Before you create a matter
No attorney-client, CPA-client, or consulting relationship
STIP is a research and organization tool. Creating a matter and entering facts here
does not create an attorney-client, CPA-client, or consulting relationship with
Brown & Associates, and the responses STIP generates are general educational
information, not individualized tax or legal advice. For guidance on your specific
situation, speak with Brown & Associates or qualified counsel.
Internal access
Authorized Brown & Associates staff may access the information in this matter to
operate, support, and review the service. Such access is logged. Your matter
information is not shared with other clients or used to answer other users' questions.
Retention
We retain the information in this matter for the duration of your engagement and for
7 years afterward, then it becomes eligible for deletion. Export and deletion
controls are coming in a later release.
How your facts are used
When you ask a question within this matter, the facts you have marked active in this
matter — including an EIN/FEIN if you entered one — are sent to the AI model that
drafts the answer, so it can tailor the response to your situation. These facts are
used only for this matter's own answers and are treated as background context, not as
legal authority. They are never cited as authority, never added to STIP's shared
legal-authority sources, and not shared with other clients or used to answer other
users' questions. After an answer is generated, we keep only references to which facts
were used — not the fact values themselves.
The text of documents you upload to this matter — including text we recover from
uploaded images (PNG, JPEG, WebP) using our own in-house text recognition, which
never sends your files to another company — may also be sent to the AI model at
answer time, so it can tailor this matter's answers to your situation. As with your
facts, this document text is treated as background context, not as legal authority, and
is never cited as authority. After an answer is generated, we keep only references to
which documents were used — never their contents and never their filenames.
What a matter stores
A matter stores the facts you enter about your situation — notes, assumptions, issues,
document references, and a few structured fields such as state, tax type, period, an
amount, and your entity's EIN/FEIN. The EIN/FEIN is the only sensitive identifier this
tool accepts; please do not enter Social Security or taxpayer ID numbers, bank or
account numbers, dates of birth, or assessed liability amounts. Everything you enter
here is handled under the separation, retention, and internal-access terms above.