01Who we are
Steady Chapter Pty Ltd (ABN to be issued, "Steady Chapter", "we") is an Australian company operating the platform at steadychapter.com. We are based in Sydney, New South Wales.
We are not a law firm and we do not provide legal advice. We are not a clinical or crisis service. The platform connects users to verified third-party Australian solicitors and registered mental-health practitioners; those engagements are governed by the practitioner's own privacy obligations.
02What this covers
This policy applies to your use of the Steady Chapter platform, including the marketing site, the matter workspace, the AI companion, the lawyer marketplace and the calm-support marketplace. It is written to comply with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the thirteen Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).
It does not cover what an independent solicitor or therapist does with information after you book a session with them. Each practitioner has their own privacy policy and professional confidentiality obligations.
03What we collect
Information you give us
- Account information: your name, email address, phone number (if you provide one), and a password.
- Matter context: the parties involved, the type of matter (separation, divorce, parenting, property, child support, family violence, de facto), what is in dispute, your goals and your red lines.
- Matter content: documents, letters, emails, court orders, financial records, photos, voice notes, and any text you type into the platform.
- Drafts and revisions: the AI's reading of inbound correspondence, drafts of replies, your edits, and the version history of each draft.
- Booking information: when you book a lawyer or therapist session, the practitioner you chose, the time, and any pre-call brief approved by you.
Information we collect automatically
- Technical: IP address, device type, browser, operating system, language, and timestamps of requests.
- Usage: page views and feature usage, with no link to specific matter content. We use this only to understand whether the product is helping.
- Errors: stack traces and error context, scrubbed of matter content before they reach us.
Information from third parties
- Practitioners: if a lawyer or therapist you booked sends a written summary or invoice into your matter after the call.
- Identity verification: if we ask you to confirm Australian residence or age, the result of that check (we keep the result, not the underlying ID).
- Payment processor: the success or failure of a transaction, transaction ID and last four digits of a card. We never see or store the full card number.
04Why we collect it
We collect information for the purposes you would reasonably expect, and only those purposes:
- To run your matter workspace and let the AI read and draft against your case.
- To connect you to a solicitor or therapist when you book a session, including sending the pre-call brief you approve.
- To keep the platform secure, prevent abuse, and meet our legal obligations.
- To improve the product. We never use the content of your matter to do this; we use aggregated, de-identified usage signals only.
- To contact you about your account, security or material changes to the service.
We do not sell personal information. Ever.
05Where it's stored
All matter content is stored encrypted at rest in Supabase, hosted in an Australian region (Sydney, AWS ap-southeast-2). Access to matter content is controlled at the database row level and tied to your authenticated session.
Backups are encrypted and retained on Australian infrastructure. Backup copies are deleted within 35 days of a successful deletion request, subject to any legal hold.
07AI processing
The AI companion is built on the Anthropic API (Claude family of models). When the AI reads a letter or drafts a reply for you, the platform sends only the slices of your matter needed for that specific task: the document being read, the parties, the dispute summary, your goals and red lines, and a small number of relevant prior items.
Steady Chapter sends every AI request with the anthropic-data-retention: zero header. Anthropic processes the request to generate a response and then deletes the request and response from its systems. Anthropic does not use your matter content to train models, and we do not have any arrangement permitting them to do so.
We do not log AI prompts or responses to any third-party analytics or observability service. If we need to debug a model interaction, we do so in our own database, with the same protections as the rest of your matter.
Limitations to be candid about: AI models can be wrong. They can misread a deadline, miscount a date, or hallucinate a citation. The 12-hour cooling-off on every draft, and the option to book a real lawyer, exist because the AI is not a lawyer and is not a substitute for one.
08Analytics & cookies
We use the minimum necessary cookies to keep you logged in. We use a privacy-respecting, EU-grade analytics provider for page-level analytics (no cross-site tracking, no IP storage, no fingerprinting). Analytics never receives matter content, identifiers tied to your matter, or anything you typed.
We do not load third-party advertising or tracking scripts.
09How long we keep it
- Matter content: for as long as your account is active. You can delete a matter or your whole account from settings; see Section 11.
- Account information: while your account is active, plus a maximum of 90 days after deletion (for legal and dispute reasons), then permanently deleted.
- Booking records: kept for the period required by Australian tax and consumer law (currently seven years for invoices), separate from matter content.
- Backups: rotating, encrypted, deleted within 35 days of the corresponding live record being deleted.
- Logs: server and security logs are kept for 90 days, scrubbed of matter content.
10Your rights
Under the Privacy Act and the APPs, you have the right to:
- Access the personal information we hold about you.
- Correct anything that is inaccurate.
- Request that we delete your information (subject to limited legal exceptions).
- Withdraw any consent you previously gave us.
- Make a complaint about how we have handled your information.
You can exercise most of these rights from the platform's settings page. For anything else, write to privacy@steadychapter.com.
11Export & deletion
From settings, you can:
- Export your data as a single download containing your account information, every matter, every document you uploaded, every draft, and every booking, in JSON plus original file formats. The export is generated on the fly and emailed to you as a one-time download link.
- Delete a matter or your whole account. Deletion is irreversible. We confirm with a typed phrase before proceeding. Live records are deleted immediately; backups are purged within 35 days.
If you ask us to delete your account but a session you have already paid for has not yet happened, the booking record will be preserved for the practitioner's professional obligations and will be deleted on their schedule, not ours.
12Security
- All traffic to the platform is over HTTPS with modern TLS.
- Matter content is encrypted at rest with AES-256.
- Access to matter content is enforced by row-level security tied to your authenticated session.
- Service-role keys are never exposed to the browser; matter access only happens through authenticated server actions.
- We do not have a "view as user" mode for staff. There is no internal admin path that reads your matter without your explicit consent.
- If you suspect your account has been compromised, write to security@steadychapter.com. If we ever experience a notifiable data breach, we will notify affected users and the OAIC in the timeframes required by law.
13International transfers
Matter content is stored in Australia. The AI inference layer (Anthropic) processes requests in regions Anthropic operates in, which may include the United States, under the zero-retention configuration described in Section 07. By using the platform you consent to that processing for the limited purpose of generating a response to your request.
If we ever change AI providers or regions, we will update this policy and notify existing users before the change takes effect.
14Children
The platform is for adults (eighteen and over). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has created an account or that a parenting matter contains a child's information that should not be on the platform, write to privacy@steadychapter.com and we will investigate.
15Changes to this policy
If we change this policy in a way that materially affects how we handle your information, we will email you and post a banner on the platform at least thirty days before the change takes effect. Minor wording changes (typo fixes, clarifications) we will publish without notice; the "Last updated" date at the top of this page will always reflect the most recent change.
16Contact & complaints
For privacy questions or to exercise any of the rights above, write to privacy@steadychapter.com. We aim to respond within seven days.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992.
Postal address: Steady Chapter Pty Ltd, [registered address to be added], Sydney NSW.