Terms and Conditions
THESE TERMS WERE LAST UPDATED ON 12TH OCTOBER 2022
*For any Forms mentioned in this document please contact the Heads of Catalegal for more information.
Definitions
Founder of Catalegal - NICCOLÒ GUASTELLA.
Heads of Catalegal - NICCOLÒ GUASTELLA & TANISHA SHAH.
Executive Legal Editor - GAIA FREYDEFONT.
Members of The Clinic - NICCOLÒ GUASTELLA, TANISHA SHAH, ILONA MUNN, AMINOOR MASOOM, RITA ALMAZURI, SOFIA MARTIELLO, EDWARD BENNET, GAIA FREYDEFONT, IRENE CORRERO, EESHA SINGH, NEHA TAVRA & YASMIN WELSH.
Confidential Private Folder - This refers to a Google Drive folder accessible only by the Heads of Catalegal where all the confidential information will be stored carefully for privacy purposes.
Who we are
Catalegal.com is a platform working with startups, students and solicitors to provide curated legal insight articles. The platform is owned and operated by the founder Niccolò Guastella. Catalegal is not a law firm and isn’t regulated as such. It is important to understand what this means, in terms of the services we provide and the regulatory protections available.
To contact us, please email niccologuastella@catalegal.com.
When these terms apply
These Terms of Service apply when:
you use any of the features on this site;
are a member of Catalegal; or
are a startup working with Catalegal.
Once you enter this site and start using any of the features, such as accessing our articles, you will be subject to and be bound by these Terms of service. We recommend you take a look and consider our Privacy Policy as well. By entering and using any of the features of this website, this will be considered as an acceptance of these Terms. If you have any issues with any of these terms the onus is on you to contact the Heads of Catalegal. If you do not accept these terms, you are not permitted to make use of Catalegal services.
Terms subject to change
Please note that we may change, modify, add or remove sections of these Terms from time to time. We encourage you to revisit the Terms every so often to make sure that you are still in agreement with these Terms. For any issues please contact the Heads of Catalegal.
No Legal Advice
We are not a law firm and are not regulated as such. Law firms in England and Wales are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and it’s important that you understand that we are not regulated or authorised by the SRA. This means we cannot provide services that are “reserved” to solicitors (or in some cases other authorised, regulated persons like barristers or licensed conveyancers), such as: conducting litigation, conveyancing, probate activities, notarising or the administration of oaths.
Our Platform and related services are only concerned with providing legal insight on a variety of legal topics which must not be taken as advice, and we do not carry out any of the activities that can only be provided by regulated solicitors and law firms. This is stressed by the inclusion of our Disclaimer at the end of each article, as well as by the fact that Catalegal does not ask or accept any remuneration from startups, solicitors or other third parties for the services provided on this website.
Limitation of liability
We do not exclude or limit in any way our liability to you where it would be unlawful to do so. This includes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence or the negligence of our team, and for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.
NOTWITHSTANDING ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY, CATALEGAL AND ITS MEMBERS WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE OR LIABLE WITH RESPECT TO ANY SUBJECT MATTER OF THESE TERMS RELATED THERETO UNDER ANY CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY OR OTHER THEORY OF LIABILITY FOR USE OF THE PLATFORM, LOSS OR INACCURACY, ANY SORT OF DAMAGES AND ANY MATTERS BEYOND OUR REASONABLE CONTROL.
Confidentiality and Privacy
Any and all matters or work relating to Catalegal will be communicated using Catalegal's LinkedIn social media page, Catalegal’s website, or email addresses of the Heads of Catalegal.
The LinkedIn page referred to in s.1 will only be accessible to the Heads of Catalegal.
Access to the LinkedIn page to any other party is prohibited and granting permission to use or view the information provided to Catalegal for purposes not approved by the Heads of Catalegal, will result in termination of membership under the Termination of Catalegal membership section.
To maintain Privacy and Confidentiality, any startup interested in sending us an enquiry will be required to read carefully the Privacy Policy, which includes particulars on the use of personal information and storage of data collected.
Any and all confidential data provided by the startups in emails or other social media channels will be carefully stored in the Confidential Private Folder, only accessible by the Heads of Catalegal.
This will be clearly stated in the Privacy Policy.
Any and all confidential information may be shared by the Heads of Catalegal for Catalegal related purposes to the other Members of Catalegal.
If the parties listed in s.4 breach these terms by showing or granting access to any other party outside of the Heads of Catalegal, their membership will be immediately terminated under the Termination of Catalegal membership section.
All Terms and Conditions documents will be stored in a private folder in the Confidential Private Folder.
All Members of Catalegal are prohibited from speaking, writing or in any way communicating information about ongoing confidential work for Catalegal, unless they are doing so with each other and during the running times of Catalegal, or are communicating with the relevant startups about the ongoing work being carried out.
Once an article has been published, Members of Catalegal will still be prohibited from speaking, writing or in any way communicating if the work was of a confidential nature, until and unless they receive permission from the Heads of Catalegal and an executive member of the startup the work was done for.
‘Executive member’ for these purposes means the member listed in the Enquiry Form, CEO, CFO or a representative of the startup.
Permission can be provided orally or in writing but must be granted by all three parties set out in s.6(1) above. Permission by one, or two of the parties will not suffice.
Complaints
Any and all complaints will be issued by filling out the necessary sections in the Complaints Form, which can be found on the LinkedIn page or by asking the Heads of Catalegal.
The Complaint Form must be provided to the startups for their awareness and understanding.
Provision of the Complaint Form will be done by including it in the Catalegal.com website in the footer along with an explanation as to the Complaints procedure.
Once the Complaint Form has been filled out and sent to Catalegal, the Heads of Catalegal will employ a period of 14 working days to deal with the complaint appropriately.
In the event the complaint regards either Heads of Catalegal, the remaining Head of Catalegal and/or other Members will deal with the complaint accordingly, within the same time frame.
Depending on the severity of the complaint, the decision reached by the parties in s.3(1) will be limited to:
Terminating membership of the culpable party, under the Termination of Catalegal membership section.
Remove the culpable party from writing or publishing any work for Catalegal.
At the end of the 14 working day deliberation period referred to in s.3, the parties referred to in s.3(1) will create a letter to send to the party who made the complaint.
The letter will include what has been done on Catalegal’s side to resolve the issue, and a section including an apology referring to the objectives and beliefs of Catalegal.
In the event the complaint regards an issue the relevant parties deem to be too severe to be dealt with, a legal team will be contacted to receive advice on how to proceed further to resolve the complaint.
If the actions mentioned in s.6 take place, a letter will be sent to the relevant startup explaining that due to the severity of the issue, a legal team has been contacted and as such a further 14 working days will be employed to resolve the issue appropriately.
The complainant also has the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.
Supervision of Catalegal work
Any and all insight articles will have to be reviewed by a legal professional before being published.
The first review will be carried out by the Heads of Catalegal when the Members of Catalegal have written the first draft.
A second review will be carried out by a legal professional, once the amendments listed by the Heads of Catalegal have been completed, and as such a second draft is prepared.
The Heads of Catalegal have the following duties:
Attend a meeting held for Catalegal purposes at least once a week;
Review every insight article at least twice before they are published and shared on the website;
Reply to any queries by Members of Catalegal within a one week period, unless it relates to an enquiry decision, which should be made within two working days;
Intervene when any work done by Members of Catalegal has been carried out inappropriately.
Intervention may be carried out by:
Having a meeting with the individual in question, with the assistance of the other Head of Catalegal.
Terminate the membership of the individual member only after consultation with the other Head of Catalegal.
Disability and Discrimination
Any comments or actions by Members of Catalegal that are deemed to have been discriminatory will be immediately reported to the Head of Catalegal and the other Members.
If deemed serious and reliable by the Heads of Catalegal, the individual who made the comments or carried out the actions will be subject to immediate termination of Catalegal membership, under the Termination of Catalegal membership section.
All Members of Catalegal, with the exception of the Founder of Catalegal, will be chosen following an application process.
The selection to allow membership to Catalegal will be carried out by the Heads of Catalegal by carefully assessing each application equally.
When rejecting applications the Heads of Catalegal reserve the right to not provide a reason as to why the rejection has been issued.
All applications, whether accepted or rejected, must be stored in the Confidential Private Folder.
The storage of the application must be done only once permission has been granted by the applicant, whereby consent to the permission of storage should be provided in the Application Form itself.
All applications must be assessed solely on merit, and no preferential treatment is allowed.
If preferential treatment or discrimination has been employed in the application process, the membership of the individual(s) in question carrying out these actions will be terminated immediately under the Termination of Catalegal membership section.
The order in which Catalegal deals with queries from the startups will be carried out on a first come first serve basis, meaning a case will take precedence if the enquiry has been sent first.
A query is deemed ‘sent’ once the enquiry has been received to Catalegal’s LinkedIn page or the Catalegal email.
The Heads of Catalegal dealing with the query must prepare a letter within 2 days of receiving the enquiry - setting out the clear reasons for why acceptance of the query was or was not possible.
‘Receiving the enquiry’ occurs once the enquiry appears in the Catalegal email address inbox.
Rejecting an enquiry from the startups can only happen due to the following reasons:
The workload of Catalegal is deemed too much for Catalegal to effectively deal with the query within the required timeframe. This will be decided by the Heads of Catalegal;
Catalegal is not in operation due to it being a holiday period;
The query has been received by Catalegal during the one week prior to an examination period, or during the examination period itself.
Any reasoning that falls outside the circumstances listed in s.8 or discriminatory reasoning, is prohibited and will be subject to review by the Heads of Catalegal.
Copyright
All content on the Catalegal website (with the exception of any photographs apart from those on the About Us page), Catalegal’s LinkedIn page, Catalegal’s Google folders and any other information written by Members of Catalegal are protected by copyright.
Any copyrighted material belonging to Catalegal can be downloaded for educational and non-commercial purposes only with the written permission of the Heads of Catalegal.
Miscellaneous terms and conditions
Any legal insight, suggestions, and comments by any Members of Catalegal are provided as purely general information and not solutions to legal problems. We encourage our readers to keep this in mind and be reasonable when considering our insight, suggestions, or comments, given it has been provided by non-qualified law students (with the proofing of legal professionals).
Catalegal and all its members will not assume any liability for damages of any kind suffered by startups and other third parties as what Catalegal provides is pure insight and not legal advice.
These Terms and Conditions shall be governed in accordance with the laws of its jurisdiction, in England and Wales.
Termination of Catalegal Membership
In the event a Member of Catalegal has breached any of the terms set out in this document, the Heads of Catalegal reserve the right to carefully assess and agree to the termination of Catalegal Membership.
Termination will be provided to the member in question orally or in writing.
Termination will consist of removing the individual from any and all of Catalegal’s matters and prohibiting them from writing or publishing any work for Catalegal.
Termination must be provided with reasoning for the decision.
The confidentiality conditions set out in the Confidentiality and Privacy section will still apply even after Termination of Catalegal Membership has been issued. The same terms and conditions must be followed.
In the event confidentiality requirements have been breached post-termination, Catalegal reserves the right to contact a legal team to seek advice on the most appropriate steps.
Decision making procedure
All decisions regarding Catalegal, and any of the matters in the Terms and Conditions, unless stated otherwise, will be deliberated by the Heads of Catalegal.
The decisions reached will be via a process of voting, with each party holding one vote.
Agreement and Understanding
By continuing to use our site and services you are agreeing:
To have read, understood and be bound by these Terms and Conditions.
You have asked for any clarifications as to the Terms and Conditions, and will seek clarification from the Heads of Catalegal if any part of these Terms have not been clearly understood.
To be bound by any amendments that are made over the course of the start of Catalegal (September 2021).