Portal Terms of Use

These terms of use (together with the documents referred to within them) set out the terms on which you may use the Acuity client portal available at http://www.acuitylaw.com/acuity-client-portal (our portal).

Please read these terms of use carefully before you start to use our portal.

By using our portal, you confirm that you accept these terms of use and that you agree to comply with them.

If you do not agree to these terms, you must not use our portal.

Other applicable terms

These terms of use refer to the following additional terms, which also apply to your use of our portal:

• Our privacy notice, which sets out the terms on which we process any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us.
• Our cookie policy, which sets out information about the cookies on our site.

Information about us

Our portal is operated by Acuity Law Limited (we, us, our). We are a limited company registered in England and Wales under company number 07545730 and have our registered office at 3 Assembly Square, Britannia Quay, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff, CF10 4PL.  

We are solicitors of England and Wales. We are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) with SRA number 560442.

Changes to these terms or our portal

We may revise these terms of use at any time by amending this page.  

Please check this page from time to time to take notice of any changes we may have made as any such changes will be binding on you.  

We may update our portal from time to time and may change its content at any time.

Accessing our portal

We do not guarantee that our portal, or any content on it, will always be available or be uninterrupted. We may suspend, withdraw or discontinue or change all or any part of our portal for business and operational reasons without notice. We will not be liable to you if for any reason our portal is unavailable at any time or for any period. 

You are responsible for making all arrangements necessary for you to have access to our portal. 

You are also responsible for ensuring that all persons who access our portal through your internet connection are aware of these terms of use and other applicable terms and conditions, and that they comply with them.

Your account details

If you choose, or you are provided with, a user identification code, password or any other piece of information as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential. You must not disclose it to any third party. 

We have the right to disable any user identification code or password, whether chosen by you or allocated by us, at any time, if in our reasonable opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these terms of use. 

If you know or suspect that anyone other than you knows your user identification code or password, you must promptly notify us at hello@acuitylaw.com.

Intellectual property rights

We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in our portal, and in the material published on it. Those works are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved. 

You may print off one copy, and may download extracts, of any page(s) from our portal for your personal use and you may draw the attention of others within your organisation to content posted on our portal. 

You must not modify the paper or digital copies of any materials you have printed off or downloaded in any way, and you must not use any illustrations, photographs, video or audio sequences or any graphics separately from any accompanying text. 

Our status (and that of any identified contributors) as the authors of content on our portal must always be acknowledged (except where the content is user-generated). 

You must not use any part of the content on our portal for commercial purposes without obtaining a licence to do so from us or our licensors. 

If you print off, copy, download, share or repost any part of our portal in breach of these terms of use, your right to use our portal will cease immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made. 

Any content you upload to our portal will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. You retain all of your ownership rights in your content, but you are required to grant us a limited licence to use, store and copy that content and to distribute and make it available to third parties.  

When you upload or post content to our portal, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable licence to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform that user-generated content in connection with the service provided through our portal and across different media including to promote our portal and/or services.  

We also have the right to disclose your identity to any third party who is claiming that any content posted or uploaded by you to our portal constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights, or of their right to privacy.

Text or data mining, or web scraping

You shall not conduct, facilitate, authorise or permit any text or data mining or web scraping in relation to our portal or any services provided via, or in relation to, our portal. This includes using (or permitting, authorising or attempting the use of):

• any “robot”, “bot”, “spider”, “scraper” or other automated device, program, tool, algorithm, code, process or methodology to access, obtain, copy, monitor or republish any portion of our portal or any data, content, information or services accessed via the same; and/or
• any automated analytical technique aimed at analysing text and data in digital form to generate information which includes but is not limited to patterns, trends and correlations.

The provisions in this clause should be treated as an express reservation of our rights in this regard, including for the purposes of Article 4(3) of Digital Copyright Directive ((EU) 2019/790).

This clause shall not apply insofar as (but only to the extent that) we are unable to exclude or limit text or data mining or web scraping activity by contract under the laws which are applicable to us.

Acceptable use

You may not use our portal: 

• in any way that breaches any applicable local, national or international law or regulation;
• in any way that is unlawful or fraudulent or has any unlawful or fraudulent purpose or effect;
• for the purpose of harming or attempting to harm minors in any way;
• to bully, insult, intimidate or humiliate any person;
• to send, knowingly receive, upload, download, use or re-use any material which does not comply with our content standards set out below;
• to transmit, or procure the sending of, any unsolicited or unauthorised advertising or promotional material or any other form of similar solicitation (spam); and/or
• to upload terrorist content.

You also agree not to access without authority, interfere with, damage or disrupt:

• any part of our portal;
• any equipment or network on which our portal is stored;
• any software used in the provision of our portal; and/or
• any equipment or network or software owned or used by any third party.

Content standards

Whenever you make use of a feature that allows you to upload content to our portal, or to make contact with other users of our portal, you must comply with the content standards set out below.

These content standards apply to any and all material which you contribute to our portal (Contribution), and to any interactive services associated with it. 

These standards must be complied with in spirit as well as to the letter. The standards apply to each part of any Contribution as well as to its whole. 

We will determine, in our discretion, whether a Contribution breaches these content standards. 

A Contribution must: 

• be accurate (where it states facts);
• be genuinely held (where it states opinions); and
• comply with the law applicable in England and Wales and in any country from which it is posted.

A Contribution must not:

• be defamatory of any person;
• be obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory;
• bully, insult, intimidate or humiliate;
• promote sexually explicit material;
• include child sexual abuse material;
• promote violence;
• promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age;
• infringe any copyright, database right or trade mark of any other person;
• be likely to deceive any person;
• breach any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence;
• promote any illegal content or activity;
• be in contempt of court;
• be threatening, abuse or invade another’s privacy, or cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety;
• be likely to harass, upset, embarrass, alarm or annoy any other person;
• impersonate any person or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person;
• give the impression that the Contribution emanates from us, if this is not the case;
• advocate, promote, incite any party to commit, or assist any unlawful or criminal act such as (by way of example only) copyright infringement or computer misuse;
• contain a statement which you know or believe, or have reasonable grounds for believing, that members of the public to whom the statement is, or is to be, published are likely to understand as a direct or indirect encouragement or other inducement to the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism; or
• contain any advertising or promote any services or web links to other sites.

You warrant that any Contribution complies with the above content standards, and you will be liable to us and indemnify us for any breach of that warranty. This means you will be responsible for any loss or damage we suffer as a result of your breach of warranty. 

We have the right to remove any posting you make on our portal if, in our opinion, your post does not comply with the content standards set out above.  

You are solely responsible for securing and backing up your content. 

We do not store terrorist content.

Viruses

We do not guarantee that our portal will be secure or free from bugs or viruses. 

You are responsible for configuring your information technology, computer programmes and platform to access our portal. You should use your own virus protection software. 

You must not misuse our portal by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material that is malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our portal, the server on which our portal is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our portal. You must not attack our portal via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack. By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use our portal will cease immediately.

Linking to our portal

You may link to the home page of our portal, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it. 

You must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement on our part where none exists. 

You must not establish a link to our portal in any website that is not owned by you. 

Our portal must not be framed on any other site, nor may you create a link to any part of our portal other than the home page. 

We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice. 

If you wish to link to or make any use of content on our portal other than that set out above, please contact marketing@acuitylaw.com.

Third party links and resources on our portal

Where our portal contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these links are provided for your information only. Such links should not be interpreted as approval by us of those linked websites or information you may obtain from them.

We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources.

Breaches of these terms of use

When we consider that a breach of these terms of use has occurred, we may take such action as we deem appropriate.

Failure to comply with these terms of use may result in our taking all or any of the following actions:

• immediate, temporary or permanent withdrawal of your right to use our portal;
• immediate, temporary or permanent removal of any Contribution uploaded by you to our portal;
• issue of a warning to you;
• legal proceedings against you for reimbursement of all costs on an indemnity basis (including, but not limited to, reasonable administrative and legal costs) resulting from the breach;
• further legal action against you; and/or
• disclosure of such information to law enforcement authorities as we reasonably feel is necessary or as required by law.

We exclude our liability for all action we may take in response to breaches of these terms of use. The actions we may take are not limited to those described above, and we may take any other action we reasonably deem appropriate.

Content made available on our portal

We may make certain tools, products, materials, information, data and/or template documents (Content) available to you through our portal without charge. Providing such Content to you shall not be taken to constitute advice and we do not accept any liability for any use to which you may put them or any reports or other materials that you may by obtain by virtue of their use. No lawyers will review any information that you provide or make available for the purpose of making use of such Content nor will we provide any opinion on the outcome or specific facts of your situation.

No warranties, promises or representations of any kind, expressed or implied, are given as to the suitability of any Content that may be made available to you and that you may access without advice from us. If you require any advice as to how to make use of such Content then that will be the subject of a separate engagement between us.

Although we make reasonable efforts to update the Content on our portal, such information is provided “as is” and we make no representations, warranties or guarantees, whether express or implied, that such Content is accurate, complete or up to date.

Limitation of liability

We do not exclude or limit in any way our liability to you where it would be unlawful to do so. This includes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence or the negligence of our employees, agents or subcontractors and for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.

To the extent permitted by law, we exclude all implied conditions, warranties, representations or other terms that may apply to our portal or any Content on it.

We will not be liable to you for any loss or damage, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, even if foreseeable, arising under or in connection with:

• use of, or inability to use, our portal; or
• use of or reliance on any Content displayed on our portal. In particular, we will not be liable for:
• loss of profits, sales, business, or revenue;
• business interruption;
• loss of anticipated savings;
• loss of business opportunity, goodwill or reputation;
• loss of or corruption to data;
• any indirect or consequential loss or damage.

You assume sole responsibility for results obtained from your use of our portal or any of the Content made available on our portal and for conclusions drawn from such use. We do not warrant or represent that:

• your use of our portal will be uninterrupted or error-free;
• our portal and/or the Content obtained by you through our portal will meet your requirements; and/or
• our portal will be free from viruses or vulnerabilities.

Transferring these terms

We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another organisation. We will always tell you in writing if this happens and we will ensure that the transfer will not affect your rights under these terms.

Applicable law

These terms of use, their subject matter and their formation (and any non-contractual disputes or claims) are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales. We both agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

Contact us

To contact us, please email us at hello@acuitylaw.com.