Privacy Policy
Checkstead, LLC
3 September 2026
Effective date: September 3, 2026.
Checkstead, LLC (“Checkstead”) is designed to collect and retain as little information as reasonably necessary. This policy covers the Checkstead website, Citation Scorecard Web, Citation Scorecard for Word, evaluation and access-code users, and Microsoft certification-review access.
Information We Process
Material you submit for verification
When you submit a document to Citation Scorecard Web, the Service processes the file or pasted text to identify and verify supported citations and quotations, review supported citation formatting, and produce the requested results. The Word add-in works from the document already open in Word. It does not upload the Word document file. It reads and transmits text from body paragraphs, footnotes, endnotes, and table cells, together with limited derived structure needed to keep those document stories distinct and identify block quotations. The add-in does not transmit raw Word formatting, styles, fonts, layout, authorship, comments, tracked changes, headers, footers, or document properties. Formatting evidence needed to confirm a finding or correction is read and evaluated inside Word. When you request a Scorecard, the Service processes current review results, detailed snapshots of each successful run in the current add-in/document session, and attempted-change outcomes needed to render the workbook. Failed or abandoned reruns are excluded. We do not use submitted material to train a model. Citation Scorecard produces results through deterministic rule-based analysis and does not use an artificial-intelligence or machine-learning model to produce a result.
The Citation Scorecard add-in for Microsoft Word
Citation Scorecard applies a correction to text or formatting only when a user selects Apply Change or Apply All for an eligible correction. Those operations occur locally in Word and create native tracked revisions. Quotations are never changed automatically. On Word for the web, case-name text replacement and case-name italicization remain review-only. Optional status highlighting is applied in Word for visualization; Citation Scorecard preserves prior highlight state it can prove and removes only its own marks.
Contact information
Checkstead may receive your name, email address, organization, and message when you contact us, request a demonstration or access, seek support, or discuss a custom deployment.
Technical information
Hosting and network providers process limited technical information needed to deliver and secure the Service. Operational logs may include request identifiers, submitted file type and size, timing, status, job and queue information, error codes, and an opaque sign-in identifier. The Service is designed not to place document text, citation text, quotation text, clear-text access keys, session tokens, or provider credentials in ordinary operational logs.
How We Use Information
We use information to provide Citation Scorecard reviews, user-directed corrections, navigation, highlighting, and Scorecards; respond to inquiries, demonstrations, support requests, and custom-deployment discussions; maintain Service security and reliability; and comply with applicable legal obligations.
• provide and improve Citation Scorecard’s verification services;
• respond to inquiries and demonstration or evaluation requests;
• maintain the security and reliability of the website and service; and
• comply with applicable legal obligations.
We do not sell personal information or use it for third-party advertising.
Retention and Deletion
Document material and results are retained only for the limited operational periods described in the Data Handling notice. The Service is not a document repository or long-term Scorecard archive. You may request deletion of contact information, submitted data, or associated information by contacting privacy@checkstead.com. We honor reasonable requests subject to security, contractual, legal, dispute-resolution, and other permitted retention requirements.
Service Providers
• Render hosts and operates the Citation Scorecard application. Material you submit is processed on Render’s infrastructure while your request is being handled, because that is where the application runs. Render’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy govern Render’s own services.
• Cloudflare provides domain name service and network delivery for our domains. Requests to the hosted service and the responses to them pass through Cloudflare’s network in transit. Cloudflare Access additionally administers sign-in for the Citation Scorecard web application, holding the list of email addresses permitted to sign in and sending the one-time codes used to do so. The Citation Scorecard add-in for Word does not use Cloudflare Access. It signs in directly with Checkstead’s own service, using an access code Checkstead issues to you. The Word add-in’s authentication flow does not provide your email address to Cloudflare. Requests from the add-in and the responses to them still pass through Cloudflare’s network in transit, as described above. Checkstead’s use of Cloudflare is governed by Cloudflare’s Self-Serve Subscription Agreement; Cloudflare’s Privacy Policy describes its own practices.
Checkstead currently uses Render for application hosting; Cloudflare for domain name service and network delivery, with requests and responses passing through its network in transit; Microsoft for AppSource distribution, Microsoft 365 administration, Word, and the Office JavaScript library; and CourtListener, eCFR, GovInfo, and the Office of the Law Revision Counsel U.S. Code service for supported authority lookups. Only citation and authority information needed for a specific lookup is sent to legal-data services. Customer documents and document text are not sent to those services. Quoted passages are compared with retrieved source text inside the Checkstead service. Operational detail is available in the Data Handling notice.
Website
The Citation Scorecard application interface loads no third-party advertising. Current application interfaces do not use analytics or tracking scripts. The Word add-in may use local browser storage for a short-lived session token, rather than the clear-text access key, where that storage is available.
Contact
Privacy questions and deletion requests: privacy@checkstead.com. Security questions: security@checkstead.com. Other questions: contact@checkstead.com.