Grounds

Legal

Law-Firm Confidentiality Addendum

Last updated August 5, 2026. Plain text, Word

This Law-Firm Confidentiality Addendum ("LFA") supplements the Terms of Service, the Data Processing Addendum (available on request from legal@grounds.ai), the Security Addendum, and the AI Data Use Policy for customers using Grounds for Law at grounds.ai (each, a "Firm"). It does not apply to Grounds for Business or Grounds Personal customers. Capitalized terms not defined here have the meaning given in the Terms.

1. Scope

The Firm is the Customer under the Terms. The Firm's own clients are third-party data subjects; the Firm is the controller of their personal data and confidential information, and Grounds is a processor. References in the DPA to "Customer Personal Data" include the Firm's client information processed through the Service.

This LFA applies to content the Firm processes through a Matter in the Service (a workspace scoped to a specific client engagement) and to communications conducted through a designated privileged channel within a Matter.

2. Privilege preservation

Grounds acts as a non-disclosing service provider with respect to communications and work product inside a Matter. The privileged-collaborations feature segregates Matter content from product analytics and from any aggregated metrics. Storage, indexing, and AI inference for Matter content are scoped to the Firm's tenant and to the participants the Firm has invited to the Matter.

Grounds personnel access privileged Matter content only as needed to:

  • Investigate or remediate a security incident affecting the Firm's tenant.
  • Fulfill an explicit support ticket initiated by the Firm where access is necessary to resolve the issue.
  • Comply with a lawful order, subject to Section 7 below.

In each case, the access is logged to an audit trail that the Firm can request, and is limited to the minimum data necessary.

3. Conflicts of interest

Grounds does not provide legal services and so does not have a conflict of interest in the legal sense. Nonetheless, we will not knowingly assign personnel to support requests that would involve simultaneous access to opposing parties' privileged data in the same matter. Operationally, we minimize human access to Matter content by default, and our incident-response procedures favor non-content remediation (e.g., restoring service, rotating credentials) over reading client communications.

4. Litigation hold

On receipt of a written litigation-hold notice from the Firm identifying the Matter or content to preserve, Grounds will preserve responsive Matter data outside the normal deletion cycle for the duration of the hold. The Firm is responsible for promptly notifying Grounds when the hold may be released. Grounds will document the scope and duration of each hold and confirm preservation in writing.

5. Disposition on Firm termination

On termination of the Firm's subscription, the Firm may, within 30 days of termination, request an export of all Firm-controlled Matter content in DOCX (for document content) and JSON (for metadata, redlines, comments, audit logs). Grounds will:

  • Provide the export within 30 days of the request.
  • Delete Matter content from production systems within 60 days of termination.
  • Purge backup copies on the normal rolling backup expiration cycle (up to 35 days).

Litigation-hold preservation under Section 4 overrides the deletion schedule for the held material.

6. Sensitive matter content

Legal work intrinsically involves sensitive facts — deal-sensitive financials, allegations, settlement positions, personal facts about witnesses and parties. The Firm may upload such content as part of authorized use of the Service. The controls in the Security Addendum apply, including tenant isolation, encryption, audit logging, and zero-retention AI inference. The Firm remains responsible for any heightened obligations imposed by court order, protective order, or its own client engagement letter.

7. Subpoena and government-request handling

If Grounds receives a subpoena, warrant, civil-investigative demand, or other government or third-party request directed at the Firm's data, Grounds will:

  • Promptly notify the Firm, unless legally prohibited from doing so (in which case we will notify the Firm as soon as the prohibition lifts).
  • Not voluntarily produce Matter content; we will require valid legal process.
  • At the Firm's direction and reasonable expense, challenge or narrow overbroad requests, including by asserting applicable privileges held by the Firm or its clients.
  • Limit production to the minimum data responsive to the request actually compelled.

8. Ethics compliance

The Firm is responsible for compliance with its bar's rules on the outsourcing of legal services, technology competence, supervision, and client confidentiality — including ABA Model Rule 1.6 (confidentiality of information) and analogous state rules, Model Rule 1.1 Comment 8 (duty of technological competence), Model Rule 5.3 (responsibilities regarding non-lawyer assistance), and any rules of the jurisdictions in which the Firm practices. The Firm is responsible for ensuring that its use of Grounds (including configuration of access controls, Matter membership, and the AI Agent) is consistent with those rules.

Grounds will provide reasonable cooperation to assist the Firm in meeting these obligations, including responses to reasonable due-diligence questionnaires, completion of standard outside-counsel security forms, and access to current versions of this LFA, the Security Addendum, the DPA (available on request), and the Subprocessors page.

9. AI-specific commitments

The commitments in the AI Data Use Policy — zero training on Customer Data, tenant isolation, tenant-scoped operational logs deleted on account deletion, and model transparency — apply to Matter content. The Agent Authorization Terms govern what the Service's AI Agent may do on the Firm's behalf, including the outbound-disclosure allowlist and the requirement for explicit human e-sign action to bind the Firm or a client to substantive terms.

10. Order of precedence

For Firm customers and with respect to privileged Matter content, this LFA prevails over inconsistent terms in the Terms of Service or the DPA. The commercial caps and limitations of liability in the main MSA (including Sections 10 and 11 of the Terms) continue to apply and are not modified by this LFA.

11. Contact

Questions about this LFA? legal@grounds.ai. Security matters affecting Matter content: security@grounds.ai.