SternBench Authority Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy applies to SternBench Authority, including the ChatGPT app and Model Context Protocol ("MCP") service operated at authority-mcp.sternbench.com, and to related SternBench source links returned by the service.

SternBench Authority is operated by 1577750 B.C. Ltd., doing business as SternBench. For this service, 1577750 B.C. Ltd. is the organization responsible for the personal information described in this policy. Questions can be directed to founder@sternbench.com.

SternBench Authority is a legal research and authority-retrieval aid. It is not legal advice, not a full citator, not a complete appellate-history or good-law service, and not a substitute for professional legal judgment.

What SternBench Authority Does

SternBench Authority lets authorized users search and retrieve legal authorities from the SternBench authority corpus through ChatGPT and MCP-compatible clients. Depending on the query and available source material, it may return case metadata, authority summaries, citations, passages, paragraph references or pinpoints, propositions, caveats, and links to SternBench Search source pages.

The service is read-only. It retrieves authority information and source links; it does not modify court records, user documents, third-party systems, or external public platforms.

Information We Process

When you use SternBench Authority, we may process the following information.

Research queries and tool inputs

We process the legal research queries, propositions, case references, jurisdiction filters, and other task-specific inputs submitted through ChatGPT or another MCP-compatible client. These inputs are used to search and retrieve relevant authorities, passages, citations, and source links from the SternBench corpus.

Authority and source data returned

We process and return legal authority data from SternBench systems, including case names, neutral citations, jurisdiction and court information, authority summaries, propositions, passages, paragraph references or pinpoints, caveats, and SternBench Search links.

Authentication and account data

SternBench Authority uses authentication and access controls for authorized pilot, review, and user access. We may process account information made available by ChatGPT/OpenAI, Clerk, or another identity provider, such as email address, profile information, OAuth token claims, account identifiers, organization identifiers, and allowlist status.

SternBench Authority does not need your ChatGPT password, Clerk password, one-time login codes, or payment card information. Authentication credentials and login verification are handled by the identity provider or client surface, not by the authority-retrieval tools themselves.

Operational and security data

We may process operational logs and security data such as timestamps, request metadata, tool names, response status, latency, error details, correlation identifiers, authentication and authorization outcomes, allowlist decisions, user agent information, IP-derived network information, and abuse-prevention signals.

We use this data to operate the service, enforce access controls, troubleshoot errors, monitor reliability, investigate security events, detect abuse, and respond to support requests.

Information the service does not intentionally collect

SternBench Authority is not designed to collect payment information, precise location data, medical information, or user-uploaded documents. The current MCP service does not support document upload, file storage, or write actions.

How We Use Information

We use information processed by SternBench Authority to:

• provide legal research and authority-retrieval functionality;
• return relevant authorities, passages, citations, paragraph pinpoints, and source links;
• authenticate users and enforce authorized-access controls;
• maintain, debug, secure, and improve reliability of the service;
• detect abuse, prompt-injection attempts, excessive traffic, or unauthorized access attempts;
• generate aggregate operational metrics; and
• respond to support, privacy, security, or review requests.

SternBench does not use SternBench Authority user queries or account data to train AI models. ChatGPT/OpenAI processing is governed by the terms, privacy commitments, and settings applicable to the ChatGPT or OpenAI account through which you use the app.

How We Share Information

We may share limited information with service providers that help us operate SternBench Authority, including:

• cloud hosting and infrastructure providers;
• identity and authentication providers, including Clerk;
• OpenAI/ChatGPT as the client surface through which the app is accessed;
• security, monitoring, logging, and operational tooling providers; and
• professional advisers or legal/compliance reviewers where necessary.

We do not sell user research queries, account data, or operational logs.

We may disclose information if required by law, legal process, security investigation, or to protect the rights, safety, and integrity of SternBench, users, or the service.

Data Retention

SternBench Authority is designed not to create a persistent SternBench history of user legal research queries or user-specific authority results.

When you submit a query through ChatGPT or another MCP-compatible client, SternBench Authority processes the query transiently to retrieve authorities, passages, citations, paragraph pinpoints, and source links from the SternBench corpus. SternBench Authority does not store user-specific query history or result history in an application database.

The MCP service may keep short-lived, in-memory fetch handles so that a selected search result can be fetched during the same research flow. These handles are temporary, are not written to a database, and currently expire after 15 minutes. They may also disappear earlier if the service restarts.

SternBench Authority writes minimal operational and security logs for service operation, debugging, reliability, abuse prevention, and support. These logs are designed to record metadata such as request path, method, status, duration, protocol/header presence, and error category. They are not designed to include raw legal research queries, returned authority payloads, bearer tokens, OAuth access or refresh tokens, passwords, one-time codes, or payment information.

SternBench Authority does not intentionally store user-uploaded documents because the current MCP service does not support document upload.

Authentication and account records, such as review or pilot account email addresses, may be retained by SternBench and its identity provider for access control, security, and support while the account remains authorized. OpenAI/ChatGPT and Clerk may retain account, session, and client-surface data according to their own policies and user settings.

If you contact us at founder@sternbench.com, we may retain the support correspondence for as long as needed to respond and maintain appropriate business records. You may request deletion of SternBench Authority access records or support records associated with your use, subject to legal, security, and operational requirements.

Security

SternBench Authority uses authentication, allowlist controls during pilot and review access, server-side validation, read-only tool design, and operational monitoring. We design the service to request only the account and query information needed to provide authority retrieval.

No internet-connected service is perfectly secure. If you believe you have found a security issue, contact us promptly at founder@sternbench.com.

Your Choices and Requests

You may contact us at founder@sternbench.com to ask privacy questions or request access, correction, deletion, or other handling of information associated with your SternBench Authority use. We may need to verify your identity before responding to certain requests.

For privacy choices related to ChatGPT or your OpenAI account, use the controls and contact paths provided by OpenAI. For privacy choices related to Clerk authentication, use the account or authentication flow provided for SternBench Authority or contact us.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy as SternBench Authority changes, as the app moves from authorized pilot or review access to broader availability, or as legal, security, or operational requirements evolve. The "Last updated" date above reflects the latest published version.

Contact

For privacy, security, or support questions about SternBench Authority, contact:

founder@sternbench.com