Local-first handling of sensitive family records.

1. About the application

Maine Family Law LLM is an open-source, local-first legal-information, record-organization, evidence-mapping, research, and drafting-support application focused on Maine family-law matters.

The application is not a lawyer, does not provide legal advice, and is not affiliated with the Maine Judicial Branch, any court, Microsoft, or any government agency.

Project repository: github.com/JTAHAI/maine-family-law-llm

2. Default privacy behavior

By default, the standard local edition:

• Keeps selected documents on your computer or in a storage location you choose.
• Does not require an online account.
• Does not sell personal information or user activity.
• Does not use advertising trackers or behavioral advertising.
• Does not intentionally collect product telemetry or behavioral analytics.
• Does not use private matter files to train shared models by default.
• Does not place private matter files, runtime databases, embeddings, vector stores, OCR caches, or generated legal work product in the public source repository.

3. Information the application may process

The application may process files and information that you intentionally select, import, paste, or place in an approved folder. Depending on the matter, this can include:

• Court pleadings, motions, orders, exhibits, forms, and docket records
• Emails, messages, letters, screenshots, photographs, and attachments
• Names, contact information, dates of birth, and information concerning children
• Financial, employment, tax, debt, support, and property information
• School, childcare, counseling, medical, or provider information
• Information concerning abuse, harassment, safety, or protection orders
• Parenting schedules and family-history information
• Attorney, guardian ad litem, therapist, counselor, agency, or provider communications
• Notes, timelines, evidence maps, summaries, reports, citations, and drafts
• Local operational information such as file paths, timestamps, hashes, preferences, and diagnostic logs

Family-law files may contain highly sensitive information. Import only information you are authorized to possess and process.

4. How files are accessed

The application is designed to access private files through an action you initiate, such as selecting a file or folder, opening an existing matter workspace, or adding records to an earlier intake. It does not automatically search unrelated areas of your computer for private legal records.

Original source records are intended to be read without modification. The application may create separate working copies, extracted text, hashes, indexes, reports, timelines, evidence maps, and generated work products.

5. Where information is stored

Local information may be stored in:

• A matter or corpus workspace selected by you
• An external drive or folder selected by you
• Your Windows local application-data directory
• Temporary local working directories used during processing
• Locally generated reports, indexes, logs, manifests, hashes, and drafts

Application preferences and limited operational state may be stored under %LOCALAPPDATA%\MaineFamilyLawLLM. Matter workspaces and case-specific outputs should remain in the separate location selected by the user.

6. Purposes of processing

Selected information may be processed to organize records, extract text, calculate hashes, build source manifests and indexes, identify issues and procedural posture, create timelines, map facts to evidence, locate Maine authority, verify citations and quote spans, generate source cards and authority matrices, identify missing records or red flags, and create review-required working drafts.

Outputs may be incomplete or incorrect and must be reviewed before reliance, disclosure, submission, or filing.

7. Information received by TAHAI

TAHAI does not receive your local matter files merely because you install or use the standard local application.

TAHAI may receive information when you separately choose to send email, request support, report a bug, open a GitHub issue, contribute code, participate in a pilot, or voluntarily provide logs, screenshots, or sample files.

Do not post confidential, privileged, sealed, juvenile, medical, or personally identifying matter information in a public GitHub issue. Use fictional or appropriately redacted examples for public support requests.

8. Optional external AI and cloud services

A user or organization may configure an optional external model, hosted API, storage provider, OCR provider, or other third-party service. When an external service is enabled, information submitted to that feature may leave your device and be processed under the provider’s own terms.

Information transmitted to an optional provider could include questions, retrieved source excerpts, document text, draft text, matter facts, citations, and diagnostic information. Before enabling an external service, identify the provider, review its retention and training terms, assess confidentiality protections, obtain required consent or approval, and redact information that is not necessary.

TAHAI is not responsible for a third-party service selected, modified, configured, or operated by another person or organization.

9. Model training

Private matter files are not used to train shared models by default. Public project development may use official public legal sources, public government material, fictional or synthetic examples, properly licensed material, and de-identified or expressly authorized evaluation data.

Private matter information should be used for training or product improvement only through a separate, explicit, lawful, documented, and appropriately reviewed process.

10. Sharing and disclosure

The standard local application does not intentionally share selected matter information with TAHAI or third parties by default. Information may nevertheless be disclosed when you export, copy, email, upload, synchronize, or share it; when another person has access to your device or storage; when you enable an external service; when malware or unauthorized access compromises the device; or when you voluntarily provide information for support.

Review every export before sharing it. A privacy-filtered export can reduce risk but cannot guarantee that every sensitive fact has been removed.

11. Security

No software or storage method can guarantee absolute security. Users should protect their Windows account, enable full-disk encryption where available, keep the operating system updated, restrict matter-folder access, secure backups and removable drives, scan imported files, and avoid untrusted plugins, models, scripts, and documents.

Unless the application expressly states otherwise for a particular feature, do not assume that every matter workspace or export is independently encrypted by the application.

12. Retention and deletion

Local files generally remain until you delete them. This can include source records, workspaces, extracted text, OCR output, indexes, logs, timelines, evidence maps, drafts, exports, and backups.

To remove local matter information:

1. Close the application.
2. Locate the matter workspace you selected.
3. Delete the workspace or individual files you no longer wish to retain.
4. Empty the Recycle Bin where appropriate.
5. Review synchronized folders, backups, exported packages, and removable drives.
6. Delete %LOCALAPPDATA%\MaineFamilyLawLLM if you also want to reset local application settings and logs.

Uninstalling the application may remove installed program files but may not delete user-created matter workspaces or exports stored elsewhere. This separation is intentional so an update or uninstall does not silently destroy legal records.

13. Children’s, sealed, and restricted information

The application is intended for adults and authorized users, but family-law matters frequently contain children’s information. Adults using the application are responsible for protecting that information and complying with applicable confidentiality, court-record, juvenile-record, medical, education, sealing, and protective-order requirements.

Special care is required for sealed records, child-protection records, medical or mental-health information, education records, attorney-client communications, attorney work product, guardian ad litem material, Social Security numbers, financial-account information, and information restricted by court order.

14. Open-source forks

A person or organization that forks, modifies, redistributes, hosts, or operates its own edition may change how information is collected, stored, transmitted, or used. This policy applies to the official Maine Family Law LLM distribution identified by TAHAI; it does not automatically apply to third-party forks.

A state-specific fork must independently replace and validate statutes, court rules, forms, case law, citation standards, legal ontology, freshness controls, evaluation materials, privacy rules, and human-review procedures.

15. Microsoft Store distribution

When obtained through Microsoft Store, Microsoft may independently process account, device, licensing, download, installation, crash, or Store-usage information under Microsoft’s own terms and privacy statement. TAHAI does not control Microsoft’s independent processing.

16. Changes and contact

This policy may be updated when the application, data practices, optional integrations, or legal requirements change. Material changes will be reflected in the “last updated” date and public Git history.

Questions may be raised through the project issue tracker, but do not include private or sensitive matter information in a public issue. For private correspondence, use the contact route listed by TAHAI in the Microsoft Store support listing or on its official website.