Terms of use

1.Acceptance

By using this site you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the site. Where you use the site on behalf of an organisation, you confirm you can bind that organisation to these terms.

If you are a consumer, these terms apply in addition to the rights you have under mandatory consumer law. Nothing here removes those rights, and where a clause conflicts with them, the mandatory rule prevails.

2.Who you are contracting with

LawLegiance is operated from Diegem, Belgium, and these terms are entered into with the operator of the atlas at that establishment. Correspondence, including notices under these terms, should be sent through the contact form, which reaches the editorial and operations team directly.

The operator’s registered company name, Belgian enterprise (KBO/BCE) number and VAT number must be published here before any paid plan or book sale goes live. Belgian law requires a trader to identify itself precisely, and those identifiers are deliberately not invented in this document.

3.What the service provides

The atlas is a structured reference describing how legal systems are organised: legal traditions, courts, government bodies, topic-level treatments, procedures and official forms. Coverage depth is uneven and is labelled on each record as either documented or indexed.

Information is provided for general orientation. It is not a substitute for primary legal sources or for advice from a qualified lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction.

4.No legal advice and no lawyer-client relationship

Nothing on this site is legal advice, and using the site creates no lawyer-client relationship with anyone. Content is not tailored to your circumstances and may not reflect the law applicable to you.

We are not a law firm, we are not regulated as one, and no one who writes or reviews atlas content is acting as your lawyer. If you need advice, instruct a lawyer qualified in the jurisdiction concerned.

5.The research assistant and AI-generated content

The research assistant is a software tool. It answers from atlas content and cites the records it used, and it is designed to refuse rather than speculate when the atlas does not cover a question. That design reduces invention but does not eliminate it.

Assistant answers are generated automatically, are not reviewed by a lawyer before you see them, and may be incomplete, out of date or wrong. Treat every answer as a pointer to the cited records and to the primary sources behind them, not as a conclusion. Do not rely on an answer for any decision with legal consequences.

Do not enter confidential, privileged or special-category personal data into the assistant. What happens to the text you submit is described in the Privacy notice.

Where an answer is generated for you, you may use it for your own research. You must not present assistant output to a third party as legal advice, as a professional opinion, or as human-authored work.

6.Accuracy and currency

Law changes continuously. Records carry a verification state and, where available, a review date, precisely so you can judge how much weight to give them. We make no warranty that any record is current, complete or accurate.

Always confirm against the official source before acting. Where a statute, court or authority is named, treat that name as a pointer to the primary source rather than as the source itself.

7.Accounts

Some features require an account. You are responsible for the accuracy of your registration details, for keeping your credentials confidential, and for activity under your account. Notify us promptly if you believe your account has been accessed without your authorisation.

You must be old enough to enter into a contract in your country of residence to hold an account. Accounts are personal and may not be shared or resold.

8.Acceptable use

• Do not present atlas content to third parties as legal advice or as your own professional opinion.
• Do not scrape, crawl or bulk-extract content outside a licence agreed with us.
• Do not attempt to bypass access controls, probe for vulnerabilities, or disrupt the service.
• Do not submit unlawful, misleading or infringing material through the correction or contact forms.
• Do not use the service to build a product that presents itself as giving legal advice.
• Do not use the assistant to generate content you then pass off as reviewed legal work.

9.Plans, prices and payment

No payment is taken anywhere on this site today. Access is free while the atlas is being built, plan tiers shown on the pricing page describe an intended future shape, and prices displayed against books are indicative because checkout is not connected. Nothing you do on the site currently creates a payment obligation.

The following terms apply from the point paid plans or book sales actually open, and are published in advance so the basis is clear. Prices will be shown inclusive of VAT where VAT applies, in the currency displayed at the time. A contract is formed only when we confirm your order or activate your subscription, not when you add an item to a basket.

Subscriptions, if introduced, will renew for the period you selected until cancelled, with the renewal price and date disclosed before you commit. We will give reasonable advance notice of a price change affecting a renewal, and you will be able to cancel before it takes effect rather than being charged the new price by default.

Where payment is handled by a third-party payment provider, that provider processes your card or account details under its own terms; we do not store full payment credentials.

10.Books and digital guides

The bookstore offers titles in ebook, print and bundle formats. Ebook editions are delivered as files for download; print editions are produced on demand and dispatched, so a printed copy takes longer to reach you than a file.

Buying a book licenses it for your personal use. You may not redistribute, resell, upload or share the files, or strip identifying marks from them. Bulk, institutional and teaching licences are available separately through the contact form.

A book describes the law as at its stated date. It is subject to the same limits as the rest of the atlas: it is reference material, not advice, and it can be overtaken by legal change after publication.

11.Right of withdrawal, cancellation and refunds

These rules apply once sales are live, and are stated now so the position is not decided after the fact. If you are a consumer in the EU you normally have 14 days to withdraw from a distance purchase without giving a reason, running from delivery for goods and from conclusion of the contract for services and digital content.

For printed books, the withdrawal period runs from the day you receive the book. Return it in resaleable condition and we refund what you paid for it, including standard outbound delivery; you bear the cost of returning it unless it arrived damaged, defective or not as described.

For ebooks and other instantly downloadable files, the withdrawal right falls away once download begins, but only where you have expressly consented to immediate performance and acknowledged that you thereby lose the right to withdraw. That consent will be requested explicitly at checkout, and if it is not given the file is not released until the period expires.

For subscriptions, you may cancel at any time and cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid period; we do not refund the unused remainder of a period you have already committed to unless mandatory law or the circumstances require it. Withdrawal rights for a newly started subscription are unaffected.

Nothing in this section limits your legal remedies where something is defective, misdescribed or not delivered. Refunds are made by the method used to pay, without undue delay and normally within 14 days of us accepting the withdrawal or claim.

12.Contributions and corrections

When you submit a correction or other content, you confirm you are entitled to share it and you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use, adapt and publish it as part of the atlas, with or without attribution.

We are not obliged to publish, act on, or keep any submission, and we may edit submissions for accuracy and consistency.

13.Intellectual property

The selection, structure, arrangement and editorial content of the atlas belong to us or our licensors. Primary legal materials referred to remain subject to their own terms and to the copyright rules of their jurisdiction.

You may quote short extracts for research, teaching, journalism or professional use with attribution. Systematic reproduction or redistribution requires a licence.

14.Third-party links

The atlas links to official gazettes, court sites, registries and other external sources. We do not control those sites and are not responsible for their content, availability or handling of your data.

15.Availability

The service is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. We do not guarantee uninterrupted access and may change, suspend or withdraw features, including free access, at any time.

Where you have paid for access and we withdraw a feature you paid for, you are entitled to a proportionate refund of the unused paid period. This paragraph does not apply to free access.

16.Privacy and data protection

How we collect, use and retain personal data, the legal bases we rely on, how long we keep records and how to exercise your rights are all set out in the Privacy notice, which forms part of these terms. Cookie use is described separately in the Cookie notice.

Because the operator is established in Belgium, the GDPR applies to our processing, and you may complain to the Belgian Data Protection Authority as well as to the supervisory authority where you live.

17.Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any loss arising from reliance on atlas content, including loss of profit, missed deadlines, adverse decisions or other indirect or consequential loss.

Where we are found liable in connection with a paid plan or purchase, our aggregate liability is limited to the amount you paid for the plan or item concerned in the twelve months before the claim arose. Because free access involves no payment, liability for free use is limited to the minimum the law permits.

Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for gross negligence or wilful misconduct, or under mandatory consumer or product-liability rules. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

18.Indemnification

If you use the service as a business or professional user, you agree to indemnify us against claims, losses and reasonable legal costs arising from your breach of these terms, from your unlicensed extraction or redistribution of atlas content, or from your presenting atlas or assistant output to a third party as legal advice or as your own professional opinion.

This indemnity does not apply to consumers, and it does not apply to loss caused by our own breach, negligence or wrongdoing. We will notify you promptly of any claim we intend to rely on, let you participate in its defence, and not settle it in a way that imposes an obligation on you without your consent.

19.Suspension and termination

We may suspend or close accounts used to abuse the service, to scrape it at scale, or to breach these terms. Where the breach is capable of being remedied and no urgent risk arises, we will normally warn you first and give you a chance to put it right.

You may stop using the service and close your account at any time. Termination does not affect rights and obligations already accrued, including licences you granted for contributions you submitted and amounts already due.

20.Severability and interpretation

If any provision of these terms is held invalid, unlawful or unenforceable, it is severed to the minimum extent necessary and the remaining provisions continue in force. Where possible, an invalid provision is to be read down rather than struck out, so that it takes effect as closely as the law allows to what was intended.

Headings are for convenience and do not affect interpretation. A failure or delay in enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these terms without our consent; we may assign them as part of a transfer of the business, provided your rights are not reduced.

21.Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the service develops. The date above shows the current version. Continuing to use the site after a change indicates acceptance of the updated terms.

Where a change materially reduces your rights or increases your obligations and you hold a paid plan or an account, we will give reasonable advance notice by a means we expect to reach you, and you may terminate before the change takes effect.

22.Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by Belgian law. The operator is established in Diegem, in the municipality of Machelen, which falls within the judicial district of Brussels, and the Dutch-language courts of Brussels have jurisdiction over disputes arising from these terms or from use of the service.

If you are a consumer, this choice does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory rules of the law of your own country of residence, and it does not remove your right to bring proceedings in the courts of the place where you are domiciled or to be sued only there.

We would rather resolve a complaint directly, so please raise it through the contact form first. Consumers who are not satisfied with the outcome may also approach the Belgian Consumer Mediation Service (Consumentenombudsdienst / Service de Médiation pour le Consommateur) in Brussels, the statutory out-of-court body for consumer disputes with Belgian traders. The European Commission’s ODR platform is deliberately not referenced here: it was discontinued on 20 July 2025 and the obligation to link to it has been repealed.