Privacy Policy

Who we are

Causelist is a real-time community platform for Delhi's lawyers and litigants, built and operated by Rishabh Verma ("Data Fiduciary"). You can reach us at feedback@causelist.app.

This policy explains what personal data we collect, why we collect it, and how you can exercise your rights under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 ("DPDPA").

What data we collect

When you request an invite

• Your full name
• Your email address
• Your role (lawyer, litigant, student, etc.)
• The courts you visit
• An optional description of how Causelist would help you

When you create an account

• Your email address, used to send a one-time code (OTP) for authentication
• Your display name and optional profile photo, which you provide in your profile

When you use the app

• Content you post: court status updates, notes, and reactions (confirm/dispute)
• Courts you follow and matters you save for alerts
• Bookmarked updates you choose to save
• Hearing dates you save in the hearing tracker (court, courtroom, item number, case title, next date)
• Feedback you submit through the app
• Presence check-in: which court complex you indicate you are currently at
• Usage data: which courts you view, how often you post, app session information
• Push notification subscription: if you enable push notifications, we store a push subscription endpoint so we can send you alerts, including matter alerts, court status updates, and daily hearing digests
• Device information: device type, operating system, and browser (collected by our infrastructure provider for security and performance purposes)

When you apply to collaborate or for a fellowship

• Your name, email, and the details you choose to submit, such as your law school, a link to your CV, and a WhatsApp number. These are used only to evaluate and respond to your application, and are deleted on request.

We do not collect payment information, government identity documents, precise location data, or any special category personal data.

Why we collect it and our legal basis

Under the DPDPA, we collect and process your data on the basis of your free, specific, informed, and unconditional consent, given at the time of sign-up. Here is what we use each type of data for:

Causelist Brief (the AI feature)

Causelist Brief at causelist.app/brief works differently from the rest of the Platform, and deliberately collects as little as possible:

• No account, no login: you can use Brief without signing in, and briefs are not linked to any account or profile.
• What is processed: the description you type is sent over an encrypted connection to our AI provider, Anthropic, solely to generate your brief. Anthropic processes it on servers outside India.
• What we store: not your words. We do not store your description or the generated brief on our servers, and we cannot retrieve either afterwards.
• Anonymous category counts: the AI assigns each brief a general category, such as tenancy or cheque bounce, and we keep a running count per category per month. The count contains no text, no identifiers, and nothing linking it to you or your network address. These counts are displayed publicly on the Brief page, which means you can see everything we collect.
• Provider retention: Anthropic may retain API inputs for a limited period under its own policies for abuse prevention, and states that it does not use API data to train its models by default.
• Your part: the page asks you to leave out names and anything private or identifying. Please do. The tool gives general information about categories of legal work, so it never needs personal details.
• Rate limiting: to keep the free daily limit fair, our infrastructure briefly keeps a count of requests per network address. This count is automatically deleted within about a day and is not linked to any content.

Causelist Case (the case-reading tool)

Causelist Case at causelist.app/case reads public court records. It is built around a simple idea: the tool needs to know about a case, not about you.

• No account, no login: you can use Case without signing in, and a lookup is not linked to any account or profile.
• What you provide: a case number, or a case type, number and year. That is a public court reference, not personal information about you. The page asks for nothing else, and you should type nothing else into it.
• What is fetched: we request that case's published record (the parties, the listing history, and the text of orders the court has published) from a third-party court-data provider. That record is public court information, published by the courts themselves.
• What is processed by AI: the fetched record is sent over an encrypted connection to our AI provider, Anthropic, solely to produce your digest, and the text of the orders is sent as well if you ask for the list of what is still open. Anthropic processes it on servers outside India.
• What we store: the fetched record and the output generated from it are cached against the case number for a limited period, so that the next person to read the same case is served faster and the tool costs less to run. What is cached is public record data. It is not linked to you, to any account, or to your network address.
• We do not keep a record of who looked up which case: the daily-limit counter described below counts requests per network address and holds no case numbers; the cache is keyed by case number and holds no network addresses. We keep nothing that joins the two, so we cannot reconstruct which cases any person has read.
• Rate limiting: to keep the free daily limit fair, our infrastructure briefly keeps a count of requests per network address. This count is automatically deleted within about a day and is not linked to any case or content.
• The feedback box: if you use the feedback box shown with your results, the text you type is stored with our database provider, together with the case number you were viewing so that we can reproduce what you saw. It is not linked to an account, and we do not ask for your name or email. Please leave out anything private or identifying.
• Provider retention: Anthropic may retain API inputs for a limited period under its own policies for abuse prevention, and states that it does not use API data to train its models by default.

Causelist Board (the cause-list tool)

Causelist Board at causelist.app/board reads the cause lists the Delhi district courts publish and shows the matters listed against an advocate’s name on a chosen date. It is the one tool here that takes a person’s name, so it is worth being exact about what that means:

• No account, no login: you can use Board without signing in, and a search is not linked to any account or profile.
• The name you type is a search term, not a registration: we do not store it against you, and typing a name does not create any record of you having searched. You can search any advocate’s name, because the cause list is a public document that already names them.
• Where the names come from: advocate names, party names, case numbers, item numbers and courtroom numbers are printed in the cause lists published by the courts themselves. Board reproduces what those public lists say and adds nothing about any person.
• What is fetched: we request the published cause lists for the date you pick from a third-party court-data provider, filtered by the name you entered. The provider receives that name and the date, and nothing about you.
• No AI: unlike Brief and Case, Board sends nothing to any AI provider. It reads published lists, groups them, and compares item numbers. That is all it does.
• What we store: the result is cached against the name and date searched for a short period so that repeating the same search is faster and the tool costs less to run. What is cached is public cause-list data. It is not linked to you, to any account, or to your network address, and we keep nothing that records who searched for whom.
• Rate limiting: as with the other tools, our infrastructure briefly keeps a count of requests per network address to keep the free daily limit fair. It is deleted within about a day and holds no names.
• The feedback box: if you use the feedback box shown with your results, the text you type is stored with our database provider along with the date you were viewing. It is not linked to an account and we do not ask for your name or email. Please leave out anything private.
• Removal: if you are an advocate and want your listings excluded from Board, write to feedback@causelist.app. We cannot change what a court publishes, but we can stop showing it here.

Third-party services

We use a small number of trusted third-party service providers to operate Causelist:

• Database and authentication provider: stores your account data, posts, and profile photos, and delivers one-time login codes to your email. This provider processes data in accordance with its own privacy policy and does not use your data for its own purposes.
• Hosting and CDN provider: serves the website and may collect standard web traffic data such as IP addresses and request logs for security and performance purposes.
• Error tracking provider: receives anonymised error reports when something goes wrong in the app, to help us identify and fix bugs. It does not collect personal data or track individual users.
• AI provider (Anthropic): used only by Causelist Brief and Causelist Case. Receives the description you type into Brief, or the published court record fetched by Case, generates the output, and nothing else. See the two sections above.
• Court-data provider: used by Causelist Case and Causelist Board. Supplies the published court record for the case number you enter, converts published order documents into text, and supplies the published cause lists for a date. It receives a case number, or an advocate name and a date, never information about you.

We do not use Google Analytics, advertising networks, or tracking pixels. We do not sell your data to any third party.

Data retention

• Your account and associated data are retained for as long as your account is active.
• Content you post is retained until you delete it, or until your account is deleted.
• If you delete your account, your personal data will be removed from our systems within 30 days, except where retention is required by law.
• Invite request data is retained until you ask us to delete it, or until one year after Causelist ceases to operate, whichever is earlier.

Your rights under DPDPA 2023

As a Data Principal under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, you have the following rights:

• Right to access: request a summary of the personal data we hold about you
• Right to correction: request correction of any inaccurate or incomplete data
• Right to erasure: request deletion of your personal data at any time
• Right to withdraw consent: withdraw your consent to data processing at any time (note: this will require account deletion)
• Right to nominate: nominate another person to exercise your rights in the event of your death or incapacity
• Right to grievance redressal: raise a complaint with us, and if unresolved, with the Data Protection Board of India

To exercise any of these rights, email us at feedback@causelist.app. We will respond within 7 days and resolve your request within 30 days.

If you are unsatisfied with our response, you may file a complaint with the Data Protection Board of India once it is operational.

Cookies and tracking

We do not use tracking cookies, advertising cookies, or analytics tools that identify you individually. Our infrastructure provider may set functional cookies for security and performance purposes. We do not use Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, or any advertising trackers.

Children's data

Causelist is not intended for users under 18 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal data from minors. If you believe a minor has created an account, please contact us and we will delete the account promptly.

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes to this policy, we will update the date at the top of this page and notify active users via the app. We will not retroactively change how we use data you have already provided without first seeking your fresh consent.

Contact and Data Protection Officer

For any questions about this policy, your data, or to exercise your rights, contact: