Usage Policy

This Usage Policy sits alongside our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. By creating a Lex Protocol account, you confirm that you have read and agree to all three. This policy describes the obligations you (the legal practitioner) take on as a condition of using Lex Protocol, and the role Lex Protocol plays in supporting — but not replacing — your professional practice.

1. About Lex Protocol and Avci Technologies

Lex Protocol is provided by Avci Technologies Pty Ltd (ABN 69 688 146 581), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. References to “Lex Protocol”, “we”, “us” or “our” mean Avci Technologies Pty Ltd. References to “you”, “the practitioner” or “the user” mean the registered Lex Protocol user.

What Lex Protocol is

Lex Protocol is an AI-assisted dictation, transcription and drafting tool. It listens to a consultation, meeting or dictation that you record, transcribes it, and produces a draft file note, follow-up correspondence, or related document for you to review.

What Lex Protocol is not

Lex Protocol is not your matter management system. It is not the official client file or system of record. It does not provide legal advice, and its outputs are not a substitute for your professional judgement. It does not handle trust money or carry out any function regulated as legal practice.

2. Who can use Lex Protocol

Lex Protocol is intended only for:

• Australian legal practitioners holding a current practising certificate, in good standing;
• Law-firm employees (paralegals, law clerks, support staff) acting under the supervision of a supervising principal or solicitor responsible for the work;
• Law students undertaking supervised legal practice or placement under a qualified supervisor;
• Equivalent legal practitioners admitted to practise in another common-law jurisdiction whose use of Lex Protocol is consistent with the conduct rules of that jurisdiction.

By creating an account, you represent that you (or, if you are acting on behalf of a firm, the practitioners in that firm) meet one of the above criteria. Lex Protocol is not designed for, and must not be used by, persons who are not entitled to engage in legal practice.

3. Lex Protocol’s role and yours

3.1 You are the controller of client information

Under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles, the entity that decides why and how personal information about a client is collected, used and held is the controller of that information. You — the practitioner or the firm — are the controller of client information. You decide which client conversations are recorded, which file notes are kept, and what those notes are used for.

3.2 Lex Protocol acts as your service provider

Lex Protocol is a service provider acting on your instructions. We process client information solely for the purpose of providing the transcription, dictation and drafting service to you. We do not use client information for any independent purpose, do not sell or share it, and do not use it (and contractually require our sub-processors not to use it) to train artificial-intelligence models. Lex Protocol’s role is comparable to that of a transcription provider or document-assembly tool engaged by your firm.

For the purposes of:

• the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles — we act as your service provider in respect of client personal information;
• the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) — we act as your data processor within the meaning of Article 28, processing personal data only on your documented instructions and as set out in the data-processing terms in our Terms of Service;
• the California Consumer Privacy Act / California Privacy Rights Act (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.140) — we act as a service provider, do not “sell” or “share” personal information as those terms are defined, and process personal information only for the business purposes you direct.

3.3 You retain the official client file

Solicitors are required by their professional conduct rules and applicable legislation to retain client files for prescribed periods — generally at least seven (7) years from the conclusion of the matter, and longer for trust account records and certain matter types (for example, wills, conveyancing and matters involving minors). The applicable rules include, depending on your jurisdiction, the Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules, the Legal Profession Uniform Law (in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia) and equivalent legislation in other states and territories.

That retention obligation is yours to satisfy — in your firm’s matter management system, document management system, or physical file store. It is not satisfied by data held in Lex Protocol. Lex Protocol is a drafting tool and is not designed for long-term record storage. Before deleting your Lex Protocol account, clearing data within the app, or relying on Lex Protocol as your sole source of record, you must ensure that any file note, transcript, correspondence or other artefact you are required to retain has been exported from Lex Protocol and stored in your firm’s permanent records.

Lex Protocol may delete inactive account data, soft-deleted accounts after the 30-day recovery window, and other data in accordance with our Privacy Policy. We are not responsible for the loss of any file note, transcript or other artefact that you failed to export to your own records.

4. Recording and consent — your responsibility

Recording laws differ materially between Australian states and territories. Without limiting your independent obligation to know and comply with the law applicable to you, you acknowledge that:

• In New South Wales (Surveillance Devices Act 2007 (NSW)), Victoria (Surveillance Devices Act 1999 (Vic)), Western Australia (Surveillance Devices Act 1998 (WA)), Tasmania (Listening Devices Act 1991 (Tas)), the Australian Capital Territory (Listening Devices Act 1992 (ACT)) and the Northern Territory (Surveillance Devices Act (NT)), it is generally an offence to record a private conversation without the consent of all principal parties, subject to limited statutory exceptions.
• In Queensland (Invasion of Privacy Act 1971 (Qld)) and South Australia (Surveillance Devices Act 2016 (SA)), the rules differ and in some circumstances a party to a conversation may lawfully record without the other parties’ consent — but separate restrictions may apply to publication or further use of the recording.
• The federal Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (Cth) prohibits the interception of communications passing over a telecommunications system; consent and other exceptions are narrow.

As a condition of using Lex Protocol, you agree that, at all times and in respect of each recording:

• You will independently determine, and comply with, the recording law applicable to you, the other participants, and the location of the recording;
• You will obtain informed consent from each person whose voice or words will be recorded or transcribed through Lex Protocol, where any applicable law (including any rule of professional conduct) requires that consent;
• You will inform the recorded person that an AI-assisted tool is being used to transcribe and draft from the recording, and what kinds of information will be processed, where required by law or by your professional conduct rules;
• You will explain that audio and transcript data is processed by Lex Protocol’s overseas sub-processors (currently including providers located in the United States), and obtain consent to that overseas disclosure where required by Australian Privacy Principle 8 or any other applicable law;
• You will respect a person’s refusal to be recorded, and not use Lex Protocol for that conversation;
• You will keep a contemporaneous record of consent in a manner consistent with your professional obligations and your firm’s policies;
• You will not use Lex Protocol to record any conversation that you are not legally entitled to record, including any communication that is subject to a statutory prohibition or court order against recording.

If a person later withdraws consent, you are responsible for acting on that withdrawal — including deleting the relevant recording and any derived transcript or note from Lex Protocol via the in-app controls, and notifying us if you require additional assistance.

5. Consent to processing of sensitive information

Legal matter content frequently contains information that is treated as “sensitive” or “special category” data under privacy law — for example, information about health (personal-injury, family law, guardianship matters), criminal history (criminal-defence matters), racial or ethnic origin, religious or political views, sexual orientation, union membership, biometric data, or information about children. The collection and processing of this kind of information attracts heightened legal requirements:

• Under Australian Privacy Principle 3.3, sensitive information may generally only be collected with the individual’s consent (subject to limited exceptions);
• Under Article 9 of the General Data Protection Regulation, processing of special-category data requires the data subject’s explicit consent or another specific lawful basis;
• The California Consumer Privacy Act recognises a category of “sensitive personal information” and gives California residents the right to limit its use and disclosure (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.121).

By creating a Lex Protocol account, you:

• Confirm that you have, or will, obtain any consent required from your client (or another lawful basis) before processing the client’s sensitive or special-category information through Lex Protocol;
• Consent, on your own behalf, to Lex Protocol processing the sensitive information you and your client choose to introduce, solely for the documented purposes set out in our Privacy Policy;
• Confirm that you have considered whether any of your matters involve information that you ought not to process through a third-party service provider at all, and have excluded that information accordingly.

Lex Protocol does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16. If you act for a child client, you are responsible for any parental or guardian consent required under Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), Article 8 GDPR, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) or any other applicable law.

6. Legal professional privilege and confidentiality

You acknowledge that you are responsible for preserving legal professional privilege and your duty of confidentiality to your clients. Using Lex Protocol is no different in principle from using any third-party drafting, transcription or document-assembly service: it requires careful judgement to avoid waiver of privilege or breach of confidentiality.

In particular:

• You should consider whether disclosure of privileged content to Lex Protocol and its sub-processors (which are bound by confidentiality but are external service providers) is consistent with your client’s instructions and the rules of privilege applicable to the matter;
• You must not use Lex Protocol to record or process any communication that you are obliged to keep separate from third-party service providers (for example, certain communications subject to a court order or to specific client instructions);
• You remain responsible for assessing whether the cross-border processing described in our Privacy Policy is consistent with your client’s instructions and any client-specific confidentiality undertakings.

We take reasonable steps to protect the confidentiality and security of information you process through Lex Protocol, including encryption at rest and in transit, contractual confidentiality obligations on sub-processors, and the controls described in our Security Policy. Those steps support, but do not replace, your independent professional duty.

7. Cross-border processing — your acknowledgement on signup

Lex Protocol relies on a small number of overseas sub-processors to deliver core functionality. These are disclosed in detail in our Privacy Policy and Security Policy and currently include:

• Deepgram (United States) — voice-to-text transcription;
• OpenAI (United States) — AI drafting from transcripts and structuring of file notes;
• Stripe (United States / Australia) — subscription billing;
• RevenueCat (United States) — mobile in-app purchase reconciliation;
• Sentry (United States) — application error monitoring (with personal information scrubbed before transmission).

By signing up to Lex Protocol you:

• Acknowledge that your personal information, and the client information you process through Lex Protocol, will be disclosed to these overseas sub-processors for the purposes described in the Privacy Policy;
• Consent, on your own behalf, to that overseas disclosure for the purpose of providing the service;
• Confirm that you have, or will, obtain your client’s informed consent to that overseas disclosure where any applicable law or rule of professional conduct requires that consent.

We take reasonable steps to require our overseas sub-processors to handle information in accordance with applicable privacy law, including through written data-processing agreements and contractual no-AI-training commitments. For transfers of personal data of European Union or United Kingdom data subjects to our United States sub-processors, we rely on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses (and, where applicable, the UK International Data Transfer Addendum), together with supplementary technical measures such as encryption in transit and at rest. We do not authorise any sub-processor to use your data, or your clients’ data, to train artificial-intelligence models.

8. Your professional obligations

Lex Protocol is a tool. It does not relieve you of any of your professional, regulatory or ethical duties. As a condition of using Lex Protocol, you acknowledge that you remain bound by:

• The conduct rules applicable to your jurisdiction, including (as adopted in your state or territory) the Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules, the Legal Profession Uniform Law (in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia), or the corresponding Legal Profession Act in your jurisdiction;
• Your duties of competence, diligence, confidentiality, independence, candour to the court, and loyalty to your client;
• Your obligations in respect of conflicts of interest, privilege, and trust money (Lex Protocol does not, and is not designed to, hold or handle any client trust money or trust property);
• The Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles, where they apply to your practice;
• The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth), where it applies to your practice;
• Any specific direction, order or undertaking applicable to a matter, including court orders restricting use or publication of recordings or transcripts.

If any provision of this Usage Policy appears to conflict with your professional obligations, your professional obligations prevail. You must not use Lex Protocol in a way that would put you in breach of them.

Facilitating your clients’ privacy rights

You remain the controller of your client information and are responsible for responding to your client’s requests to access, correct, delete, or restrict the processing of their personal information — including any rights they have under Australian Privacy Principles 12 and 13, Articles 15–22 of the GDPR, or the California Consumer Privacy Act. Lex Protocol provides in-app controls for you to view, export, correct and delete records, which you can use to fulfil those requests. We will provide reasonable assistance where you require it; we will not respond to a client privacy request directly — clients should be directed to you as their solicitor / controller.

9. AI limitations and your review obligation

You acknowledge and agree that:

• AI-generated transcriptions, file notes, summaries, correspondence and other drafted content may contain errors, mishearings, omissions, fabrications, hallucinations or formatting inaccuracies;
• Lex Protocol is designed to structure and summarise what was said during a recorded conversation or dictation; it is not designed to provide legal advice, to suggest legal arguments the practitioner did not make, or to generate citations of case law or legislation that were not stated by the practitioner;
• If you become aware of an AI output that appears to introduce information that was not stated during the recording — including any apparent reference to a case, statute, regulation or factual matter that you did not raise — you must not rely on it. You should correct or discard the output and may report the issue to us at support@lexprotocol.co;
• You remain solely responsible for the accuracy, completeness, and professional appropriateness of any document, file note, correspondence or other artefact that you adopt from Lex Protocol and use in your practice;
• You will not adopt an AI output as a file note, as correspondence to a client, as a submission to a court, or as any other professional work product without first reviewing it in full.

Lex Protocol does not provide legal advice. AI outputs do not constitute legal advice, professional recommendations, or any opinion on the merits of a matter.

10. Acceptable use

You agree to use Lex Protocol only for legitimate legal-practice purposes within your professional practice. You expressly agree not to:

• Use Lex Protocol for any unlawful or unethical purpose, or in a way that breaches your professional conduct rules;
• Record or process information about any person whose consent you have not obtained where that consent is required by law or by your professional conduct rules;
• Use Lex Protocol to record any conversation or communication that you are not legally entitled to record;
• Use Lex Protocol for purposes outside legitimate legal practice (for example, for general personal note-taking, recording non-professional meetings, or any recording for which you do not have a lawful purpose);
• Use Lex Protocol to engage in the unauthorised practice of law, or to provide what amounts to legal advice in a jurisdiction in which you are not admitted to practise;
• Share login credentials or allow any unauthorised person to access your account;
• Use Lex Protocol to process client trust money or to perform any function regulated as legal practice that Lex Protocol is not designed to perform;
• Reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to derive the source code of Lex Protocol or any of its components;
• Use automated systems, scripts, or bots to interact with Lex Protocol, except as expressly permitted by us in writing;
• Attempt to access data belonging to other users of Lex Protocol, or to interfere with the security or integrity of the service.

11. Account security

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. You agree to:

• Use a unique email address and protect access to it (we sign you in via one-time codes delivered to your email);
• Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) in Settings — we strongly recommend this for any user handling client information;
• Notify us immediately at security@lexprotocol.co if you suspect any unauthorised access to your account;
• Sign out from shared or public devices after each session.

12. Limitation of liability and indemnity

To the maximum extent permitted by law, and without limiting any provision of our Terms of Service:

• Lex Protocol is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis;
• Avci Technologies is not liable for any loss arising from your failure to obtain any legally required consent before recording, your failure to comply with any law applicable to the recording or processing of a conversation, your failure to review an AI output before adopting it, your failure to comply with your professional conduct rules, your failure to retain client records as required by law, or your failure to export records from Lex Protocol before deleting your account or clearing data;
• You indemnify Avci Technologies against any claim, loss, damage, fine or penalty arising from your breach of this Usage Policy or from any act or omission of yours that breaches an applicable law or professional rule.

Nothing in this Usage Policy excludes any consumer guarantee or other right that cannot be lawfully excluded under the Australian Consumer Law or any other applicable law.

13. Suspension and termination for breach

We may suspend, restrict, or terminate your access to Lex Protocol if we reasonably believe you have breached this Usage Policy, our Privacy Policy or our Terms of Service, or if we are required to do so by law or by a regulator. Where reasonably practicable and lawful, we will give you notice and an opportunity to remedy the breach before suspending or terminating access.

You may terminate your account at any time via the in-app account deletion flow. On termination, our handling of your data is governed by our Privacy Policy. Before termination, you must export any data you are required to retain.

14. Changes to this policy

We may update this Usage Policy from time to time. Where changes are material, we will notify you by email to the address associated with your account, and by an in-app notification, before the changes take effect. Your continued use of Lex Protocol after the effective date of an updated Usage Policy constitutes acceptance of the updated terms. If you do not accept the updated terms, you may terminate your account.

15. Contact