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Pay a laywer or use Termly.io (a privacy policy/terms of use generator)?

6 points by tskittles ↗ HN
We're going to launch our mobile app in a couple weeks, and I wondered if we need to hire a lawyer OR if we can just use Termly.io .

They generate your privacy policy/terms of user automatically and are a lot cheaper than a lawyer.

Does anyone have experience using them? Or advice?

4 comments

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davismwfl
Can't comment on Termly specifically, but I have used services to generate basic templates for me to get moving with and then as we had resources we had attorney's review the T&C etc. Two things I usually do when I use a template, one make sure there is some statement about the right to update at any time, and two I compare it to other similar services to see if there are any key sections missing which I might be concerned about.

IANAL, but this has worked for me in the past and when I had enough resources I had an attorney go over it all for me. The only time I can think of right now where I'd not launch without a legal review first would be if my software/solution was in a high liability area. e.g. if it managed peoples bank information, or health care data etc.

*edit fixed a word

rococode
When you had attorneys review the documents did they find a lot of issues or was it mostly OK?
davismwfl
Generally good, with only a few corrections that were pretty specialized to our situation, or in one place our home State. To be clear, the one I had reviewed by an attorney in Texas, his office pointed out to me that they used a service to generate them too and just modified those to save time.

Every time I've used attorney's where we had to produce documentation they either took a prior case pleading and copied it, or they used one of the services that produces the template pleading and then just modified it.

WinonaRyder
We got ours through our insurance provider. It was a template of sort and I had to pour to tonnes of pages, but they provided helpful guides and also had templates for everything from Privacy Policy, T&Cs, Cookies, GDPR, to (separate) Acceptable Use, Sales... and other documents I didn't even think we needed.

They also happen to be a legal services provider, so I don't know if it's standard practice, but it's maybe one other alternative to think about.