Product and intended use
Define the configuration, people, information and tasks being assessed.
Product and plan covered
Public claim only
LegalStep.ai is one of the “LegalCollect MCP Servers” defined in the Terms dated 11 July 2026 (cl 1.1 and the introduction), alongside Urbanstep.ai for strata managers; the Software also includes the separate LegalCollect accounts receivable system. Terms cl 2.2 places the commercial terms in a Proposal that prevails over the Terms on any inconsistency. The product requires an existing Actionstep subscription and connects through Actionstep's supported APIs (llms.txt and setup guide, checked 2026-09-27); Terms cl 1.7(h) states an MCP Server may be provided as an early access or preview service, provided “as is”, and may be “suspended or withdrawn at any time”.
Ask: Will our Proposal name LegalStep.ai specifically, state which tools are enabled for our firm, and remove or qualify the early-access withdrawal right in cl 1.7(h) for the term we are paying for?
Release stage
Public claim only
The home page, the llms.txt page and the Terms all describe the service as early access, checked 2026-09-27: the home page invites firms to “Register your interest” for “your dedicated server details”, llms.txt records availability as “early access — contact via the demo form”, and Terms cl 1.7(h) attaches “as is” treatment and a withdrawal right to early access services. No general-availability date is published.
Ask: What distinguishes early access from general availability for this product, what changes in the contract at that point, and what notice would we get if the service were withdrawn under cl 1.7(h)?
What the server exposes
Public claim only
Per the home page and llms.txt (checked 2026-09-27) the server publishes named tools grouped by permission tier: reads (matter and participant search, matter summaries, custom matter data, matter emails searchable by subject, direction and date range, conflict checks across parties including closed matters, time entries and disbursements, billing settings, rates and invoice totals, unbilled time and WIP across many matters, calendar, file notes, admin-side activity auditing, and two firm-wide reporting tools covering KPI targets, the trust ledger and per-matter financial totals); writes (open matters, add parties, file notes, custom data, time and disbursements, calendar bookings, workflow step advancement, task management, and document generation from the firm's own Actionstep templates into SharePoint); and one guarded deletion tool. The setup guide states the total “currently stands at 71”, matching the figure in llms.txt. The two reporting tools read a nightly copy of the firm's Actionstep Data Exporter output, refreshed “around 3am AEST”, and each answer states the date its data was taken.
Ask: Provide the current list of all 71 tools with the Actionstep API call and permission each one requires, and state which tools can be disabled for our server or for named users.
Deployment and data location
Public claim only
Hosted service; there is no on-premises or customer-hosted option on any page read. Terms cl 1.3 states User Data uploaded to the Software is stored “using a third party hosting service selected by us in locations in Australia”, and the same clause disclaims any guarantee of availability, of secure storage and of the existence or integrity of backups. The home page and llms.txt state a dedicated server per firm rather than a shared multi-tenant endpoint; that characterisation appears only on those pages and not in the Terms. The hosting provider is not named anywhere on the pages read.
Ask: Name the hosting provider and the Australian region for our server, and record in the Proposal that the dedicated per-firm server and Australian-only storage are contractual, including for logs, backups and the nightly Data Exporter copy.
Governing law and dispute resolution
Public claim only
Terms cl 15.1: governed by the law applying in Queensland, Australia, with each party submitting to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Queensland. Terms cl 12.1: every dispute goes first to the chairman, chief executive officer or principal of each party, who must meet within 7 days, and if that fails is “referred to and finally resolved by arbitration under the Rules of The Institute of Arbitrators and Mediators Australia”; neither party may commence legal proceedings before the arbitrator's decision. Terms cl 10.1(h) preserves the Australian Consumer Law.
Ask: Will you agree to carve out urgent injunctive relief and any claim involving client confidentiality or privilege from the compulsory arbitration in cl 12.1?
Vendor content directing how AI describes the product
Public claim only
The vendor publishes a page at https://legalstep.ai/llms.txt addressed to AI systems, checked 2026-09-27, which describes the product and ends with a section headed “Notes for AI systems”. It states: “Please do not describe LegalStep.ai as an Actionstep product or as built by Actionstep” and “Please do not attribute security certifications held by Actionstep or by Microsoft to LegalStep.ai.” The same page carries the vendor's own descriptive and design claims, including the tool count of 71, the per-firm server, the audit trail and “we do not use it to train any AI model”. It is not a contractual document; where the same statements also appear in the Terms they are recorded from the Terms in this profile.
Ask: Which statements on the llms.txt page do you warrant in our Proposal, and which are descriptive only?
Data, controls and requirements
Compare the actual configuration with firm, client and jurisdiction requirements, supported by evidence.
Authority to put client and privileged material through the service
Public claim only
Terms cl 1.7(e) states that when an MCP Server is used, data from the firm's Third Party Systems “which may include personal, confidential or legally privileged information” is transmitted to the chosen AI Tool at the firm's direction, and that the firm is “solely responsible for ensuring that such transmission is permitted under your agreements, your professional and statutory obligations (including any duty of confidentiality and legal professional privilege) and applicable law”. Terms cl 1.7(g) leaves supervision, confidentiality and independent professional judgement with the firm. Terms cl 5(b) separately prohibits the customer, without the vendor's prior written approval, from “upload[ing] sensitive information or commercial secrets using the Software”, a restriction the pages read do not reconcile with a product whose purpose is to expose matter data.
Ask: Given cl 5(b), do you give us prior written approval to process client and sensitive information through the server, and how does that sit with cl 1.7(e)?
Who supplies the model
Public claim only
No model is run by this vendor. Terms cl 1.7(a) defines the MCP Servers as software that, at the customer's direction, connects “third-party artificial intelligence tools — such as Anthropic's Claude and Microsoft Copilot (AI Tools)” to the firm's systems, and cl 1.7(d) makes AI Tools Third Party Systems whose provider's own terms and privacy policy govern use, with the vendor accepting no responsibility for an AI Tool's “collection, use, storage or disclosure of data transmitted to it — including any use of that data for model training under your arrangement with the AI Tool provider”. llms.txt states the product “is not a chatbot and not a separate application” but a server exposing tools to a general-purpose AI assistant. No foundation model, model version or inference region is named on any page read, because the model is the one in the customer's own AI tool.
Ask: Confirm in writing that no model inference is performed by LegalCollect or on your infrastructure, and that the server transmits tool results only to the AI tool the firm has connected.
Subprocessors
Not confirmed
No subprocessor list is published: the site has no trust centre, security page or DPA, and neither the Terms nor the privacy policy names a hosting provider, cloud region or any other processor. Terms cl 1.3 states only that User Data is stored “using a third party hosting service selected by us in locations in Australia”. The privacy policy (11 July 2026) discloses categories rather than names: other companies in the group, “third party service providers and partners”, and “AI tool providers (such as Anthropic or Microsoft) and practice or strata management platforms (such as Actionstep or Urbanise Strata), where you or your organisation direct data to be transmitted to or from them”. Terms cl 1.5 and 7.6 permit Third Party Systems to access User Data as required for interoperation.
Ask: Provide a named subprocessor list for the LegalStep.ai server — hosting, key vault, logging, email and monitoring — with each one's country, and a commitment to notify us before it changes.
Use of customer content for model training
Public claim only
Terms cl 7.3(e): “We do not use User Data to train any artificial intelligence model. However, data that you transmit to an AI Tool through an MCP Server is subject to your own arrangement with that AI Tool provider”. The privacy policy repeats, for the MCP servers, “we do not pool this data across customers, we do not sell it, and we do not use it to train any AI model”. Separately, Terms cl 7.3(a) grants the vendor “a perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, worldwide and royalty-free licence (including the right to sublicense)” over Intellectual Property Rights in User Data for stated purposes, one of which is “benchmarking aspects of the activities of law firms and strata management businesses without identifying you or any client or person to whom the User Data relates”, and others of which are promoting use of the Platform and communicating with Users.
Ask: Will you narrow the cl 7.3(a) licence to what is needed to provide the service, and describe exactly what data the benchmarking use draws on and who sees the result?
Logs, prompts and service improvement
Public claim only
The privacy policy (11 July 2026, incorporated into the Terms by cl 9(b)) states for the MCP servers: “We keep limited technical logs. We retain logs (such as timestamps, request metadata and error information) for security, support and service-improvement purposes”, with no retention period. The home page adds that the server “privately records every request it handles — who, which action, when, and whether it succeeded — using privacy-safe summaries only. Never document contents, never client data”, which is a claim on a marketing page and is not in the Terms or the privacy policy. Nothing on the pages read says whether prompts, tool arguments or tool results are retained, whether any person reviews them, or whether a feedback mechanism exists.
Ask: Are prompts, tool arguments and tool results stored at all, for how long, and does any LegalCollect person or automated process read them for service improvement?
Retention
Public claim only
Terms cl 4(b): after cancellation the licence continues only to the end of the then current billing cycle “to ensure you have an opportunity to retrieve all data you may need”, after which “we will have no responsibility to store or otherwise retain any data” and the customer releases the vendor for any loss arising from that. Terms cl 7.4 states backup practices are maintained without any guarantee against data loss, and cl 1.3(c) disclaims any guarantee that a backup will exist or be usable. The privacy policy states personal data is kept while the relationship continues and for a period afterwards where there is an ongoing business need, then “deleted or anonymised”, with no period given. No retention period is published for logs, the nightly Data Exporter copy, or anything the server holds about a matter.
Ask: State the retention period for each class of data the server holds — request logs, audit records, the nightly Data Exporter copy and any cached Actionstep data — and put it in the Proposal.
Deletion on request and at exit
Not confirmed
No deletion commitment or timeframe for customer data is published. Terms cl 4(b) states only that after the final billing cycle the vendor has no responsibility to retain data; it does not say data will be deleted, by when, or that deletion is confirmed. Terms cl 12.5 addresses transfer rather than deletion. The privacy policy gives individuals a right to “request a copy of your personal data, or ask us to restrict processing your personal data or delete it” by emailing the vendor, and states personal data is deleted or anonymised once the business need ends. Separately, and not about the vendor's own records, the product's single guarded deletion tool deletes one Actionstep record per request: per the home page, the record is read back first, the request is refused if the record does not belong to the named matter, and matters, contacts, bills, emails, workflow steps and documents “can't be deleted at all”.
Ask: Will you commit in the Proposal to delete all of our data, including logs, backups and the nightly Data Exporter copy, within a stated number of days of termination, and to certify the deletion in writing?
Vendor personnel access to firm data
Not confirmed
No statement about which vendor personnel can access a firm's server, its logs or the nightly Data Exporter copy was found on any page read, and there is no security page or trust centre on the site. The only related provisions are Terms cl 9(a), a mutual confidentiality obligation not to use or disclose the other party's Confidential Information without prior written consent, and cl 7.3(d), in which the vendor undertakes to “establish, maintain, enforce and continuously improve safety and security procedures and safeguards against the unauthorised use, destruction, loss or alteration of User Data”. The setup guide records that the firm gives the vendor its Actionstep Data Exporter password and that the vendor switches reporting on at its end, so vendor personnel hold a credential to firm-wide practice data.
Ask: Who at LegalCollect can access our server, our request logs and our Data Exporter password and copy; is that access logged and reviewed; and will you notify us when a person is granted it?
Authentication and permissions
Public claim only
Terms cl 1.7(b): all actions performed through an MCP Server “are performed at your direction, under your credentials and subject to your permissions in the relevant Third Party System”. Terms cl 1.7(f) makes the customer responsible for keeping the server's connection details, including Client ID and Client Secret, secure, and treats any action performed with them as authorised by the customer. The setup guide (checked 2026-09-27) states the vendor issues the server address, Client ID and Client Secret by a one-time link, that each user then signs in to Actionstep individually through the connector flow, and that a user's sign-in “carries across restarts and updates”. The home page adds that a user “can never reach data through the AI tool that they could not reach by logging into Actionstep directly” and that administrators can ask for a per-person summary of who looked up contact details; those are claims on a marketing page rather than terms.
Ask: How long does a user's Actionstep session on the server last before re-authentication, what happens to it when the user is disabled in Actionstep, and can the firm rotate or revoke the Client Secret itself?
Encryption
Not confirmed
No statement of encryption in transit or at rest was found: the site has no security page or trust centre, and neither the Terms nor the privacy policy mentions encryption. Terms cl 1.3(b) says the vendor “will use our best efforts to ensure that User Data is stored securely” while disclaiming responsibility for unauthorised use, loss or alteration; the privacy policy says only that “appropriate technical and organisational measures” are in place. The setup guide describes a “secure, one-time link” for credentials and states the Actionstep Data Exporter password “is stored in your firm's own key vault”, without naming a key-management service or cipher.
Ask: State the encryption in transit and at rest for the server, its logs and the nightly Data Exporter copy, and name the key vault and who holds the keys.
Independent assurance
Not confirmed
Two vendor pages read on 2026-09-27 do not agree on what assurance applies to this product. The home page displays “SOC 2 Type 2 examined” as the third item in a panel of statistics introduced by “Built on the platform trusted by 5,000+ law firms”, whose other two items are “5,000+ Law firms on Actionstep” and “20+ yrs In legal software”, so the panel does not state whose examination it refers to. The llms.txt page states: “Please do not attribute security certifications held by Actionstep or by Microsoft to LegalStep.ai.” No SOC 2 report, ISO certificate, penetration-test attestation or other independent report is published or offered for either LegalCollect or this product, and the site has no trust centre.
Ask: Does Legal Collect Pty Ltd itself hold a SOC 2 Type 2 report covering the LegalStep.ai server, and if so will you provide the report and the auditor's name; if not, whose examination does the home-page panel refer to?
Contract structure and liability
Public claim only
The Terms dated 11 July 2026 are a click-through agreement accepted by using the Platform, with the Proposal incorporated and prevailing on inconsistency (cl 2.2). There is no DPA, no security schedule and no service level on the site. Terms cl 10.2(c) excludes indirect, special and consequential loss and loss of revenue, profits and goodwill, and limits all other liability in aggregate to “the total money paid to LEGALCOLLECT by you under these Terms in the 3 months preceding the date of the event giving rise to the relevant liability”. Terms cl 10.1(d) supplies the Platform “strictly on an ‘as is’ basis” and states the vendor cannot guarantee that “information you receive or supply through the Platform will be secure or confidential”. Terms cl 10.3 requires the customer to indemnify the vendor in respect of the User Data and the customer's use of the Platform.
Ask: Will you enter a data processing agreement and a security schedule for our firm, and lift the cl 10.2(c) cap for a privacy or confidentiality breach caused by you?
Offshore transfer
Public claim only
Two separate flows. For data the vendor stores, Terms cl 1.3 commits storage to “locations in Australia” through an unnamed third-party hosting service. For data the firm sends to its AI tool, Terms cl 1.7(e) states that data from the firm's systems, which may include personal, confidential or legally privileged information, “is transmitted to your chosen AI Tool at your direction”, and cl 1.7(d) makes that provider's own terms govern its handling; the privacy policy lists AI tool providers “such as Anthropic or Microsoft” among the parties data may be disclosed to when the firm directs it. Neither document names a country for that leg or states any restriction on it, and neither contains a cross-border disclosure clause of the kind Australian Privacy Principle 8 addresses.
Ask: For each AI tool you support, in which countries is our data processed once it leaves the server, and will you record in the Proposal that your own storage and logging stay in Australia?
Incident notification
Public claim only
Terms cl 9(c) requires each party to “promptly notify the other party if it learns of any potential, actual or suspected loss, misappropriation or unauthorised access to, or disclosure or use of Confidential Information or other compromise of the security, confidentiality, or integrity of Confidential Information”, and cl 9(d) requires the notifying party to investigate and to assist the other party's investigation. No notification timeframe is stated, the obligation is framed around Confidential Information rather than personal information, and neither document mentions the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) or an incident-response or status page.
Ask: Will you commit to a stated notification period — for example 24 or 48 hours — for any incident affecting our data, and to give us the information we need to assess an eligible data breach?
Change of terms and of the tool surface
Public claim only
Two kinds of change. Terms cl 11 sets a change procedure for the Terms: a notice posted on the website or Platform for 30 consecutive days, notice by email, a 30-day window for the customer to make submissions which the vendor must take into account “although we are not under any obligation to modify the proposed changes unless they are unreasonable”, and a right to cease using the Platform without penalty at the end of that period. Terms cl 6 separately has the customer agree “that we may change any features of the Platform at any time on notice to you”, and cl 10.1(c) makes updates part of the Subscription while allowing increased fees for major changes the customer requests. For the tool surface, the setup guide states that “a new release can add actions, or change what an existing action accepts”, that the change reaches a user only when they remove and re-add the server because the tool list is read once at connection, and that v1.17.0 changed the matter-email action. A release notes page is published and was not read in this pass.
Ask: How will you notify us before a release changes or removes a tool our staff rely on, and can we pin our server to a release version while we test?
Exit and data portability
Public claim only
Terms cl 4(b): on cancellation the licence runs to the end of the then current billing cycle so the customer can retrieve data it needs, after which the vendor has no obligation to retain anything. Terms cl 12.5: where a Subscription is cancelled or terminated the customer may request in writing that the vendor transfer its User Data, and “we will use best efforts to comply with your request, but such transfer will incur a fee determined at our absolute discretion”. Terms cl 7.2 makes access to User Data contingent on full payment of Fees. Terms cl 12.2(b) provides that on termination by the vendor for breach or insolvency the customer must pay the remainder of the Subscription Period's Fees as if the agreement had not been terminated. Because the system of record remains Actionstep, the material at risk on exit is what the server itself holds rather than the firm's matter data.
Ask: What format would a cl 12.5 transfer take, what would it cost, and will you cap or waive that fee and set a maximum turnaround in the Proposal?
Connections into firm systems
Public claim only
Terms cl 1.5 states third-party services such as Actionstep, Urbanise Strata and the AI Tools may be integrated with or connected to the Platform and that their terms may apply; cl 7.6 has the customer agree the vendor “may allow Third Party Systems to access your User Data as required for the interoperation of such Third Party Systems with the Platform” and disclaims responsibility for disclosure, modification or deletion resulting from that access. Per llms.txt and the setup guide the connections are: Actionstep through its supported APIs under each user's login, with no change to the firm's Actionstep configuration; the firm's chosen AI tool through the per-firm server address with a Client ID and Client Secret; Microsoft 365 or Entra ID and SharePoint for the Document Merger only, via a Microsoft Graph Sites.Selected grant that a Microsoft 365 administrator approves for named sites; and the Actionstep Data Exporter, for which the firm hands over the export password and a nominated service login's user id.
Ask: For the Document Merger, which SharePoint sites does the Sites.Selected grant cover, is the access read-only, and can the grant be revoked by us without breaking the rest of the server?
External retrieval
Not confirmed
Nothing on the pages read states whether the server can reach any resource outside the firm's Actionstep tenancy, its nightly Data Exporter copy and the nominated SharePoint sites, and the published tool list contains no search-the-internet tool. Whether the connected AI tool performs its own web search alongside a tool call is a property of that tool, which Terms cl 1.7(d) places outside the vendor's responsibility, and it was not verified here for any of Claude, Microsoft Copilot or the Word and Excel add-ins.
Ask: Does any tool on the server make an outbound request to a destination other than Actionstep, our SharePoint sites and your own infrastructure, and can web search be disabled in the AI tool for our connector?
Control over write and delete actions
Public claim only
The design the firm would rely on is published on the home page and in llms.txt rather than in the Terms (both checked 2026-09-27): tools are classified reads, writes and guarded, with the classification described as “enforced, not cosmetic”; deletion is “one record at a time, read back before it is destroyed, never in bulk”, is refused “if it doesn't belong to the matter you named”, and matters, contacts, bills, emails, workflow steps and documents “can't be deleted at all”; and administrators are emailed automatically if someone runs an unusually high volume of contact lookups, which “alerts; it never blocks normal work”. What the Terms do establish is where responsibility sits: cl 1.7(b) makes every action, including creating and updating records, performed at the customer's direction under the customer's credentials, and makes the customer “solely responsible … for reviewing and confirming any change before it is made, and for all records created, modified or transmitted as a result”, with the vendor having “no liability for any change made to a Third Party System” at a user's direction.
Ask: Can a write or delete tool be turned off per firm or per user, is there a confirmation step before a write is committed, and will you warrant the deletion guardrails in the Proposal?
Human review of output
Public claim only
Terms cl 1.7(c) states that AI Tools generate content using probabilistic methods and that outputs “may be inaccurate, incomplete, out of date or misleading”, are not legal, financial or other professional advice, carry no warranty as to accuracy, completeness or fitness for purpose, and “You must independently verify any Output before relying or acting on it”, with the vendor having no liability for reliance on an output. Terms cl 1.7(b) likewise puts reviewing and confirming any change before it is made on the customer, and cl 1.7(g) leaves supervision and independent professional judgement with the firm. Terms cl 10.1(f) extends the disclaimer of legal information to anything produced through an MCP Server or an AI Tool. The vendor publishes a related accuracy rule on the home page — that an unresolved amount is excluded from a total and the total says so — but no in-product review or approval step is published.
Ask: Which tools produce output that a person must check before it is filed or sent, and does the server mark a generated document or reported figure so a reviewer can tell it came through the AI tool?
