Case Exchange
Last updated: Not yet in force
These terms are an agreement between you and Case Exchange (“we”, “us”, the “platform”). They cover your use of this website and everything it does.
By creating an account you accept them. If you are using the platform on behalf of a firm, you confirm you are authorised to accept them for that firm.
For counsel to decide
The operating entity, its state of formation and its notice address are not yet settled and appear here as a placeholder.
The platform is software. It lets a licensed attorney describe a civil matter they are not taking forward, lets other licensed attorneys offer to take it on, and prepares the paperwork the two of them then sign.
We are not a law firm. We do not practise law, we do not give legal advice, and nothing on this platform is legal advice. Using it creates no attorney-client relationship between you and us.
We are not a party to your referral. The arrangement between two attorneys, including the division of any fee, is agreed directly between them. We do not set those terms, negotiate them, or take any share of any legal fee.
We never hold client money. No client funds, settlement proceeds or legal fees pass through this platform at any point.
We do not supervise, direct or vouch for the work any attorney does on a matter. Once two attorneys are introduced, what happens on the case is between them, their client and their own professional obligations.
Accounts are for attorneys admitted to practise in a jurisdiction the platform supports. Today that is California only.
You must be at least 18, using the platform for your own practice, and not barred from using it under any applicable law or by any prior suspension by us.
Your account is yours alone. Do not share your sign-in details, and tell us promptly if you believe somebody else has used them.
Anyone may create an account and browse. Two actions require verification first: posting a case and submitting a proposal.
To verify an account we do two things:
We keep the result of that check, the name it returned and a reference number. We do not keep your identity document, any image of it, its number, or your date of birth. Those stay with the identity service.
Some information on your profile is simply what you typed and is not checked by anybody: your firm name and the counties you practise in are examples. Where we show your details to another attorney, we distinguish what we verified from what you told us.
Verification is not a guarantee. It is a check against public records and an identity document at a point in time. It is not an assessment of competence, character or fitness, and you must not describe it as one.
We re-check bar status periodically. If your licence stops being active, your ability to post cases and submit proposals stops with it.
A public case listing must not identify your client or anybody else. Do not include names, addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers, email addresses, case numbers, incident dates or anything else that would let a reader work out who is involved.
The platform is built around this. Listings are visible to attorneys who have not been matched to your case and who owe your client nothing. Identifying detail is released only after a match, and only to the attorney who paid to take the matter on.
You are responsible for what you write. Only you know what your client would consent to being shared, what is privileged, and what would be recognisable to somebody who already knows the matter. We cannot check that and do not try to.
You must have whatever consent or authority you need before offering a matter to another attorney, and before releasing anything about it once matched.
An attorney who wants a case submits a proposal with the terms they are offering. The attorney who posted it may accept one proposal, decline any, or do nothing.
Accepting a proposal is the moment a match is made. Before either attorney commits, each is shown the other’s name, bar number, firm, year of admission, current bar status and a link to their State Bar record, so they can check for themselves.
Acceptance alone charges nothing and releases nothing. The match completes when the accepting attorney’s counterpart pays the fee described below. If that does not happen within 7 days, the acceptance ends by itself, nothing is charged, and the case stays available.
The platform is free to join, browse, post and propose on. There is one charge: a flat fee of $100, paid by the attorney taking a case on. The attorney who posted the case never pays anything.
The fee is a fixed amount. It is not a percentage of anything and is never calculated from a settlement, a recovery, a legal fee or the value of a matter.
The fee is for access, not for an outcome. It is charged when the match is made. It does not depend on whether the client signs, whether the matter is retained, whether the case resolves, or what it resolves for. It is not a share of any legal fee and is not contingent on one.
We may change the fee. A change applies to matches made after we publish it, never to one already made.
Some referrals end after the fee has been paid. What happens to it depends on why:
Where a refund is due it goes back to the card that was charged. Payments are handled by our payment processor; we do not store your card details.
After a match we prepare the documents the referral needs and route them for electronic signature. In California that is a single agreement covering the division of fees between the two attorneys together with the client’s consent, signed by the posting attorney, then the attorney taking the case on, then the client.
A referral is only complete when every required signature is in. We do not record a signature on anybody’s say-so: the signing service reports it, and that report is what we act on.
We may also offer to prepare a substitution of attorney, the court form that changes the attorney of record. That form is offered and never required. Nothing about your referral depends on it, and you are free to prepare and file one yourselves in the ordinary way.
Read what you sign. We fill in the parts we already hold, such as names, bar numbers and the terms taken from the proposal that was accepted, and you can correct any of it before signing. Supplying a document or a court form is not legal advice, and we do not warrant that any document is suitable for your matter. Whether it is correct and complete for a particular case is a judgement only the attorneys signing it can make.
There are no ratings, rankings, scores, badges or endorsements on this platform, and there will not be. We do not suggest which attorney to choose and we do not present any attorney as better than another.
What we show is factual: what a public record says, and what an attorney has told us. Filters and sorting are yours to control and imply nothing about quality.
We do not collect your client’s identity.There is no field anywhere on this platform for a client’s name, date of birth, address or telephone number, and there is no record of one in our systems.
The one exception is narrow and deliberate. To send the agreement for signature we need somewhere to send it, so the posting attorney supplies their client’s email address at that moment. It is passed to the signing service and is not stored by us. The client types their own name when they sign, so we never receive it.
Conflict checking is yours, not ours. Each attorney checks a matter against their own records, which we have never seen and never will.
The platform introduces you to another attorney and shows you enough about them to check who they are. That same information would let you contact them privately and complete the arrangement elsewhere.
For counsel to decide
Whether these terms may require the fee on a match that begins here and is completed off the platform, and in what form, is a question for counsel. No clause is stated here because a term of this kind is worth nothing if it is drafted wrongly, and stating one we cannot rely on would be worse than stating none.
You agree not to:
You may stop using the platform at any time and ask us to close your account. Closing it does not undo a referral already under way, cancel a document already signed, or refund a fee already properly charged.
We may suspend or close an account if a licence stops being active, if we believe these terms have been broken, if we are required to, or if we stop offering the service. Where we reasonably can, we will say why and give notice.
We keep records of matches, payments and signatures after an account closes. Those are the evidence that a referral happened and complied with the rules that apply to it, and both attorneys may need them.
We do not promise the platform will always be available or free of faults. We may change it, take features away or take it down for maintenance.
The platform is provided as it is. To the extent the law allows, we make no warranties about it, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement.
We depend on other companies for identity checks, payments, electronic signature and email delivery. We choose them with care and we are not responsible for their failures beyond what these terms say.
We are not responsible for the professional relationship between two attorneys, or between an attorney and their client. That includes the terms of any referral, the quality of any legal work, whether a matter is handled properly, whether a deadline is met, and whether anybody complies with their own professional rules.
To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost profit, lost business, or loss arising from a matter you did or did not take on.
For counsel to decide
A cap on total liability belongs here. The usual shape is the fees you paid us in some preceding period, which on this platform is a small number, and whether that is appropriate or enforceable is counsel’s call.
Nothing in these terms limits anything that cannot lawfully be limited.
You agree to cover us against claims, losses and reasonable costs arising from your use of the platform, from anything you posted, from a matter you referred or took on, or from your breach of these terms or of your own professional obligations.
For counsel to decide
Whether this platform is a lawyer referral service under California Business and Professions Code section 6155, and what follows if it is, is the subject of a pending opinion. This section is deliberately empty until that answer arrives, because a statement either way would be a claim about the law that nobody has yet made.
We may update these terms. If a change is significant we will tell account holders before it takes effect. Continuing to use the platform after that means you accept the new version.
For counsel to decide
Governing law, venue, and whether disputes go to arbitration or to court are all counsel’s decisions, along with whether a class action waiver is appropriate for a platform whose users are all attorneys. Nothing is stated here.
Write to us at support@caseexchange.app.
Case Exchange is software that makes an introduction and generates the required paperwork. It is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. Attorneys agree their own referral terms with each other.