Terms FAQ

No. Creating a free account at useroadmap.co does not make you a legal client of Roadmap Law PLLC, and does not form an attorney‑client relationship. Roadmap is not your lawyer until you do one of the following:

• Subscribe to Roadmap Counsel or Roadmap Personal and Roadmap commences attorney work for you after conflict and jurisdictional checks pass; or
• Purchase a legal workflow (e.g. Roadmap Stack, Deals, Privacy) at Stripe checkout and Roadmap commences work on that deliverable; or
• Open a fixed‑fee matter through the portal and Roadmap accepts and commences work on it.

Until one of those events occurs, your account is simply a free account. Your communications with us before engagement commences are held in confidence as intake communications (see Terms §6.2), but they are not protected by attorney‑client privilege and we are not acting as your attorney.

Ava and any automated tools available to free accounts are informational only and do not constitute legal advice.

Owner‑operators, founders, executives, solopreneurs, and individuals who are looking at Roadmap and want to understand what they're signing without spending an hour parsing a contract.

Yes — you're hiring a law firm, so you should know what you're signing. But you can read this FAQ first to get the shape of it, then go to the Terms for the operative language.

Yes. Roadmap is the brand. The actual contracting entity is Roadmap Law PLLC, a New York‑registered professional limited liability company. The attorneys handling your legal matters are licensed and accountable to the bar.

It's an Engagement Letter for the legal or advisory services Roadmap provides — combined with the everyday Terms of Service for the platform. One unified document so you're not signing five things.

Four:

• Roadmap Counsel — fractional in‑house counsel for companies. Legal.
• Roadmap Personal — fractional in‑house counsel for individuals (you personally, not a company you own). Legal.
• Roadmap Operator — business advisory. Not legal.
• Roadmap CoCounsel — per‑hour specialist support for other law firms.

The invoice wins for that specific engagement. The Terms set the defaults; an invoice or written engagement‑specific terms can vary them.

Stripe handles it. You're billed monthly. There are two flavors of subscription:

• Monthly Plan — pay‑as‑you‑go, cancel anytime, effective at the end of the current month.
• Annual Commitment Plan — twelve‑month commitment, billed in twelve discounted monthly installments. Lower per‑month price than the Monthly Plan, in exchange for the commitment.

Yes — both plans can be ended. The mechanics are different:

• Monthly Plan: cancel anytime in the Stripe Customer Portal or the Roadmap client portal; you're billed through the end of the current month, no further charges. No proration on this month.
• Annual Commitment Plan: non‑renewal and early termination are handled by emailing support@useroadmap.co (the Stripe portal does not expose self‑serve cancellation for annual plans). To stop the next twelve‑month renewal, the email must arrive at least 30 days before the Renewal Date. If you end the current term early, future installments stop and you receive one final invoice for the cumulative discount on the months you already used (the difference between the standard Monthly Plan rate and the Annual rate, summed across the months you consumed). That's not a cancellation fee — it's a true‑up to the regular rate for services already received. The clawback invoice is charged to the payment method on file. After the twelve‑month term ends, you can go month‑to‑month with no clawback.

No — not for months we've already started. Subscription fees are engagement (availability) retainers under NY State Bar Ethics Op. 599. Here's the doctrinal version, in plain English: each month, we commit to (a) keeping at least one licensed attorney on call for your matters (in NY, or in another state where the matter requires another license, where reasonably available), (b) reviewing AI‑assisted work under a supervising attorney's professional judgment, (c) running conflicts/intake on your matters as they come in, (d) keeping your Slack channel, Drive folder, and portal provisioned and staffed, and (e) turning down other engagements that would eat the same capacity. We deliver all of that during the month, not at the end — so the fee is earned at the start of each month, not held against future work. If you cancel, future months stop billing. We don't reach back and refund consumed months.

Yes, with 60 days' notice. You have 30 days after notice to opt out by cancelling. New price doesn't apply to your current period.

Some things sit outside the subscription — a formation package, a filing, a contract review, a defined workflow deliverable. Those are billed as fixed fees, set on the Stripe checkout or invoice. Under Module M‑WF.1 of the Terms, the pattern is: we charge the fixed fee in full at checkout, the fee is held as an unearned fixed‑fee deposit, and we earn it on delivery. If we don't deliver, you get a full refund through Stripe to the original payment method, ordinarily within ten (10) business days of our determination that the deliverable isn't going to be delivered — per‑component for multi‑component deliverables. Any non‑waivable trust‑account obligation under NY RPC 1.15 for a particular workflow is observed regardless of the standard charge‑at‑checkout pattern. This sequencing is consistent with ABA Formal Opinion 505 and the NY rules on flat‑fee billing.

Three different fee types, three different earning triggers: subscription fees (Module M‑SUB) are engagement retainers earned at the start of each Billing Period (you're paying for our reserved availability that period, which we deliver by holding that capacity for you the whole period); CoCounsel hours (law firms only, Module M‑CC) are billed weekly in arrears, after the work is done; fixed‑fee workflows (Module M‑WF) are charged in full at checkout, held as an unearned fixed‑fee deposit, and earned on delivery — with a full refund (ordinarily within ten business days) if we don't deliver. We don't ask you for advance payments against future expenses — out‑of‑pocket expenses (filing fees, court fees, etc.) are billed to you at cost after we incur them.

For the rare case that funds land in our hands before they're earned — a court‑ordered escrow, settlement proceeds we're holding for a client, a retainer received in advance of work, or any workflow where a non‑waivable trust‑account obligation applies — Roadmap Law PLLC maintains an IOLTA attorney trust account. Those funds are segregated from operating funds, handled under NY RPC 1.15 (and the analogous rule of any other state where our attorneys are licensed), and only moved to our operating account when they're earned. In normal subscription operation, and in the standard charge‑at‑checkout workflow pattern, the IOLTA isn't involved.

Counsel and Personal are legal services. You become a client of the law firm. An attorney‑client relationship forms (once we kick off your first matter). Privilege applies.

Operator is business advisory. You are not a legal client. No attorney‑client relationship. No privilege. We give business advice; we don't give legal advice on Operator. If a question on Operator turns into a legal question, we either refer you out or offer to add Counsel/Personal on top.

Yes — any combination. They're independently purchased and independently cancellable.

For Counsel and Personal: when we actually start work on your first matter, after our conflict and jurisdictional checks. Buying a subscription alone doesn't form it.

Yes — AI is integral and native. Ava (our AI assistant) sits inside your Slack channel and helps with intake, drafting, research, and triage, always under an attorney's supervision. There's no AI‑free version of the service.

No. If you can't accept AI processing, the answer is to not subscribe. Existing clients who can no longer accept it must cancel under Terms of Service §5 and Module M‑SUB.5 — cancellation doesn't trigger a refund (Module M‑SUB.6) and doesn't excuse unpaid Annual installments or the cumulative discount clawback (Modules M‑SUB.4 and M‑SUB.6).

No. Roadmap does not use Client Content to train, fine‑tune, or otherwise modify any AI model, whether ours, Perplexity's, or any third party's, unless you sign a separate authorization. This is the most important promise we make on AI.

Your assigned attorney(s) and authorized Roadmap personnel staffed on your matter. Plus the sub‑processors required to deliver the service: Slack, Google Workspace, Notion (matter management), Stripe, Vercel, and the Perplexity Sonar API. We don't share your data with anyone else.

Full details and the complete current sub‑processor list with purpose and data categories: Privacy Policy §7. Security architecture: Security.

Yes — on every plan. The source of the protection depends on the plan:

• Counsel and Personal: Confidentiality is committed by the New York Rules of Professional Conduct (your attorney's bar duty, with real teeth — up to disbarment for breach) and, once a matter is formed, by attorney‑client privilege and the work‑product doctrine.
• Operator: Confidentiality is committed by contract. No privilege.

Full breakdown: Attorney‑Client Privilege page.

Matter by matter, when we start work on that matter. Before that, your intake communications are protected by the prospective‑client duty under NY RPC 1.18 — confidential, just not yet privileged. You can be direct with us from the start.

Yes — once you've paid an invoice, we get a license to use your name and logo to identify you as a current or former Roadmap client (on our website, decks, marketing materials, etc.). This stays in place after your subscription ends.

No. Anything beyond name and logo — case studies, quotes, video testimonials, results, dollar amounts — only goes up with your written approval, piece by piece.

Yes. You can ask in writing and we'll remove it from our website, decks, and social channels within a reasonable time. We can't retrieve copies that have already been distributed to third parties or are sitting in search caches — but we stop publishing it ourselves.

That license is the one part we keep — it stays in place even after you cancel. We don't retroactively scrub our history of who worked with us.

By binding arbitration under the American Arbitration Association's Commercial Rules, in Palm Beach County, Florida. No class actions, no jury trials.

Florida law for the contract. New York Rules of Professional Conduct for how your attorney behaves (because that's where the firm is licensed).

Yes — the greater of $5,000 or two times what you paid us in the last 12 months. Non‑waivable obligations under the rules of professional conduct are preserved as required by those rules.

The Terms let us assign the engagement to a successor or affiliate — including, eventually, an alternative business structure ("ABS") in a state that permits them. If that happens, your matters under New York law will still be handled by a New York‑licensed attorney, or, where the matter requires admission in another jurisdiction, by an attorney admitted in that jurisdiction. We'll send a transition notice when it actually happens.

Yes, with 30 days' notice for material changes. If you don't agree, you cancel under Section 5 in the notice window. Continued use after the effective date = acceptance.

1. Roadmap Law PLLC is a real New York law firm, with attorneys admitted in New York and, where a matter requires it, in other jurisdictions.
2. Two plans are legal (Counsel, Personal). One plan is advisory (Operator) — no privilege, no attorney‑client relationship.
3. Monthly Plan: cancel anytime, no proration. Annual Plan: commitment for twelve months, billed in twelve installments.
4. Subscriptions are engagement retainers, earned at the start of each Billing Period for the availability we commit to that period. We don't refund consumed periods. Hourly CoCounsel (law firms only) is billed weekly after the work is done. Fixed‑fee workflows are charged at checkout, held as an unearned fixed‑fee deposit, and earned on delivery — refunded in full if we don't deliver.
5. AI is core to the service. No opt‑out. But your content is never used to train AI without a signed authorization.
6. Disputes go to arbitration in Palm Beach County. Cap on damages is $5K or 2x fees.
7. Once you pay, we can use your name and logo to say you were a client. Anything more requires your approval.

If after reading this and the Terms anything is unclear, email support@useroadmap.co before subscribing and we'll explain.