Legal

Privacy Policy

Effective date: October 1, 2026. This policy covers www.rothrocklegal.com, including the deadline tool and the consult request.

Rothrock Legal (“we,” “us”) is a law firm in San Jose, California. People who come to this site are usually worried about a family member’s trust or estate and are deciding whether to tell a lawyer about it. This page explains, in plain English, what happens to what you tell us.

The short version

We collect only what you type, say, or upload, and a count of visits we keep ourselves, with no cookie. No profiles.
If you say yes in the privacy choices bar, Google Analytics also counts your visit and a few steps, such as sending a consult request. Until you answer, nothing from Google loads.
We use it for one thing: to decide whether we can help you, which includes a conflict check.
AI helps us organize a consult request so a lawyer can review it faster. A lawyer reviews everything. The AI provider does not train on what you send.
As part of conflict checking and case review we may look at public court records about the people and disputes you describe.
Video meetings happen on Google Meet. Google Analytics, only if you say yes, is the only thing from Google that runs on this website.
We do not sell your information or share it for advertising.
If we do not take your matter, we delete what you sent after 12 months. You can ask us to delete it sooner.
Sending us information does not make you a client, but we keep it confidential either way.

What we collect, and where it goes

We collect only what you choose to give us. There are three ways to send us information on this site, and each is described below. Beyond that, the site receives only the technical details described under Technical information. Google Analytics counts your visit only if you say yes.

The deadline tool (“How Long Do I Have?”)

Your answers stay in your own browser so you can come back to them. Nothing you enter in the deadline tool reaches us unless you then send a consult request or an email. You can clear the saved answers from the tool itself or by clearing your browser data.

The consult request

When you request a consult, we collect what you enter at each step. It can include all of the following:

How to reach you: your full name, email address, phone number (optional), and how you prefer to hear back.
Your situation: which situations fit, and your relationship to the person who died or to the estate.
The people involved: the name of the person who died, the trustee or executor, other family members or opposing parties, and their lawyer if you know it. We need these names to run a conflict check.
Your story: what happened, in your own words. You can type it, or press the microphone button and say it. If you use the microphone, the words appear as text, we keep a copy of the words exactly as your browser heard them, and, where your browser supports it, we also receive the audio recording you made.
Coming back later: if you type an email address that already has an unfinished request, we email that address a link to continue it. We never open an earlier request from a typed email alone, and each link works once.
Key dates: when the person passed away, when you received a notice or a copy of the trust, and other dates you were told matter.
Documents you upload: trusts, wills, letters, account statements, and similar papers (PDF, images, Word, email, or text files, up to 95 MB each and 500 files in total). We also receive the file names.
Scope and cost: the rough value of what is in dispute, how you expect to pay for legal work, how urgent things are, and what you want to happen.
Follow-up answers: anything you add when we ask a few more questions or for a few more documents on the last screen.

Your progress is saved as you go, both in your own browser and as a draft on our server, so you can stop and come back. Drafts you never send are deleted after 30 days.

About the microphone. Turning your speech into text is done by your browser, not by us. Most browsers, including Chrome, send the audio to the browser maker’s speech service to do this, under that company’s privacy policy. If you would rather not use it, type instead.

Email you send us

If you email us directly, we keep the email and any attachments the same way we keep a consult request.

Public records we may look at

As part of conflict checking and case review, we may look at public court records and other public sources about the people and the disputes described in your request. We do this to check for conflicts and to see what has already happened in court. We do not buy information about you from data brokers.

Video meetings and scheduling

Video consultations happen on Google Meet, and we schedule them on the firm’s Google Calendar. When we set up a meeting with you, Google receives your name and email address so it can send you the invitation and the meeting link, under Google’s own privacy policy. Google Analytics, described under Technical information below, is the only thing from Google that runs on this website, and only if you say yes. If you would rather not use Google Meet, tell us and we will find another way to talk.

If we agree to work together

You sign the engagement agreement on a signing page that runs on the firm’s own systems, not through a third-party e-signature company. After you become a client, we work on your file in Legion, the AI litigation platform our founder co-founded, which is listed among our providers below. Your file is then protected by the rules that cover client information, and this policy keeps applying to what you sent us before you became a client.

Technical information

This site does not build a profile of you. These technical details exist because most websites have them:

Google Analytics runs only if you say yes in the privacy choices bar (see Cookies and your choices below). It counts visits and shows us which pages people read, so we know what to write more of. It also counts a few steps, with nothing you typed or chose attached: starting a consult request, sending one, finishing the deadline tool, and clicking our email address. It sets a cookie so it can tell a return visit from a new one. It does not tell us who you are, Google does not keep your IP address, and we use it for nothing else. We switch off Google’s advertising features, so it is never tied to a Google account or used for ads. Google’s handling of it is covered by Google’s privacy policy. Saying no, or blocking it in your browser, changes nothing about how the site works.
We also keep our own count of visits, with software that runs on the firm’s own computer, not a third party’s. It sets no cookie and saves nothing on your device. It records which pages are read, the website that sent you, and general facts such as browser, type of device, language, and country. It counts the same few steps described above, with nothing you typed or chose attached. Your IP address is used for a moment to tell one visit from another, then dropped; it is never stored. If your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, the count leaves you out. It runs whatever you choose in the privacy choices bar, because it identifies no one.
The site is hosted on GitHub Pages, which logs visitor IP addresses for security. We do not receive or use those logs.
Our consult-request server uses your IP address only to limit abuse, such as too many requests at once. It does not store your IP address with your request.

Cookies and your choices

On your first visit, a bar at the bottom of the screen asks about analytics. Until you say yes, nothing from Google loads and no analytics cookie is set.

Our own visit count, described under Technical information, sets no cookie and stores nothing in your browser, so the bar does not ask about it.

This site keeps two kinds of information in your browser:

Needed for the site (always on). Your privacy choice, your reading options, and your progress in the deadline tool and the consult request. The site also notes which topics you have read, so the next pages fit. These stay on your device; we never see them. The consult request also saves a draft with us, as described above.
Analytics (only if you say yes). Google Analytics, described under Technical information above. Its cookies have names that start with _ga and last up to two years, unless you clear them or change your answer.

No advertising cookies or social-media pixels run on this site today. If that ever changes, this policy will say so first, and they will run only if you say yes.

What we keep about your choice. Your browser stores your answer, the date you gave it, and whether a privacy signal was on. It is saved on your device under the name rl-consent and is never sent to us. After 12 months, or if we change what we ask, the bar asks again.

Changing your mind. Use Privacy choices at the bottom of every page, or the button below. Saying no takes effect at once and removes the analytics cookies. The site works the same either way.

Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track. If your browser sends either signal, we treat it as a no to analytics and advertising, and the bar says so. You can still turn analytics on yourself. Advertising, if we ever use it, stays off while the signal is on. Either signal also leaves you out of our own visit count.

How we use it

We use what you send us for these purposes only:

To decide whether we can help with your matter.
To run a conflict check. We compare every name you give us against our client list before we can talk about your matter.
To reply to you, ask follow-up questions, and give you a written fee estimate.
If you become a client, as part of your file.

We do not use what you send us for marketing. We do not sell it, rent it, or share it for advertising, and we never will.

How we use AI

When you send a consult request, a single automated pass reads everything you sent and organizes it for us: a summary, a timeline, the names involved, what seems to be missing, and a short list of follow-up questions. That is what makes it possible for a lawyer to review your request within a business day instead of weeks.

A lawyer reviews everything. The AI does not decide whether we take your case, does not give you legal advice, and does not reply to you. A lawyer at the firm reads your request and decides what happens next.
The AI provider. We use a commercial AI service from Anthropic. Its commercial terms state that it may not train its models on customer content. Its published policies state that, by default, it does not use inputs or outputs from its commercial products to train its models and that it deletes inputs and outputs from its systems within 30 days, with limited exceptions such as legal requirements. The provider processes what you send only to provide the service to us.
The deadline tool does not use AI. It applies a fixed table of rules to your answers, inside your browser.

Who can see it

Your information is seen by:

The attorneys and staff at Rothrock Legal who evaluate and handle requests.
Companies that provide services to us and that may only use your information to do that work: our email provider, the form-delivery service (if one is in use), the company that hosts the site and the consult-request system, the AI provider described above, Google (Meet and Calendar) when we schedule a video meeting with you, and Legion, the AI litigation platform our founder co-founded, where we work on client files after you become a client.
Anyone we are required by law to share it with, for example under a court order or subpoena. Even then, we share only what the law requires and we assert every protection that applies.

We do not share your information with data brokers, advertisers, or anyone else. If another lawyer or party needs to see what you sent us, we will ask you first.

Storage and security

Everything you send through this site travels over an encrypted connection (HTTPS).
Consult requests and uploaded documents are stored on systems the firm controls, and access is limited to the firm.
Ordinary email is not fully secure. Please do not put Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, or passwords in an email or a consult request unless we ask you for them.
No website or storage system is perfectly secure. We use reasonable safeguards, and we will tell you if we learn that your information has been exposed.

How long we keep it

Drafts you never send: deleted 30 days after you last touched them.
Requests you send: kept while we evaluate your matter and follow up with you.
If you become a client: your request becomes part of your file and is kept under our file-retention rules for client files.
If we do not take your matter: deleted 12 months after our last contact with you. We keep only a short conflict-check record (the names you gave us, the date, and the type of matter) so that we never take a case against you later, plus anything the law requires us to keep.
Emails: kept on the same schedule as a request.

You can ask us to delete your information sooner. See the next section.

Your choices and rights

Email us at arothrock@rothrocklegal.com and we will:

Tell you what information we hold about you.
Correct anything that is wrong.
Delete it, except for the short conflict-check record and anything the law requires us to keep.

We will confirm it is really you before we act, usually by replying to the email address on your request. We answer as promptly as we can, normally within 30 days. There is no charge and no penalty for asking.

California law gives consumers rights over their personal information held by businesses above certain size thresholds (the California Consumer Privacy Act). Rothrock Legal is a small firm and does not currently meet those thresholds. Whether or not that law applies to us, we honor the requests above for everyone.

“Do Not Track” signals. We honor them. If your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, we treat it as a no to analytics and advertising. Either signal also leaves you out of our own visit count. See Cookies and your choices. If you say yes to analytics, Google collects information about your visits to this site over time. We do not track you across other websites, and we do not let any other company do so through this site.

Children

This site is for adults. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has sent us information, email us and we will delete it.

Sending information does not make you a client

Sending a consult request or an email does not create an attorney-client relationship. That relationship begins only when both you and the firm sign an engagement letter. We may have to decline your matter, and after a conflict check we may not be able to explain why.

Even so, what you tell us stays confidential. The rules that govern California lawyers require us to protect information from a prospective client the same way we protect a client’s (Rule 1.18 of the California Rules of Professional Conduct), whether or not we take your case.

Please do not send us documents that belong to another lawyer’s client file, that you took from someone else without permission, or that you were told you may not share. If you are not sure, hold the document and tell us about it instead.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy we post the new version here and update the effective date at the top. If a change is significant and you have a consult request pending with us, we will also email you. Earlier versions are available on request.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or a request under this policy, go to arothrock@rothrocklegal.com. You can also write to Rothrock Legal, San Jose, California.