The rules for using Tellbrief

The short version

• Tellbrief helps you prepare for a lawyer. It isn’t a law firm and doesn’t give legal advice.
• Nobody is your lawyer yet. Using Tellbrief doesn’t make anyone your lawyer. A lawyer represents you only once they agree to take on your matter.
• Deadlines keep running. Sending names or a brief doesn’t pause any deadline.
• Tell it straight. Your answers should be accurate as far as you know, and yours to share.
• Check the AI. AI suggestions can be wrong. You can see and change every answer before you send.
• Your brief is yours. Keep it, and share it with any lawyer you choose.
• Use it fairly. Don’t try to get into records that aren’t yours, overload the site or copy its questions.

What Tellbrief is

Tellbrief helps founders get ready for a first conversation with a business lawyer. You send names for a conflict check, answer questions about your business, and get a brief you keep as a PDF. The reviewing lawyer gets the same brief.

The questions, the brief, the guides and the examples on this site are general information to help you prepare. They aren’t legal advice about your situation, and they can’t tell you what the law requires of you. Only a lawyer who has agreed to represent you can do that.

When a lawyer represents you

Sending names, answering questions or sending your brief doesn’t make anyone your lawyer. That includes the reviewing lawyer and Tellbrief’s co-founder who is a lawyer. A lawyer represents you only once they agree to take on your matter. Until then, no one is acting for you or watching your dates.

Tellbrief’s own services, such as the questions, the brief and the guides, aren’t legal services. The protections that come with having a lawyer don’t apply to them, and you shouldn’t assume what you share here is privileged.

A lawyer may decline to review your names or your brief, and doesn’t have to give a reason.

Deadlines

Legal rights can have strict deadlines. Sending names or a brief doesn’t pause any of them, and waiting for a reply doesn’t either. If a date might matter, talk to a lawyer now instead of waiting.

Your part

• You’re at least 18 and using Tellbrief for a business you run, are starting or work for.
• What you tell us is accurate as far as you know, and yours to share. A brief built on wrong facts can point a lawyer the wrong way.
• Until the names clear, you send only what the conflict check asks for.
• You don’t send passwords, source code, customer lists, confidential formulas, messages with a lawyer or documents nobody has asked for. More on what not to send.
• You keep your private link to yourself. It works like a key to your brief.

AI features

Some features use AI: matching an answer you type to the closest choice, suggesting answers from your story when you ask, and picking extra questions when you choose to answer more. AI can be wrong. You can see and change every answer before you send, and what you send is up to you.

AI never decides conflicts, gives legal advice or changes your answers on its own. What AI features send, and to whom.

Fair use

Please don’t:

• try to get into records that aren’t yours, or into the lawyer’s dashboard;
• overload, probe or interfere with the site, or get around its limits;
• copy the question set, or use automated tools to pull content from the site;
• use Tellbrief to gather information about other people or companies;
• send anything you don’t have the right to share, or pretend to be someone else.

The site limits how often parts of it can be used, and we may stop access that breaks these rules.

Who owns what

Your answers and your brief are yours. You let Tellbrief store and process them only to run the service, as Privacy & data use describes. Tellbrief owns the site, its questions, its design and its guides. You may use them to prepare for your own matter.

Changes to the service

We may change, pause or stop parts of Tellbrief. Whatever happens, records are still deleted on the schedule in What we keep. Download your PDF when you send: it’s your copy.

What we don’t promise

Tellbrief is provided as it is and as available. We work to keep it accurate and running, but we don’t promise it will be free of errors, always available, or complete for your situation. A brief can miss an issue that matters, which is one reason to talk to a lawyer. To the extent the law allows, we make no other promises about the service, spoken or implied.

Limits on liability

To the extent the law allows, Tellbrief and its people aren’t liable for indirect or consequential losses from using the site, such as lost profits or lost business, and our total liability for any claim about the site is limited to $100. Some places don’t allow these limits, so they may not all apply to you.

Changes to these terms

When these terms change, we update this page and the date at the top. The terms in effect when you send names for a conflict check apply to that check and the brief that follows it.

Tellbrief runs this site. Tellbrief is not a law firm and does not give legal advice. Using Tellbrief doesn’t create a lawyer-client relationship. Legal advice comes from a licensed lawyer you hire.