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Legal

Privacy Policy.

Family-law context is the most sensitive material a person carries. This policy explains what Steady Chapter collects about you and your matter, why, where it lives, and how to take it back.

Last updated: 31 July 2026 Australian Privacy Principles Steady Chapter Pty Ltd

01Who we are

Steady Chapter ("Steady Chapter", "we") is an Australian software service operating 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, counselling, or crisis service.

02What this covers

This policy applies to your use of the Steady Chapter marketing site, matter workspace, mailbox import, and AI companion. It is intended to align with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles.

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, 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.
  • Mailbox connection information: the mailbox address, provider scopes, sync status, and an encrypted refresh token when you choose to connect Gmail or Outlook.

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

  • Connected mailbox providers: correspondence and attachments returned by Gmail or Outlook within the access you approve.

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 import correspondence from a Gmail or Outlook account you choose to connect.
  • 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.

Steady Chapter does not currently maintain a separate customer-restorable backup. We will update this policy before managed backups contain customer matter data.

06Who can see it

Only you, by default. Specifically:

  • You see all of your matter content.
  • Microsoft Azure AI processes the slices of your matter needed to answer a question or draft a reply (see Section 07). Microsoft may retain content that its automated abuse-monitoring systems flag for limited review, as described below.
  • Google or Microsoft provides mailbox content only when you connect that service and approve the requested read access. Steady does not request permission to send mail.
  • Steady Chapter staff do not access matter content. Engineering staff may access infrastructure metadata and aggregated usage. If a support engineer ever needs to read a specific record (for example, to investigate data corruption), we will ask for your explicit permission first.
  • Law enforcement and courts only with a valid Australian warrant, subpoena or production order. We will tell you about any such request unless legally prohibited from doing so.

We do not share matter content with advertisers, data brokers, or any other third party.

07AI processing

Steady Chapter uses GPT-5.6 Terra through Microsoft Azure AI Foundry. Our Azure AI resource is located in Australia East. The Terra deployment uses Azure's Global Standard service, which means Microsoft may process an AI request in an Azure region outside Australia to provide availability and capacity. When the AI reads a letter or drafts a reply, the platform sends only the matter context needed for that task.

Microsoft states that prompts and completions sent to Azure Direct Models are not available to OpenAI or other model providers and are not used to train foundation models without permission. Azure's automated abuse-monitoring systems may temporarily store and review prompts or completions flagged as potentially abusive. Steady Chapter has not claimed or enabled zero-data-retention status for this deployment.

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 exists 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 also use a first-party anonymous identifier to count broad product screens and activation steps. We do not store IP addresses, user agents, account ids, matter ids, document ids, free text, or anything you typed in analytics. Browser "Do Not Track" is respected.

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.
  • Backups: Steady Chapter does not currently maintain a separate customer-restorable backup. Infrastructure providers may keep internal disaster-recovery copies under their own retention controls.
  • 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 ZIP downloaded directly from settings. It contains a readable matter brief, JSON data, and the original attachment and raw-mail files Steady still holds.
  • Delete a matter or close your whole account. Closure removes your live matter data, files, mailbox tokens, profile, and login after a typed confirmation. Deletion is irreversible.

The deletion flow removes the records and files available to Steady Chapter from the live service. An infrastructure provider may retain an internal disaster-recovery copy under its own retention controls.

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 at rest is stored in Australia. AI requests use Microsoft Azure AI's Global Standard deployment and may be processed in an Azure region outside Australia for the limited purpose of generating the response you requested. Microsoft may also process limited flagged content for abuse monitoring as described in Section 07.

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.

For formal correspondence, contact us by email and we will provide the appropriate postal details.