Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy describes how Kovel.io, a subsidiary of Spaceship Earth, LLC d/b/a Kovel (“Kovel,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, uses, shares, and protects information in connection with your use of kovel.io and any related applications, portals, or services (collectively, the “Services”). By accessing or using the Services you agree to this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Services.

1. Information We Collect

1.1 Information You Provide

When you create an account or use the Services, we collect the information you voluntarily submit, including:

• Identity & contact information — your full name, email address, phone number (if provided), and the jurisdiction(s) in which your legal matters arise.
• Legal matter context — descriptions of your legal situation that you enter during intake, onboarding, or research sessions, including the nature of your matter, the parties involved, relevant dates, and any supporting documents you upload to the Law Library feature.
• AI conversation content — the prompts you submit to the AI research portal and the AI-generated responses returned during your sessions. If you save sessions to your Law Library, those records persist; unsaved session content is discarded at session end.
• Attorney matching information — your stated legal needs, preferred practice areas, and jurisdiction preferences used to match you with a licensed attorney in the Kovel network.
• Communications — messages you send to us through support channels, email, or any feedback forms.

1.2 Billing Information

Payment processing for individual subscriptions is handled by Stripe, Inc. through Stripe Checkout. Your card number, card verification code, and billing details are entered on Stripe’s pages and never touch our servers. What Kovel stores is a tokenized customer and subscription reference and your subscription status; details such as the card brand and last four digits remain with Stripe, where we can view them for support and dispute handling. Firm accounts are invoiced and pay by ACH or cheque; we deliberately keep no card on file for firms. By submitting payment information through the Services, you agree to Stripe’s Privacy Policy.

1.3 Automatically Collected Information

When you access the Services, our infrastructure automatically records certain technical data, including:

• Device & access information — IP address, browser type, operating system, device identifiers, referring URL, and pages visited within the Services.
• Log data — the date and time of each request, server responses, and error logs. These logs are used for security monitoring and debugging and are retained for 90 days.
• Session tokens — cryptographically signed session identifiers stored as httpOnly cookies for authentication purposes. See Section 7 (Cookies) for details.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

• Providing the Services — to create and manage your account, match you with a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction, process your AI research queries, and deliver the functionality described in your subscription plan.
• Attorney matching — to identify a licensed attorney in the Kovel network whose jurisdictional authorization and practice areas align with your stated legal needs, and to share the information necessary to establish a formal attorney engagement.
• AI query routing — to route your research prompts to the appropriate AI model infrastructure under the direction of your matched attorney. We do not use your matter content to train AI models. All queries route through enterprise endpoints that contractually prohibit training on inputs or outputs.
• Billing and account management — to process subscription payments, issue invoices, manage plan changes, and enforce billing-related restrictions.
• Security and fraud prevention — to detect, investigate, and prevent unauthorized access, abuse, or fraudulent use of the Services.
• Legal compliance — to comply with applicable laws, respond to lawful legal process, and protect the rights, property, and safety of Kovel, its attorneys, and users.
• Service improvement — to analyze aggregated, de-identified usage patterns to improve the platform. No individual matter content is used for this purpose.
• Communications — to send you transactional messages (account confirmation, payment receipts, attorney engagement notifications), product updates, and, where you have opted in, service announcements. You may unsubscribe from non-transactional communications at any time.

3. How We Share Your Information

3.1 With Your Directing Attorney

The attorney matched to your matter receives the information necessary to establish and fulfill the engagement: your name, contact details, jurisdiction, matter summary, and (if you authorize it) access to Law Library materials you designate as relevant to your matter. Your attorney is an independent licensed professional bound by the professional conduct rules of their jurisdiction, including duties of confidentiality. We contractually require all network attorneys to maintain confidentiality consistent with applicable bar rules.

3.2 Service Providers

We share information with third-party vendors who assist us in operating the Services, subject to data processing agreements that restrict their use of your information to the purposes for which it is shared:

• AI infrastructure providers (including Anthropic, PBC) — to process your research queries under zero-retention, zero-training contractual terms.
• Payment processor (Stripe, Inc.) — for billing and subscription management.
• Cloud hosting and infrastructure providers — for data storage and application hosting, all within U.S. data centers.
• Email delivery services — for transactional email (account notifications, magic-link authentication).

3.3 No Sale of Personal Data

Kovel does not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to any third party for their own marketing or commercial purposes.

3.4 Legal Process and Safety

We may disclose information when required by law, court order, subpoena, or other governmental or legal process. To the extent permitted by applicable law, we will attempt to notify the directing attorney before disclosing matter content so that counsel may assert privilege and seek a protective order. Nothing in this Privacy Policy limits Kovel’s ability to respond to legally binding process.

3.5 Business Transfers

If Kovel is involved in a merger, acquisition, sale of assets, or similar transaction, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will provide notice of any such transfer and any material change to this Privacy Policy.

4. Data Retention

Conversations are stored, not discarded. Every message you send and every reply you receive is written to our database and kept until you delete it. An earlier version of this policy said that session content was “discarded at the end of each session and is not stored on Kovel’s servers beyond the session.” That was not true, and it is corrected here. Storing the conversation is deliberate: a privilege log is built from a contemporaneous record, and a record that vanishes cannot support the claim this service exists to support.

What we store is ciphertext. Message content is encrypted in your browser under a key we do not hold, so retaining it indefinitely does not mean we can read it. What we retain in readable form is listed in Section 1: dates, matter titles, and the name of the directing attorney.

We do not currently run any automatic deletion. This policy previously described a two-year retention period following cancellation. No process enforced it, so in practice retention has been indefinite. Rather than describe a schedule we do not operate, we state the actual position: data persists until you or we delete it, and we will publish a retention schedule here when one is implemented and running.

You can export or delete your account and its data yourself, at any time, from your data settings. You may also write to privacy@kovel.io. We will fulfill deletion requests within thirty (30) days, subject to our right to retain information where required by applicable law, to resolve active disputes, or to comply with our legal obligations. Certain log data, billing records, and attorney-engagement documentation may be subject to mandatory retention periods independent of your deletion request.

5. Privilege and Confidentiality

The content you submit to the Services in connection with a legal matter is treated as confidential. Kovel’s infrastructure is designed so that matter content is accessible only to you and your directing attorney. Network attorneys are bound by the professional conduct rules of their jurisdiction, which impose independent duties of confidentiality with respect to client communications.

Whether attorney-client privilege attaches to any specific communication made through the Services is a legal question that depends on the existence and scope of your attorney-client relationship, your conduct, and the facts of your matter. Kovel makes no guarantee that privilege will attach. Please review the full privilege disclaimer in Section 6 of our Terms of Service.

6. Security

Kovel implements commercially reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect your information against unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. These include, without limitation:

• In transit: TLS between your browser and our servers.
• At rest: conversation content is encrypted with AES-256-GCM under a per-matter data encryption key, in your browser, before it reaches us. That key is stored only in forms we cannot open: encrypted under a passphrase you hold, under a printed recovery code you hold, and under your attorney’s public key. Authenticated encryption means altered records fail to decrypt rather than returning altered text.
• Access logging: reads of client content by a directing attorney are recorded, so it is possible to say who accessed a matter and when.
• Model providers: your conversations are sent to our AI provider to generate responses. We do not train models on your data and our provider does not train on API traffic, but provider-side retention is governed by their terms rather than ours. We will name the provider and its current retention window on request.

What we hold, and what this does not protect against. As of 18 August 2026 Kovel holds no key that opens a matter. What we can produce in response to a subpoena is ciphertext, the dates on which things happened, the titles you gave your matters, and the name of the attorney directing each one. Those last three are not encrypted, deliberately — a privilege log is built from them.

Three limits worth stating rather than leaving for someone to find. Answering a question requires reading it, so the text of your current turn passes through our servers in memory while a reply is generated; it is not stored or logged there. Your browser runs code we serve, so a party who could compel us to change that code could reach content on a going-forward basis — encryption does not solve that, and we would rather write it here. And if you lose both your passphrase and your recovery code, the matter is unreadable by anyone, including us. That is the same property described above, seen from the other side.

No security system is impenetrable, and no method of electronic storage or transmission over the Internet is 100% secure. While we strive to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security. In the event of a data breach affecting your information, we will notify you as required by applicable law.

7. Cookies

We set no advertising cookies, no third-party tracking pixels, and nothing is shared with an advertising network. This is the complete list of what we do set. An earlier version of this section said we set “a single category” of strictly necessary cookies, which understated it by two.

• kovel_device and kovel_atty_device — your sign-in session, for clients and attorneys respectively. httpOnly, Secure, SameSite=Lax. Strictly necessary; without them you cannot stay signed in.
• kovel_agreement_signed_at — records that you accepted the engagement terms, so you are not asked again. Strictly necessary.
• kovel_ref — set for thirty days only if you arrive through a referral link, so the person who referred you is credited when you sign up. This one is not strictly necessary. If you would rather not have it, remove the ?ref= parameter from the link before you open it, or clear the cookie; the service works identically either way.

Our analytics sets no cookie and does not identify you. It does not run on the portal or counsel pages at all.

8. Children’s Privacy

The Services are not directed to individuals under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from minors. If you believe we have inadvertently collected information from a minor, please contact us at privacy@kovel.io and we will delete it promptly.

9. Subprocessors

These are every third party that processes data on our behalf. If this list changes we will update it here before the change takes effect.

• Anthropic (United States) — generates the responses. Receives the text of your current question and the conversation history your browser supplies for that one request. Does not train on API traffic.
• Railway (United States) — hosting and database storage. Holds the encrypted database and our self-hosted analytics.
• Resend (United States) — sends sign-in links and confirmation emails. Receives your email address, never matter content.

We run our own analytics on our own infrastructure rather than using a third-party service, it sets no advertising cookies, and it does not run on the portal or counsel pages at all — those URLs contain matter identifiers, and we do not collect them.

10. If You Are in the UK or European Economic Area

Who is responsible. Kovel is the controller for the personal data described in this policy. Contact privacy@kovel.io for anything in this section.

Why we are allowed to hold it. We rely on performance of a contract for the data needed to operate your account and your matters; on your consent for marketing email, which you can withdraw at any time using the unsubscribe link; and on legitimate interests for security, abuse prevention and keeping the service running. Where we rely on legitimate interests you have the right to object, and we will stop unless we have grounds that override your objection.

Your rights. You can ask for a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, and receive it in a portable format. Export and deletion are available immediately and without asking us, from your data settings. For anything else, write to us; we will respond within one month.

One limit worth stating plainly. A right of access is a right to the data we hold. For your matter content, what we hold is ciphertext we cannot read, so an export contains exactly that, plus the readable metadata listed in Section 1. Only your own key turns it back into text. This is not us withholding anything; it is the property the product is built around, and it cuts both ways.

Transfers out of the UK and EEA. Kovel operates in the United States and all three of the subprocessors above are United States companies, so your data is transferred to and processed in the US. We are documenting the transfer safeguards for each of them and will name the specific mechanism here rather than assert one we have not verified. If that matters to your decision, ask us before you put matter content into the platform.

Complaints. You can complain to your local supervisory authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner’s Office; in the EEA it is the authority for the country where you live or work.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will notify you by email to the address associated with your account at least thirty (30) days before the changes take effect. The updated policy will be posted at this URL with a revised effective date. Your continued use of the Services after the effective date of any changes constitutes acceptance of the revised policy. If you do not accept the revised policy, you should discontinue use of the Services before the effective date.

12. Contact Us

If you have questions, requests, or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us at: