Terms
loupe.legal · last changed 5 November 2026
Plain terms for a tool sold to people who read terms for a living.
What Loupe is
Loupe checks the authorities cited in a document against published sources and reports what it found. It reports which checks ran, which did not, and why.
It is not legal advice, and a clean report is not a defence. Loupe does not tell you whether an authority is good law for your argument, whether to cite it, or whether your filing is sound. It tells you whether the authority exists, whether it is the one you named, and whether what you said about it matches the source. Reading the case remains yours.
What a report means, exactly
A report never says a document is clean. It says which checks ran and what they found. Anything a check could not reach is reported as unverified rather than as passing. Two consequences worth stating:
- Unverified is not a pass. If a citation is reported as not checked, nothing here has said it is sound.
- A finding is a reason to look, not a verdict. Every finding names the source it was checked against so you can check it yourself.
What we do not promise
We publish our accuracy figures and the documents they were measured on, which is more than this category usually offers. We do not promise that every defect will be found or that nothing correct will ever be questioned. Published sources go down, are incomplete, and are sometimes wrong; where we depend on one, its gaps are ours.
We never say that a Westlaw or Lexis citation does not exist, because no public source holds them. Loupe reads them only against the names courts give them in their own citations.
Your documents
We do not retain them after the requested check, unless you keep a check in your account; then its record is kept until you delete it. An upload may be buffered temporarily on the service’s ephemeral disk while it is parsed; that copy is discarded with the request. See Privacy, which describes what happens to a document and what leaves the service. You keep every right in what you upload; we get no licence in it beyond running the check you asked for and keeping the checks you choose to keep.
Your licence to use Loupe
A subscription licences the tier you bought for the seats you bought, for as long as it is paid. A single-document purchase licences one check.
A licence is a key. It is yours to use and not yours to publish or resell. Licences are sold with a number of seats and a daily volume, both stated when the plan is bought, and both are enforced: a key used far beyond what it was sold with will be refused, and we will tell you why rather than fail quietly.
Money
Nothing is sold while Loupe is in testing: every account has the Firm tier free, as the section below says. When paid plans open, subscriptions will be paid monthly or yearly, and you will be able to cancel at any time, effective at the end of the period you have paid for.
Orders will go through a merchant of record named at checkout: it takes the payment, issues the invoice, charges and pays the tax, and handles refunds. A purchase is also subject to its buyer terms, linked at checkout.
Refunds. If Loupe does not do what this site says it does, write to us within 30 days and we will refund you. We would rather return the money than argue about it. How a refund works.
Liability
We are liable for what we can control and not for what we cannot. To the extent the law allows, our total liability is limited to what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, and we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including the outcome of any proceeding.
That limit is the ordinary one, and here is the honest reason it is fair rather than merely usual: you remain the person who signs the filing, and no tool can take that from you.
The free tier
Free checks stay free. They run on public data and cost us almost nothing, and we would rather a self-represented litigant checked a filing than did not. There is a daily limit so it stays available to everybody.
While Loupe is in testing
While Loupe is in testing, every account has the Firm tier free: quotation checks, matters, colleagues and sealed records, with no card and no commitment. We will announce paid plans at least a month before they start. When the testing period ends, nothing you kept is lost: an account without a plan falls to the free tier, and everything in it can still be opened and downloaded.
The education plan
Anyone who signs in with an address at a college or university in the United States (one ending in .edu) has the Solo tier free, for study and teaching, for as long as they can sign in with that address. Alumni forwarding addresses are not included. It is not for work done for clients, which needs a plan of its own.
We may change or end the education plan. If it ends, or pauses, nothing you kept is lost: your account falls to the free tier, and everything in it can still be opened and downloaded.
Acceptable use
Do not use Loupe to attack the sources it reads, to check documents at a volume your licence was not sold for, or to resell access. Do not upload what you have no right to upload.
Changes
If these terms change materially we will say so on this page and tell subscribers by email before it takes effect. The date at the top is the date of the last change.
Who we are
Loupe is made by an independent developer. Write to hello@loupe.legal for anything, including the things people usually have to escalate for.