TrustEasyGo — Terms of Service (Draft)

⚠️ AWAITING ATTORNEY REVIEW — NOT LEGALLY BINDING IN THIS FORM
This draft is an engineering starting point intended to compress an SA-admitted attorney's drafting work. It does not constitute legal advice. Until countersigned by the attorney and published in approved form, it has no contractual effect.

Version: Draft 1.0

Date prepared: 2026-06-02

Codebase reference: develop post-PR #206

Format note: Square-bracket [ATTORNEY TO VERIFY] and [FIRM TO COMPLETE] markers indicate items requiring attention before publication.

1. Parties

1.1. These Terms of Service ("Terms") are entered into between:

(a) TrustEasyGo (Pty) Ltd, a private company incorporated in the Republic of South Africa with registration number [ATTORNEY TO VERIFY — registration number], having its registered address at [ATTORNEY TO VERIFY — registered address] ("TrustEasyGo", "we", "us"); and

(b) the legal practice (whether a sole practitioner or an incorporated firm) that registers an account with us ("the Firm", "you"), and whose details are captured on registration.

1.2. By registering for or using the TrustEasyGo service the Firm accepts these Terms.

2. Definitions

Unless the context indicates otherwise:

  • "LPA" means the Legal Practice Act 28 of 2014.
  • "LPC" means the Legal Practice Council established under the LPA.
  • "LPC Rules" means the rules of conduct, trust accounting, and other Rules made by the LPC under the LPA.
  • "POPIA" means the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013.
  • "Service" means the TrustEasyGo software-as-a-service application made available to the Firm, including all hosted environments, APIs, exports, and supporting documentation.
  • "Firm Data" means data that the Firm or its users enter into, upload to, or generate within the Service — including client matter records, financial transactions, FICA evidence, reconciliations, and documents.
  • "Personal Information" has the meaning given in POPIA.
  • "User" means an individual authorised by the Firm to access the Service under the Firm's account (a director, partner, employee, accountant invited via the accountant-access feature, or contractor).

3. The service

3.1. TrustEasyGo provides the Firm with access to a hosted application designed to assist with trust accounting and matter management for legal practices subject to LPC Rule 54, including (but not limited to): journal entry recording, file/matter management, monthly trust reconciliation, regulatory reports (general ledger, cashbook, trial balance, annual financial statement, audit pack), trust-shortfall detection and alerting under LPC Rule 54.14, bank statement upload and reconciliation, subscription billing, and an AI-assisted assistant feature.

3.2. The Service is a tool to assist the Firm in meeting its regulatory obligations. It does not substitute for the Firm's professional judgment, the Firm's responsible practitioner, or the Firm's auditor. Compliance with the LPC Rules remains the responsibility of the Firm and its admitted practitioners.

3.3. We reserve the right to modify, expand, or remove features of the Service from time to time. Material adverse changes will be notified to the Firm at least [ATTORNEY TO VERIFY — notice period, suggest 30] days in advance.

4. Eligibility and registration

4.1. The Service is intended for use only by legal practices admitted to practice in the Republic of South Africa, and by persons authorised to act on behalf of such practices. By registering, the Firm warrants that it is so admitted and that the individual registering is so authorised.

4.2. The Firm must provide accurate, complete, and current information at registration and keep it current.

4.3. The Firm is responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of its account credentials and for all activity that occurs under its account.

5. Subscription and payment

5.1. Access to the Service is by paid subscription, save for any trial period offered by TrustEasyGo at its discretion.

5.2. Subscription fees, billing cycles, and supported payment methods are as published on the TrustEasyGo website at the time of registration or renewal. Subscriptions are processed via PayFast (Pty) Ltd as our payment service provider; the Firm authorises TrustEasyGo to instruct PayFast to debit the Firm's nominated payment method in accordance with the chosen subscription plan.

5.3. Where payment is by electronic funds transfer rather than recurring card billing, the Firm undertakes to settle invoices by the due date stated.

5.4. Fees are exclusive of VAT unless stated otherwise.

5.5. [ATTORNEY TO VERIFY — refund policy] Subscription fees, once paid, are non-refundable except where required by law. [Alternative: pro-rata refund on early termination not for cause.]

5.6. We may suspend access to the Service if payment is overdue after [ATTORNEY TO VERIFY — grace period, suggest 14] days following the due date and a written reminder.

6. Firm data — ownership and licence

6.1. The Firm retains all right, title, and interest in and to the Firm Data. TrustEasyGo claims no ownership of the Firm Data.

6.2. The Firm grants TrustEasyGo a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, process, transmit, display, and operate on the Firm Data solely for the purpose of providing the Service to the Firm, and to its sub-processors only to the extent set out in the Data Processing Agreement annexed as Annexure A to these Terms.

6.3. The Firm acknowledges that the Firm Data will include Personal Information of the Firm's own clients. With respect to such client Personal Information, the Firm is the Responsible Party under POPIA and TrustEasyGo is the Operator. The Data Processing Agreement (Annexure A) governs that relationship.

6.4. Export. On the Firm's written request, and not more frequently than [ATTORNEY TO VERIFY — frequency, suggest 12 months], TrustEasyGo will provide the Firm with an export of the Firm Data in a commonly readable format (CSV / Excel for tabular data, PDF for reports, and original-format files for uploaded documents).

6.5. Retention beyond termination. Following termination of the Firm's subscription, TrustEasyGo will retain the Firm Data for [ATTORNEY TO VERIFY — retention window, suggest 90 days] to permit export, after which the Firm Data will be deleted in accordance with the Data Processing Agreement, subject to record-retention obligations under the LPC Rules (notably the 5-year financial record retention applicable to trust accounting records).

7. Acceptable use

7.1. The Firm and its Users undertake not to: (a) use the Service in breach of any law; (b) attempt to gain unauthorised access to any part of the Service, other firms' data, or the underlying infrastructure; (c) reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to derive the source code of the Service; (d) introduce malware or other harmful code to the Service; (e) use the Service to send unsolicited communications; or (f) impersonate any person or misrepresent affiliation.

7.2. Breach of clause 7.1 may result in immediate suspension or termination at TrustEasyGo's discretion.

8. The AI-assisted feature

8.1. The Service includes an AI-assisted assistant feature powered by Anthropic, PBC. When used, the feature transmits a working data context (typically aggregated financial summaries and matter summaries, generated from the Firm Data) to Anthropic's hosted model.

8.2. The feature is designed not to transmit client identifying Personal Information except where strictly necessary to perform the requested task. The technical safeguards adopted are described in the Data Processing Agreement.

8.3. AI-generated output may contain errors. The Firm must independently verify any AI-generated content before acting on it. AI-generated output is not legal advice.

9. Trust accounting — Firm responsibility

9.1. The Firm remains responsible for compliance with the LPC Rules at all times. The Service provides tools (reconciliation, reports, shortfall alerts) to assist compliance but does not assume the Firm's regulatory duties.

9.2. The Firm is responsible for the accuracy of data entered into the Service. The Service computes balances, reports, and reconciliations from the data supplied; garbage in produces garbage out.

9.3. The Firm warrants that it has nominated a legal practitioner responsible for trust accounting in accordance with LPC Rule 54, and that such practitioner has authorised the Firm's use of the Service.

9.4. The trust-shortfall alerting feature (LPC Rule 54.14) is a detection feature only. Notifying the LPC of a detected shortfall is the responsibility of the Firm and its responsible practitioner. The Service's alert does not constitute notification to the LPC.

10. Confidentiality

10.1. Each party undertakes to treat as confidential all information of the other party that is marked confidential or that would by its nature be understood to be confidential.

10.2. TrustEasyGo will not disclose Firm Data to any third party except (a) to sub-processors necessary to provide the Service and bound by equivalent confidentiality obligations; (b) where required by law, by court order, or by lawful regulator request (in which case TrustEasyGo will, to the extent legally permitted, notify the Firm in advance); or (c) with the Firm's prior written consent.

11. Security

11.1. TrustEasyGo will implement and maintain appropriate technical and organisational measures designed to protect the Firm Data against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction, or damage, having regard to the state of the art, the costs of implementation, and the nature of the data.

11.2. Security measures currently in place include (without limitation): password hashing (PBKDF2), enforced password complexity, account lockout after repeated failed login attempts, session expiry, HTTPS-only transport in production, secure cookies, content-security headers (X-Frame-Options DENY, content-type nosniff, referrer policy), an immutable audit log, and trust-shortfall detection.

11.3. Disclosed gap. As at the date of this draft, uploaded documents stored in object storage carry a public-read ACL. This is being remediated; the Privacy Policy and Data Processing Agreement describe the remediation timeline.

11.4. Security breaches involving Personal Information will be handled in accordance with the Data Processing Agreement and POPIA §22.

12. Service availability

12.1. TrustEasyGo will use reasonable endeavours to make the Service available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, save for scheduled maintenance and force majeure events.

12.2. No specific uptime SLA is offered in this version of the Terms. [ATTORNEY TO VERIFY — whether to commit to an SLA percentage and any service-credit regime.]

13. Intellectual property

13.1. All right, title, and interest in and to the Service (including all software, designs, documentation, trademarks, and improvements) vest in TrustEasyGo or its licensors and are not granted to the Firm save for the limited right of use under these Terms.

13.2. Subject to clause 6, the Firm grants TrustEasyGo a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide licence to use anonymised, aggregated data derived from the Service for the purpose of improving the Service, provided that no such anonymised data identifies the Firm or any natural person.

14. Disclaimers

14.1. The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the maximum extent permitted by law, TrustEasyGo disclaims all warranties, whether express or implied, including (without limitation) implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

14.2. TrustEasyGo does not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free from security vulnerabilities, nor that defects will be corrected within any specified time.

14.3. Nothing in this clause excludes any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded under South African law, including (without limitation) under the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 to the extent applicable.

15. Limitation of liability

15.1. [ATTORNEY TO VERIFY — limitation cap, e.g. "to the amount of subscription fees paid in the 12 months preceding the event giving rise to liability"].

15.2. Neither party will be liable to the other for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages, including loss of profits, loss of business, loss of revenue, or loss of goodwill, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.

15.3. Clause 15 does not exclude liability for fraud, gross negligence, wilful misconduct, or any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

16. Indemnity

16.1. The Firm will indemnify and hold harmless TrustEasyGo against any third-party claim arising out of (a) the Firm's breach of these Terms; (b) the Firm's misuse of the Service; or (c) the Firm's breach of POPIA or the LPC Rules in connection with its use of the Service.

16.2. TrustEasyGo will indemnify and hold harmless the Firm against any third-party claim that the Firm's authorised use of the Service infringes a South African registered intellectual property right of the third party, subject to the Firm notifying TrustEasyGo promptly of the claim and permitting TrustEasyGo to defend it.

17. Term and termination

17.1. These Terms commence on the Firm's registration and continue until terminated.

17.2. Either party may terminate without cause on [ATTORNEY TO VERIFY — notice period, suggest 30 days] written notice.

17.3. TrustEasyGo may terminate immediately on written notice if the Firm breaches these Terms materially and fails to remedy the breach within [ATTORNEY TO VERIFY — cure period, suggest 14 days] of written notice requiring remedy.

17.4. The Firm may terminate immediately on written notice if TrustEasyGo breaches these Terms materially and fails to remedy the breach within the same cure period.

17.5. On termination clauses 6.5 (data retention beyond termination), 10 (confidentiality), 13 (intellectual property), 15 (limitation of liability), 16 (indemnity), 18 (notices), 19 (governing law), and 20 (dispute resolution) survive.

18. Notices

18.1. Notices to TrustEasyGo are to be sent to [ATTORNEY TO VERIFY — formal notice email and physical address].

18.2. Notices to the Firm are to be sent to the email address recorded on the Firm's account.

18.3. Email notices are deemed received on the business day after sending, unless the sender receives a delivery-failure notification.

19. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa.

20. Dispute resolution

20.1. Any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms will, in the first instance, be referred to executive-level negotiation between the parties.

20.2. If unresolved after 30 days, the dispute may be referred to arbitration administered by the Arbitration Foundation of Southern Africa under its standard rules, before a single arbitrator agreed between the parties, failing which appointed by the Foundation.

20.3. [ATTORNEY TO VERIFY — whether to provide for the High Court alternative.]

21. General

21.1. Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Data Processing Agreement (Annexure A) and the Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between the parties on their subject matter and supersede all prior agreements, representations, and understandings.

21.2. Variation. TrustEasyGo may vary these Terms on [ATTORNEY TO VERIFY — notice period, suggest 30 days] written notice to the Firm; if the Firm objects to a variation, the Firm may terminate before the variation takes effect.

21.3. Assignment. Neither party may assign these Terms without the other's prior written consent, save that TrustEasyGo may assign to an affiliate or successor in interest on notice.

21.4. Severability. If any clause is held invalid, it is to be severed and the remainder remains in effect.

21.5. No waiver. Failure to enforce a provision does not constitute a waiver of it.

21.6. Counterparts and electronic signature. These Terms may be accepted by electronic acceptance (click-through) and that acceptance is binding.

Annexures

  • Annexure A — Data Processing Agreement (see [DATA_PROCESSING_AGREEMENT_DRAFT.md](DATA_PROCESSING_AGREEMENT_DRAFT.md))
  • Annexure B — Privacy Policy (see [PRIVACY_POLICY_DRAFT.md](PRIVACY_POLICY_DRAFT.md), in its capacity as the privacy notice to the Firm's Users)

Questions for the attorney

  1. Confirm the legal entity name, registration number, registered address, and Information Officer details.
  2. Decide on the notice period for service changes (clause 3.3), refund policy (5.5), grace period for non-payment (5.6), export frequency (6.4), retention window beyond termination (6.5), uptime SLA (12), liability cap (15.1), termination notice and cure periods (17), formal notice address (18.1), variation notice period (21.2).
  3. Confirm the arbitration regime in clause 20.
  4. Decide whether the Terms should explicitly reference the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 — TrustEasyGo's customers are juristic persons (firms), so the CPA may or may not apply at standard limits; the attorney should advise.
  5. Decide on the appropriate forum for the Firm to lodge complaints with the Information Regulator (cross-reference Privacy Policy).
  6. Confirm that the "anonymised aggregated data" licence in clause 13.2 is acceptable and that the description of "anonymised" satisfies POPIA de-identification standards (POPIA §6(1)(b)).

Attorney sign-off

FieldValue
Attorney name_______________________________________
LPC roll number_______________________________________
Firm_______________________________________
Date of review_______________________________________
Codebase version revieweddevelop post-PR #206

I confirm that I have reviewed this draft of the Terms of Service and that, subject to the amendments marked in my redline (attached), it is fit for use as the contract between TrustEasyGo (Pty) Ltd and the subscribing legal practice.

Signature: _______________________________________

Date: _______________________________________

End of draft.

Questions about this document? Contact us via the sub-processor list page or your account manager.