous improvement of its services.
12.3. ByTheLaw® may amend these Terms at any time. Material changes will be communicated to the Customer with reasonable advance notice, indicating their effective date. If the Customer does not agree with material changes, it may cease use of the Platform before the effective date of such changes, without additional penalty. Continued use of the Platform after that date constitutes full acceptance of the amended Terms.
13.1. ByTheLaw® may suspend or terminate access, in whole or in part, if:
a) there is a breach of these Terms;
b) there are indications of fraud, abuse or security risk;
c) there is non-payment (under a subscription);
d) it is required to do so by law/authority.
13.2. The Customer may cease use upon written notice. Under a subscription, termination takes effect at the end of the billed period, unless otherwise agreed.
13.3. Non-acceptance of material and contractual changes to the Terms, under Article 12.3, implies suspension of access to the Platform until the Customer expressly accepts the changes, and such changes will take effect under the terms set out therein.
14.1. The Platform and the Services are provided “as is” and “as available”. No warranties are given regarding fitness for a particular purpose, specific results, or absence of errors.
14.2. The Customer acknowledges that the Results may contain inaccuracies and that human verification by the Customer is its obligation and is essential.
15.1. To the maximum extent permitted by law, ByTheLaw® shall not be liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, loss of profits, loss of data, or reputational damage arising from use of the Platform.
15.2. The total aggregate liability of ByTheLaw® for any damages arising out of the contract is limited to the total amount paid by the Customer in the three (3) months preceding the event giving rise to liability (or, in the case of a free pilot, €0), except where such limitation is prohibited by law or in the event of wilful misconduct or gross negligence by ByTheLaw.
The Customer shall indemnify ByTheLaw® for any third-party claims arising from: (i) Customer Content submitted without proper authority or in breach of the obligations not to send confidential or privileged information, or any kind of trade or professional secrets, and of the duty to anonymise such content, where applicable; (ii) infringement of third-party rights; (iii) unlawful use of the Platform by the Customer/Users.
17.1. These Terms are governed by Portuguese law.
17.2. For dispute resolution, the courts of the judicial district of Lisbon shall have jurisdiction, with express waiver of any other.
If any provision of these Terms is held invalid, illegal or unenforceable (in whole or in part) by a competent authority, such invalidity shall not affect the validity of the remaining provisions, which shall remain in full force and effect. The affected provision shall be interpreted, to the maximum extent permitted by law, so as to produce effects as close as possible to the originally intended economic and legal purpose.
For contractual communications: contact@bythelaw.com.
For other contacts, namely by ordinary mail, registered mail, or registered mail with acknowledgement of receipt: Draft of Life, Lda., IPN Incubadora, Edifício C, Rua Pedro Nunes, 3030-199 Coimbra.