Terms of Service

Agreement to Terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of Surface, an AI-powered document vault for Ontario lawyers, operated by Surface AI Inc. ("Surface", "we", "us", or "our"), a company operating in Ontario, Canada.

By creating an account or using Surface, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use Surface.

The Service

Surface is a desktop application that allows lawyers and legal professionals to upload legal documents, ask questions about those documents using AI, and receive answers with source citations pointing to the exact paragraph the answer came from. Surface is designed for use by licensed legal professionals in Ontario, Canada.

Eligibility

Surface is designed for use by lawyers, paralegals, and legal professionals. By using Surface, you represent that:

• You are at least 18 years of age
• You are legally permitted to use AI tools in connection with your legal practice under applicable professional rules, including the Law Society of Ontario Rules of Professional Conduct
• You will use Surface in compliance with all applicable laws and your professional obligations
• You are responsible for ensuring that any staff or paralegals using your Surface account also comply with these Terms

Subscription and Billing

Surface is offered on a subscription basis:

• Free trial — 14 days free, no credit card required to start
• Pro plan — CA$49 per user per month, billed monthly
• Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period
• You may cancel at any time from within the Surface application under Settings → Subscription
• Cancellations take effect at the end of the current billing period — no partial refunds for unused time
• We reserve the right to change pricing with 30 days written notice to existing subscribers

Payments are processed securely by Stripe. By providing payment information, you authorize us to charge your payment method for the applicable subscription fees. We never store raw card numbers — all payment data is handled by Stripe.

Your Data and Documents

You retain full ownership of all documents and data you upload to Surface. Surface AI Inc. does not claim any rights to your documents or your clients' confidential information.

You grant Surface a limited, non-exclusive licence to process, store, and analyze your documents solely for the purpose of providing the Surface service to you. This licence terminates when you delete a document or cancel your account.

You are responsible for ensuring you have the right to upload documents to Surface, including documents containing client confidential information. Surface provides technical and contractual measures — including Canadian servers, encryption, per-matter data isolation, and a Data Processing Agreement available on request — to support your compliance obligations. However, compliance with your professional duties under the LSO Rules of Professional Conduct remains your responsibility.

Data Processing Agreement

A Data Processing Agreement (DPA) is available on request for firms that require one. The DPA establishes Surface as the data processor and you as the data controller, documents our Canadian data residency, confirms no AI training on your data, and serves as evidence of reasonable measures under LSO Rule 3.3-1.

To request a DPA, contact us at contact.moosakhan@gmail.com.

Acceptable Use

You agree not to use Surface to:

• Upload documents you do not have the right to process
• Violate any applicable law, regulation, or professional obligation
• Attempt to reverse engineer, decompile, or extract the Surface application or its underlying AI models
• Share your account credentials with individuals not authorized under your subscription
• Use Surface for any purpose other than legitimate legal practice support
• Attempt to circumvent any security, access control, or billing measures
• Upload content that is unlawful, harmful, or violates any third party's rights

AI Limitations and Disclaimer

Surface uses AI to generate answers based solely on documents you upload. You acknowledge and agree that:

• AI-generated answers may contain errors, omissions, or inaccuracies — always verify against the source documents cited
• Surface does not provide legal advice — it is a document analysis and retrieval tool for licensed legal professionals
• You are solely responsible for verifying all AI-generated answers before relying on them in any legal matter
• Surface has no knowledge of documents not uploaded to your account
• Surface does not have access to CanLII, Westlaw, Lexis, or any external legal databases or case law
• AI performance may vary depending on document quality, scan quality, and document type

Canadian Data Residency

All documents uploaded to Surface are stored exclusively on Canadian servers located in AWS ca-central-1 (Montreal, Canada). Your client documents do not leave Canadian jurisdiction for storage purposes.

AI query processing involves sending only the relevant document excerpts (typically 2–5 short passages) to the Anthropic Claude API and to Cohere's embedding API for each query. Full documents are never transmitted. Neither Anthropic nor Cohere retain this data after each request completes under their respective API data processing terms.

Availability and Uptime

We aim to provide reliable, uninterrupted service but do not guarantee 100% availability. Surface may be temporarily unavailable due to maintenance, updates, or circumstances beyond our control, including third-party service disruptions. We will make reasonable efforts to notify users of planned maintenance. We are not liable for any losses resulting from service interruptions.

Intellectual Property

Surface, including its software, design, AI pipeline, and documentation, is owned by Surface AI Inc. and protected by applicable intellectual property laws. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sublicense, or create derivative works from any part of Surface without our express written permission.

You retain all intellectual property rights in the documents you upload and the work product you create using Surface.

Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Surface AI Inc. and its operators shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of Surface, including but not limited to:

• Errors or inaccuracies in AI-generated answers
• Loss of data due to technical failures (though we implement industry-standard backups)
• Any professional liability arising from reliance on Surface outputs without independent verification
• Service interruptions or downtime
• Unauthorized access to your account resulting from your failure to protect your credentials

Our total aggregate liability to you for any claim arising from your use of Surface shall not exceed the total amount you paid us in the three months immediately preceding the claim.

Termination

You may cancel your subscription at any time through Settings → Subscription within the Surface application. We reserve the right to suspend or terminate your account if you materially violate these Terms or engage in conduct that we reasonably determine is harmful to Surface, other users, or third parties.

Upon termination, your access to Surface will cease at the end of your current billing period. Your documents and data will be permanently deleted within 30 days of termination as described in our Privacy Policy.

Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time to reflect changes in our service, applicable law, or business practices. We will notify you of material changes by email at least 14 days before the changes take effect. Continued use of Surface after changes take effect constitutes your acceptance of the updated Terms.

Governing Law

These Terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable therein, without regard to conflict of law principles. Any disputes arising under these Terms shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Ontario.

Entire Agreement

These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy and any Data Processing Agreement, constitute the entire agreement between you and Surface AI Inc. regarding your use of the Surface service and supersede all prior agreements or understandings.