Citation Scorecard Terms of Service
Checkstead, LLC
21 August 2026
Effective date: August 21, 2026. Version: 2026-08-terms-1.
These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern your access to and use of Citation Scorecard, provided by Checkstead, LLC (“Checkstead”, “we”, “us”). They apply to the Citation Scorecard web application, the Citation Scorecard add-in for Microsoft Word, and any evaluation or pre-release access we provide to either (together, the “Service”).
By installing, accessing, or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not install, access, or use the Service. You represent that you have authority to accept these Terms for yourself and for any organization on whose behalf you act.
These Terms replace any earlier Evaluation Terms of Use for the Citation Scorecard evaluation environment.
How we handle information and material you submit is described in our Privacy Policy. Our Data Handling notice provides additional operational detail about how Citation Scorecard processes submitted material and the service providers involved.
1. The Service
Citation Scorecard is a deterministic verification tool. It checks citations and quotations in a document against configured authoritative legal sources and reports what it found. It is software, not a legal service, and it is not a substitute for professional judgment. Citation Scorecard produces its results by deterministic rule-based analysis. It does not use an artificial-intelligence or machine-learning model to produce any result, and material you submit is not used to train any model.
2. Licence
Subject to these Terms, Checkstead grants you a limited, revocable, nonexclusive, nontransferable, non-sublicensable right to use the Service for your own internal business or professional purposes, and to install the Word add-in on devices you control or are authorized to configure. You may not: • resell, sublicense, rent, or provide the Service as a service to another person; • copy, modify, or create derivative works of the Service; • reverse engineer or attempt to extract nonpublic implementation details, except to the extent applicable law expressly permits despite this limitation.
3. Access, credentials, and charges
Installing the Word add-in does not itself require a Checkstead credential where the add-in has been made available. Using the Service to verify a document requires a Checkstead-authorized credential, which Checkstead issues at its discretion. Access to the web application is likewise limited to those Checkstead has authorized. • Checkstead currently provides authorized access free of charge. No purchase, subscription, or payment method is required to use the Service as offered today. • Checkstead may introduce paid tiers in future. Any charge will be disclosed before it applies, and nothing in these Terms obliges you to pay for anything you have not agreed to purchase. • Credentials are personal to the recipient, must not be shared, and are revocable at any time. • Checkstead may set and change quotas, rate limits, document-size limits, and other technical limits.
4. Scope of verification, and your independent review
Citation Scorecard verifies only supported, objectively checkable citation and quotation details. Which details are supported, and which parts of a document are covered, are described in the Data Handling notice and may change as the Service develops. It does not determine: • whether an authority is good law; • whether an authority supports the proposition it is cited for; • whether a quotation is misleading in context; • whether a paraphrase is accurate; • whether legal reasoning is correct; • whether a document is complete, suitable, or ready to file. A result reported by Citation Scorecard is information for your review, not a conclusion you may adopt without checking. You must independently review the Service’s results, and you remain solely responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, and final contents of your filings, deliverables, and other work product. You should not rely exclusively on Citation Scorecard in making any legal or professional decision. Citation Scorecard is not legal advice and does not replace review by a qualified legal professional. Where the Service reports that something could not be checked, that is a statement about what the Service was able to establish. It is not a finding that the underlying material is correct.
5. Your documents and submission authority
You retain ownership of the documents and content you submit. You grant Checkstead only the limited right necessary to process that material and provide the results you request. You represent that you are authorized to submit and process the material you submit, and you are responsible for determining whether it may be submitted under applicable professional, contractual, confidentiality, privilege, privacy, employment, and client obligations. Checkstead will use nonpublic documents and content you submit only to provide, operate, secure, and support the Service, as otherwise described in the Privacy Policy, or as required by law. Checkstead will not disclose submitted material except to service providers acting on its behalf, as directed by you, or as required by law, and will use reasonable measures to protect submitted material while it is in Checkstead’s possession or control. For the avoidance of doubt, providing the Service includes sending the limited citation and authority information described in section 6 to the legal-data sources listed there, so that a cited authority can be confirmed. Your document and its text are not sent to those legal-data sources. Nothing in these Terms states or implies that submitting a document waives any privilege or confidentiality.
6. Third-party service providers
Checkstead uses third-party providers to operate the Service. The providers currently used to operate the hosted Service are: • Render — application hosting. The Service runs on infrastructure operated by Render, so material you submit is processed on that infrastructure while your request is being handled. • Cloudflare — domain name service and network delivery. Checkstead’s domains are proxied through Cloudflare, so requests to the hosted Service and the responses to them, including the material you submit for verification, pass through Cloudflare’s network in transit. Cloudflare Access additionally administers sign-in for the Citation Scorecard web application; the Word add-in does not use Cloudflare Access and signs in directly with Checkstead’s own service using an access code Checkstead issues. Checkstead also queries public legal-data sources to confirm the authorities you cite. The sources currently configured are CourtListener (operated by the Free Law Project), the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), GovInfo, and the Office of the Law Revision Counsel U.S. Code service. Your documents are not sent to these sources; only the citation and authority information needed for a specific lookup is. What each provider handles, and what it does not, is set out in the Data Handling notice. Checkstead may add, change, or remove providers; the Data Handling notice states the providers in use, and Checkstead will update it when they change. If you require a formal subprocessor list, contractual data-processing terms, or provider documentation for a security review, contact contact@checkstead.com.
7. Third-party sources and provider credentials
Results may depend on third-party legal sources, application programming interfaces, repositories, credentials, quotas, availability, and data quality. Checkstead does not control or warrant third-party source availability; the completeness or accuracy of third-party data; provider response times; provider changes, restrictions, outages, or termination; or your continued access to any provider. If you supply your own provider account, credential, token, or content source for use with the Service, you are solely responsible for having the right to use it, for complying with the applicable provider’s agreements and restrictions, for obtaining any permissions required for your intended use, and for preventing unauthorized use or sharing of your credentials. Checkstead: • does not grant you rights to third-party provider content; • is not responsible for your violation of provider terms; and • may disable an integration or suspend access if a provider objects, if access appears unauthorized, or if continued use creates legal, security, or commercial risk. Access to legal sources that Checkstead itself provides is subject to Checkstead’s own provider rights, restrictions, quotas, and availability, and may be limited, modified, or withdrawn at any time.
8. Acceptable use
You will not: • share credentials; • access the Service without authorization; • circumvent access controls, quotas, or technical limits; • perform automated scraping or bulk extraction; • load test without written permission; • upload malicious files or code; • interfere with the Service; • probe for vulnerabilities except through a security review expressly authorized by Checkstead; • reverse engineer or extract nonpublic implementation details; • resell, sublicense, or publicly redistribute the Service; • use nonpublic functionality, outputs, or materials to recreate or train a competing citation-verification product; or • use the Service in violation of law, professional duties, third-party rights, or provider terms. Ordinary comparative evaluation and internal assessment by a legitimate prospective customer are permitted.
9. Suspension and termination
Checkstead may suspend, limit, or revoke your access immediately when reasonably necessary because of suspected misuse, excessive or abnormal use, credential misuse, a security risk, a provider complaint or restriction, a legal or regulatory concern, a violation of these Terms, or a risk to Checkstead, another user, or a third-party service. Checkstead may also modify or discontinue the Service, in whole or in part. You may stop using the Service at any time, and may uninstall the Word add-in through Microsoft Word or your organization’s add-in administration.
10. No service levels
Checkstead provides no service-level commitment, uptime guarantee, response-time obligation, maintenance obligation, support entitlement, compatibility commitment, or obligation to preserve jobs or results. Any assistance Checkstead provides is discretionary and does not create an ongoing obligation. Support enquiries may be sent to contact@checkstead.com. Checkstead does not commit to a response time. The Service is not a document-management, records-management, or archival system, and is not intended to hold your documents or results over time. You remain responsible for retaining your original documents and for downloading any report you want to keep.
11. Ownership and feedback
Checkstead retains all rights in Citation Scorecard, its verification methods, software, rules, interfaces, documentation, report templates, structures, formats, taxonomies, presentation methods, improvements, and derivative technology. You retain any rights you may have in your submitted documents and in the document-specific content reflected in a report generated for you. You do not acquire rights in Citation Scorecard’s underlying software, methods, rules, templates, taxonomies, formats, or presentation systems. If you provide feedback, Checkstead may use it without restriction or compensation. This does not give Checkstead ownership of your confidential documents.
12. Confidentiality
Nonpublic functionality, documentation, pricing, test materials supplied by Checkstead, and nonpublic product information are confidential and must be treated as confidential. This does not apply to information that is or becomes public without a breach of these Terms; was already lawfully known to you; is independently developed without use of the confidential information; is lawfully received from another source without restriction; or must be disclosed by law, subject to legally permitted notice. These Terms are not a mutual nondisclosure agreement. If you and Checkstead have a separately signed confidentiality agreement, that agreement controls in the event of a conflict.
13. Warranty disclaimer
The Service is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Checkstead disclaims all warranties, whether express, implied, or statutory, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and noninfringement, and any warranty of accuracy, completeness, or uninterrupted or error-free operation. Features, sources, limits, outputs, and availability may change or be withdrawn.
14. Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, Checkstead will not be liable for any indirect, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any lost profits or revenue, lost data, business interruption, provider charges or account suspension, filing errors, sanctions, malpractice claims, or damages arising from reliance on a result, in each case arising out of or relating to the Service, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the total aggregate liability of Checkstead arising out of or relating to the Service will not exceed the greater of one hundred United States dollars ($100) or the amount you paid to Checkstead for the access giving rise to the claim in the twelve months before it arose.
15. Your indemnity
You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Checkstead from third-party claims arising from documents you lacked authority to submit, your unlawful use, credential misuse, your violation of third-party provider terms, infringement or violation caused by content you supplied, or your intentional circumvention or prohibited use. This indemnity does not apply to ordinary use of Citation Scorecard or to defects caused by Checkstead.
16. Governing law and venue
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Florida, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. The state and federal courts located in Broward County, Florida have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service.
17. Distribution through third-party marketplaces
Where you obtain the Word add-in through Microsoft AppSource, the Microsoft commercial marketplace, or another third-party store or administrator:
• Checkstead, not the marketplace operator, is solely responsible for the Service and for these Terms. The marketplace operator is not a party to these Terms.
• The marketplace operator makes no warranty regarding the Service and has no obligation to furnish support, maintenance, or any remedy in respect of it.
• Your use of the marketplace itself is governed by that operator’s own terms.
• If your organization’s administrator deploys or removes the add-in centrally, that administrator controls your access to it.
18. Signed agreements control
If you and Checkstead have a separately signed evaluation agreement, pilot agreement, license agreement, support agreement, confidentiality agreement, data-processing agreement, or other written agreement covering the same access, that signed agreement controls over these Terms to the extent of a conflict.
19. Changes to these Terms
Checkstead may change these Terms. A revised version takes effect when posted at https://checkstead.com/terms with an updated effective date. Checkstead will make reasonable efforts to identify material changes on that page. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of a revised version constitutes acceptance of it. If you do not accept a revised version, stop using the Service and uninstall the add-in.
20. Open-source and third-party software
Citation Scorecard incorporates certain open-source and third-party software components that are subject to their own licenses and copyrights. Nothing in these Terms limits any rights granted under an applicable open-source or third-party license, and where such a license governs a particular component, that license controls as to that component. Required third-party notices are provided with the applicable software. Additional information is available upon request at contact@checkstead.com.
21. General
Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts, or modifies any right, guarantee, warranty, condition, or remedy that applicable law does not permit to be excluded, restricted, or modified; and if you are a consumer resident in a jurisdiction whose law grants you the right to bring proceedings in your local courts, section 16 does not deprive you of that right. You may not assign these Terms without Checkstead’s prior written consent. If any provision is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions stay in effect. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. These Terms are the entire agreement for the Service, subject to any separately signed agreement described in section 18. Sections addressing ownership, confidentiality, disclaimers, limitations of liability, indemnity, and governing law survive termination.
Questions about these Terms: contact@checkstead.com