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How Counsel Bids uses information
This notice explains what information we collect when you use counselbids.com, why, who sees it and what your rights are. It is written for busy people: short sections, no legalese. Last updated 9 October 2026, during the free pilot.
Who we are
Counsel Bids is a procurement platform for business buyers of legal services in England and Wales. In-house legal teams and business leaders describe the work they need, SRA-regulated law firms quote for it in a sealed round, and the buyer compares the quotes side by side.
Counsel Bids is the controller of the personal information described in this notice. You can reach us about anything in this notice at hello@counselbids.com.
The platform is for businesses. It is not intended for use by individuals acting in a personal capacity, or by anyone under 18.
What we collect
If you only visit the public website
Nothing that identifies you. The public pages set no cookies and we run no analytics or advertising tools. Our hosting provider keeps ordinary server logs (the address your request came from, the page requested and when) for security, for a short period.
If you use the sense-check
The fee and matter type you type in are used to show you where that fee sits against the benchmark and are not stored against you. No account is needed.
If you have an account
- Your details: your name, work email address, job title and the organisation you work for. Sign-in is by a one-time code emailed to you; we hold no passwords. If your organisation asks for sign-in with Microsoft or Google, those services tell us your email address and name and nothing else.
- Requests for quotes: the scope, parameters and comparison criteria a buyer sets out, the names of the parties (used only for conflict checks). The platform is designed to hold the shape of a matter, not its facts: a checker runs before any request is sent and stops narrative, dates, amounts and personal details going in.
- Quotes: what a law firm submits in reply, including fee, basis, team, timing, assumptions, exclusions and the charity pledge, and any quote letter the firm uploads.
- Decisions: which quote a buyer chose and the reason given, and the decision record produced from it.
- Audit trail: a record of every material action on the platform: who did what, when, the internet address it came from and the browser used. This is what lets a buyer or firm prove a sealed round was run fairly.
- Correspondence: emails you send us, and the notification emails we send you.
If you work at a law firm we approach
Our firm directory and business-development records hold the business contact details of people at law firms (name, role, firm, work email and phone number) and notes of our dealings with them. We take these from public sources, such as the SRA register, firm websites and professional networking sites, and from our own correspondence. We use them only to tell firms about the platform and to run the pilot, and anyone can ask us to stop at any time.
Why we use it, and our legal grounds
- To run the platform for you and your organisation: creating accounts, running sealed rounds, showing quotes to the buyer after the round closes, producing decision records and sending the notifications the process needs. Legal ground: performing our agreement with you (the pilot terms).
- To keep the platform secure and provable: sign-in, the audit trail, the hash chain that proves no quote was seen or changed before a round closed, and error monitoring. Legal ground: our legitimate interest in a secure, trustworthy service, which is also yours.
- To build benchmarks: aggregated figures (such as the typical fee for a matter type and region) computed from closed rounds. A figure is shown only when it draws on at least five rounds from at least five different buyers, and never identifies a firm, a buyer or a quote. Legal ground: legitimate interests.
- To tell law firms about the platform and manage the pilot panel. Legal ground: legitimate interests in business-to-business marketing, subject to your right to object.
- To meet legal obligations and to deal with disputes or complaints.
We never sell personal information, never use it for advertising, and never use it to train AI models.
Who sees what in a sealed round
The platform exists to keep information in the right hands, so this is worth spelling out. These rules are enforced in the database itself, not just on screen.
- A law firm can never see another firm's quote, price or identity, during or after a round.
- Quotes are sealed from the buyer until the round closes. Each quote is fingerprinted on submission and the fingerprint written to the audit trail, so nobody can alter or add a quote unnoticed.
- Firms learn about a request in stages: a summary first, the party names only once they register interest (so they can run a conflict check), and the full brief only after they confirm the conflict check is clear and accept a confidentiality undertaking, which is logged.
- A buyer who chooses to be anonymous is named to a firm only when the firm registers interest, so it can run its conflict check.
- Counsel Bids staff can see request and quote data to support users and investigate problems. Any staff access to a sealed quote is logged, as is any override of the sensitive-information checker, with the reason.
How we use AI
Two features use Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic. Both are there to save you retyping and to keep case facts off the platform:
- The sensitive-information check reads the text of a request before it is sent and flags anything that looks like the facts of a case, suggesting a scope-level rewording. Party names are removed before the text is sent to the model, and attachments are never sent.
- Quote-letter reading takes a quote letter or PDF a firm uploads and fills in the fixed fields for the firm to confirm. Party names are removed from the letter first.
Anthropic processes that text to produce the answer and does not use it to train its models. Nothing else about you or your organisation is sent. A person stays in control: the model only suggests, and the user confirms.
How long we keep it
- Account details: while you have an account, and for 12 months after it closes, in case of queries.
- Requests, quotes, decisions and the audit trail: for six years after the round closes, because buyers and firms may need to evidence how a decision was made, and the audit trail is a chain in which each entry depends on the one before it.
- Business-development records about people at law firms: while we are in contact with the firm, and removed promptly if you ask.
- Server logs and error reports: a short period, typically 30 to 90 days.
Benchmarks are kept indefinitely because they contain no personal information.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, object to our using it, ask us to restrict how we use it, and ask for it in a portable form. Where we rely on legitimate interests, including for business-development contact, you can object at any time and we will stop unless we have compelling grounds to continue.
Some information cannot be deleted on request: the audit trail of a completed round, for example, is kept so that the round remains provable to everyone who took part. We will explain this when it applies.
To exercise any right, email hello@counselbids.com. We answer within one month. If you are unhappy with our answer you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, although we would welcome the chance to put it right first.
Changes and contact
We will update this notice as the platform develops, and the date at the top will change when we do. If a change matters to how your information is used, we will tell account holders by email.
Questions, requests or concerns: hello@counselbids.com.