Terms of Service

Last updated: 17 July 2026

1. About LawyersNearMe

LawyersNearMe is a technology-driven information directory and discovery platform that helps consumers identify and connect with advocates enrolled with the State Bar Councils of India, based on practice area, jurisdiction, language, and case category. The Platform also surfaces summaries, statutes, outcome distributions and related analytics derived from publicly available legal judgments, to help consumers form an informed view of their issue before engaging an advocate.

We are an “intermediary” under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and observe the due-diligence requirements of the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. Listing an advocate on the Platform reflects only what our verification process described in Section 6 has been able to confirm — principally that the advocate's enrolment with a State Bar Council matches the documents they submitted. It is not a professional endorsement and it is not a recommendation. We do not rank advocates by skill, we cannot promise that any particular advocate will agree to take on your matter, and no outcome of any legal matter handled by an advocate found through the Platform is guaranteed by us in any way.

2. Eligibility

• • You must be at least 18 years old to create an account.
• • If you sign up as a lawyer, you represent that you are currently enrolled with a State Bar Council in India, your enrolment is in good standing, and you are authorised to practise law.
• • You agree to provide accurate information at signup and to keep your profile up to date.

3. Nature of information shown on the Platform

The Platform surfaces summaries, statutes, outcome distributions and related analytics derived from public legal judgments. This information is general in nature and is not legal advice. Whether and how any law or judgment applies to your specific situation is something only a qualified advocate can determine after reviewing the facts.

We make reasonable efforts to keep this information accurate, but we do not warrant its accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any particular purpose. You should not act or refrain from acting on the basis of information shown on the Platform without seeking your own legal advice.

4. Accounts and authentication

• • You may register for an account using your email address and a password, or by signing in with a third-party identity provider offered on the Platform (e.g., Google). We may also offer authentication via one-time password (OTP) delivered to your registered email or mobile number, and password-reset (“Forgot Password”) flows that verify your identity through your registered contact details.
• • You are solely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality and security of your account credentials — including usernames, passwords, OTPs, and any other authentication mechanism. Do not share your password or OTP with any other person, including any person claiming to be from LawyersNearMe.
• • You are fully responsible for all activity that occurs through or under your account, whether authorised by you or not. Notify us immediately upon becoming aware of any unauthorised access, security breach or compromise relating to your account or credentials — contact the Grievance Officer (see Privacy Policy).
• • You undertake that all information submitted by you to the Platform shall be true, accurate, complete, current and lawful. Any misrepresentation, suppression of material facts, or submission of false information may result in suspension or termination of your account without prejudice to any other rights or remedies available to us under applicable law.

5. Lawyer subscriptions and payments

Lawyers may pay a periodic subscription fee to maintain an active listing on the Platform. Subscription terms include:

• • Subscription cycle: [ADVOCATE REVIEW: monthly / quarterly / annual]
• • Auto-renewal: [ADVOCATE REVIEW: clarify whether subscriptions auto-renew and how to cancel]
• • Taxes: prices are inclusive / exclusive of GST as displayed at checkout.
• • Refunds and cancellations: see Section 9 below.
• • Payments are processed by our payment provider. We do not store full card or bank details on our servers.

6. Verification of lawyers

Lawyers are required to submit verification documents (e.g. enrolment certificate, identity proof) for our verification team to review before the profile becomes publicly visible. By submitting these documents, you consent to their handling as described in our Privacy Policy.

Verification is a reasonable-effort review based on the documents submitted and publicly available records. It is not a guarantee of competence, current standing, or fitness for any particular legal matter. Consumers should perform their own diligence before engaging a lawyer.

7. Bar Council of India compliance

LawyersNearMe is not an advocate, is not a law firm, and does not act as an “agency” that performs or makes possible the practice of law within the meaning of Rule 37 of the Standards of Professional Conduct and Etiquette under Section IV, Chapter II, Part VI of the Bar Council of India Rules. We do not draft legal documents, appear before any court or tribunal, render legal advice or opinion, solicit work on any advocate's behalf, or hold or disburse funds belonging to consumers in respect of any legal matter. Every act of legal practice arising from a connection made through the Platform is performed exclusively by the advocate, in the advocate's own name and under the advocate's own professional responsibility.

The Platform operates as a self-listing information directory. The subscription fee an advocate pays to be listed is a fee for the technology infrastructure we operate, the verification we perform, the payment + support tooling we provide, and the directory presence we maintain. It is not a commission, a referral fee, a success fee, a share of professional fees, a fee per consumer connection, or any other consideration tied to the introduction of work to the advocate. Professional fees, retainer arrangements and engagement terms between a consumer and an advocate are determined directly between them; LawyersNearMe is not a party to that arrangement and does not take a cut of it.

Listings, search results and matches are surfaced based on the consumer's self-described issue, the consumer's state preference, and the information that advocates themselves have provided about their own practice. We do not accept payment to promote, recommend, rank, upgrade or feature any advocate above another within a category, we do not publish editorial “best of” lists, we do not write advocate-promotional copy of our own, and we do not solicit work on behalf of any advocate. [ADVOCATE REVIEW: please confirm the framing above is consistent with current BCI guidance, including the 2024 letter to legal- services platforms. If the commercial model evolves to include any form of paid ranking, sponsored placement, pay-per-lead or promotion-as-a-service, Rule 36 re-analysis is essential before launch]

7A. Advocate profile fields (Schedule under Rule 36)

The Schedule appended to Rule 36 (added by Resolution No. 50/2008 dated 24 March 2008) specifies the categories of information an advocate may furnish on a website intimated to the Bar Council of India. The fields published on each advocate profile on this Platform are limited to those Schedule categories:

• (i) the advocate's name;
• (ii) the advocate's contact information (address, telephone number, email) to the extent the advocate consents to disclose;
• (iii) enrolment number, date of enrolment, the State Bar Council on whose roll the advocate's name originally appears, the State Bar Council on whose roll the advocate's name currently appears, and the name of the Bar Association of which the advocate is a member;
• (iv) professional and academic qualifications;
• (v) general areas of practice (e.g., Civil, Criminal, Taxation, Labour), without any claim of specialisation, expertise, rate of success or relative superiority over any other advocate.

The Platform does not publish or permit on advocate profiles (whether by the advocate or by us): client testimonials, endorsements, ratings of legal outcomes, claims of being “the best” or “top”, photographs of the advocate published in connection with cases the advocate has been engaged in, references to past public office or judicial position held by the advocate, or any other information that falls outside the Schedule above. [ADVOCATE REVIEW: any existing profile fields collected today (e.g., languages, years of experience, courts practised at, free- text bio, photograph) sit outside the literal Schedule list. Each of these needs an advocate's call on whether to retain, qualify or remove. My read: years of experience + courts + languages are arguably part of “general areas of practice”; bio + photograph are not and should be tightly limited if retained at all]

7B. Advocate undertakings on profile content and conduct

By listing on the Platform, an advocate represents, warrants and undertakes that:

• (a) the information furnished by the advocate for the advocate's profile complies in form and substance with the Schedule under Rule 36 and with all other applicable rules, standards and circulars of the Bar Council of India and of the applicable State Bar Council;
• (b) the advocate has independently obtained any intimation or approval required for furnishing such information on a website, and that the State Bar Council under whose roll the advocate's name appears has been intimated of the advocate's presence on the Platform to the extent required by the Schedule;
• (c) the advocate will not use the Platform to make any statement that constitutes advertisement, solicitation, touting or personal communication of the kind prohibited by Rule 36, whether through the advocate's profile, through messages exchanged with consumers via the Platform, or through any other surface;
• (d) the advocate's relationship with any consumer with whom the advocate is connected through the Platform is governed exclusively by the engagement terms agreed directly between the advocate and the consumer, and not by these Terms;
• (e) the advocate will indemnify LawyersNearMe in respect of any claim, proceeding, fine, penalty or disciplinary action arising from a breach by the advocate of clauses (a)–(d) above (see also Section 13).

LawyersNearMe may, in its sole and good-faith discretion, remove, edit, redact or refuse to publish any advocate profile content that, in our reasonable view, may be inconsistent with the Schedule under Rule 36 or with any other applicable Bar Council rule. Such removal is not a finding of misconduct against the advocate; it is a precautionary platform-side action.

8. Prohibited conduct

You agree not to do, or attempt, any of the following:

• • Misrepresent your identity, qualifications, professional history or bar enrolment status
• • Submit forged, altered, fabricated or otherwise misleading verification documents, or impersonate any other advocate (lawyer accounts)
• • Use the Platform to harass, threaten, defame, stalk, intimidate, or otherwise interfere with the legitimate use of the Platform by any other user
• • Scrape, copy, frame, mirror, republish, sell or otherwise reuse content from the Platform without our prior written permission, or use automated means (bots, crawlers, scripts) to access the Platform other than as permitted by our robots.txt
• • Use the Platform for any unlawful purpose, in violation of applicable Indian law, or in a manner that creates legal or regulatory risk for us or for other users
• • Solicit clients in a manner that violates Rule 36 or any other applicable Bar Council of India rule, including by advertising, touting, paid promotion, or using the Platform's features in ways that those rules prohibit (lawyer accounts)
• • Maintain or operate more than one active account for the same individual advocate, except where expressly permitted by us
• • Interfere with our integrity controls — for example, by manipulating ratings or reviews, using fake accounts to inflate reach, or coordinating with other users to game the matching algorithm

8A. Off-platform contact and non-circumvention (advocate accounts)

The Platform charges advocates a periodic subscription to be listed and to use our infrastructure. The subscription is what funds the operation; we deliberately do not levy a per-consultation or per-engagement fee. As a result, once an advocate is a paying subscriber, the advocate and the consumer they connect with are free to take the engagement off-platform, agree their own fees, and bill and pay each other directly. We do not stand between you.

However, advocates must not use the Platform as a free or discounted lead source while avoiding the subscription. In particular, advocates may not:

• • Allow their subscription to lapse and continue to list a profile-equivalent presence on the Platform (for example, by running an unverified profile as another advocate of the same firm)
• • Use the Platform's search or matching features to identify consumers and then route them to a separate, off-platform sign-up that the advocate operates, in order to circumvent the subscription
• • Solicit consumers reached via the Platform to leave reviews or ratings on the Platform in exchange for any inducement, discount or off-platform benefit

Advocates and consumers are entirely free to take their engagement off the Platform after a connection is made — we encourage it for matters that need confidentiality of attorney-work-product. What we ask is that the listing relationship itself remain honest and paid-for.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that we, in good faith, believe have violated these Terms, with or without notice depending on the severity.

9. Refund and cancellation (advocate subscriptions)

Consumer accounts are free; there is nothing to refund. This Section 9 applies to subscription payments made by advocates to maintain a listing on the Platform.

9.1 What can be refunded

• • Cooling-off cancellation— if an advocate cancels within [ADVOCATE REVIEW: 7 / 14 days] of the initial subscription payment AND the advocate's verification has not yet been approved, the full subscription fee will be refunded.
• • Verification rejection— if the verification team rejects the advocate's profile (e.g., enrolment cannot be confirmed), the full subscription fee will be refunded within [ADVOCATE REVIEW: 7 / 14 business days] of the rejection.
• • Platform-side error— if a payment was charged in error (duplicate charge, billing system bug), the affected amount will be refunded immediately on confirmation.

9.2 What cannot be refunded

• • Subscription periods where the advocate profile was active and visible to consumers;
• • Subscriptions cancelled after the cooling-off window described in Section 9.1;
• • Subscriptions of advocates whose accounts were suspended for breach of these Terms, including breach of Section 7B.

9.3 How to request a refund

Email our Grievance Officer (see Privacy Policy §8) with: registered email, transaction reference number, and the reason for the refund request. Acknowledgement within [ADVOCATE REVIEW: 24 / 48 hours]; approval or decline within [ADVOCATE REVIEW: 5 / 7 business days]. Approved refunds are processed back to the original payment method via our payment provider; typical bank settlement is 5–10 business days from approval.

9.4 Cancellation

An advocate may cancel a subscription at any time from the lawyer dashboard. Cancellation stops the next billing cycle but does not automatically trigger a refund for the current cycle (see Section 9.1 for refund eligibility). The profile remains active until the end of the paid period, after which it becomes inactive and is no longer visible to consumers.

9.5 Chargebacks, escalation and events beyond our control

Please reach out to the Grievance Officer before initiating a chargeback with your bank; most billing concerns can be resolved via Section 9.3 faster. If a chargeback is initiated, we may suspend the account pending resolution. If a refund request is declined and the advocate disagrees, the matter may be escalated to the Grievance Officer for reconsideration; nothing in this Section limits the advocate's rights under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019. We will not be responsible for refund delays caused by events outside our reasonable control (payment-gateway outages, bank settlement delays, regulatory holds, etc.); see Section 16 (Force majeure).

10. Intellectual property

All content on the Platform — including software, design, text, aggregated analytics, and translations — is owned by LawyersNearMe or its licensors and is protected by Indian copyright and other intellectual property laws. Your account does not grant you any right to copy, distribute, or commercially exploit this content.

Content you submit (e.g. your lawyer bio, the queries you ask) remains yours. By submitting content, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, display, and process that content for the purposes of operating the Platform.

11. Disclaimers

The Platform is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the Platform will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that any specific lawyer match will result in retention, settlement, or any other outcome.

12. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our aggregate liability arising out of or relating to these Terms or your use of the Platform will not exceed [ADVOCATE REVIEW: e.g. INR 10,000 OR the subscription fees paid in the 12 months preceding the claim].

In no event will we be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, including loss of profits, loss of goodwill, or loss of data.

13. Indemnity

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless LawyersNearMe and its directors, officers, employees, agents and service providers (the “Indemnified Parties”) from and against any claim, demand, action, proceeding, liability, loss, damage, penalty, cost or expense (including reasonable advocates' fees) arising out of or in connection with:

• • your access to or use of the Platform;
• • your breach of these Terms or any policy, guideline or notice published on the Platform;
• • your violation of any applicable law, rule, regulation or professional code of conduct;
• • any infringement by you of intellectual property, privacy, confidentiality or other proprietary rights of any third party;
• • for advocates, any legal advice, opinion, draft, document or service you render through, or in connection with, the Platform, and any claim brought against you by a consumer arising therefrom;
• • for advocates, any attempt by you to circumvent the subscription model described in Section 8A.

We will notify you in writing of any claim for which we intend to seek indemnification, and you agree to assume the defence within fifteen (15) days of such notice, at your own cost. We may, at our option and at our cost, participate in the defence with counsel of our choosing. You may not settle any claim covered by this indemnity, in a manner that imposes any obligation or liability on us, without our prior written consent. [ADVOCATE REVIEW: please confirm scope of indemnity and add carve-outs for losses arising from our own gross negligence or wilful misconduct]

14. Termination

You may terminate your account at any time via the account settings, subject to the data-retention provisions in the Privacy Policy. We may terminate or suspend your account if you breach these Terms or if required by law. Provisions that by their nature should survive termination (e.g. intellectual property, indemnity, limitation of liability) will continue in effect.

15. Independent contractor status (advocate accounts)

Advocates listed on the Platform are independent legal professionals. Listing on the Platform does not make an advocate an employee, partner, agent, joint venturer or representative of LawyersNearMe, nor are we any of those things vis-á-vis the advocate. Advocates are solely responsible for their own tax registrations, GST, professional indemnity insurance, Bar Council compliance and all other obligations attaching to legal practice in India.

16. Force majeure

We will not be liable for any delay or failure in performance of our obligations under these Terms to the extent that the delay or failure is caused by events beyond our reasonable control. Such events include, without limitation, acts of God, natural disasters, floods, earthquakes, fires, epidemics or pandemics, wars, insurrections, civil disturbances, riots, governmental actions or orders, changes in law, internet outages, denial-of-service or other cyber attacks, failures of telecommunications or power infrastructure, and disruptions of our hosting or third-party service providers. During the continuance of any such event, our obligations will be suspended to the extent reasonably necessary, and resumed as soon as practicable thereafter.

17. Governing law and dispute resolution

These Terms are governed by, and shall be construed in accordance with, the laws of India, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules.

If you have a dispute, claim or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms, the Platform or any Service:

1. 1. Grievance step. First, please raise the matter in writing with our Grievance Officer (contact details in the Privacy Policy). We will endeavour to address the matter through good-faith discussion within sixty (60) days from the date you raise it.
2. 2. Arbitration. If the dispute is not resolved through the grievance step within sixty (60) days, the dispute shall be referred to and finally settled by arbitration in accordance with the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. The arbitration shall be conducted by a sole arbitrator to be mutually appointed by the parties. The seat and venue of the arbitration shall be [ADVOCATE REVIEW: city of our registered office; recommend tying to wherever we are incorporated for ease of enforcement]. The proceedings shall be conducted in the English language. The arbitral award shall be final and binding on the parties.
3. 3. Court jurisdiction (for limited matters). Subject to the arbitration agreement above, courts at [ADVOCATE REVIEW: same city as the arbitration seat] shall have exclusive jurisdiction over interim or emergency relief, over the enforcement of any arbitral award, and over any matter that may not be referred to arbitration under Indian law.

18. Class action waiver

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, you agree that any dispute under Section 17 shall be brought and resolved on an individual basis only, and not as a class action, collective action, representative action or consolidated proceeding on behalf of any other person. If this clause is held unenforceable in respect of a particular dispute, the unenforceable portion shall be severed from this Section 18 only with respect to that dispute, and the remainder of this Section 18 and of these Terms shall continue in full force and effect. [ADVOCATE REVIEW: please confirm the enforceability of this clause as drafted under current Indian jurisprudence — class action waiver enforceability in India is less settled than in the US and may need narrowing or removal]

19. Changes to these Terms

If we make material changes to these Terms, we will notify you by email and / or by an in-app banner before the changes take effect. Your continued use of the Platform after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.