Terms of Service

1. Agreeing to these terms

These terms are an agreement between Disbursely LLC, a New Jersey company that operates Disbursely ("Disbursely," "we," "us"), and the law firm or organization that has signed up to use the service ("your firm," "you").

Your firm agrees to these terms when it signs an order form or subscription agreement with us, or when anyone at your firm uses the service. If you are accepting on behalf of a firm, you are confirming you have the authority to bind that firm.

If your firm has a separate signed agreement with us, that agreement controls wherever it conflicts with this page.

2. Who can use Disbursely

Disbursely is offered only to businesses located in the United States. It is built for law firms and their staff, and it is not intended for personal, family, or household use.

We do not currently offer the service outside the United States. The platform and the data in it are hosted and processed in the United States, and payments are made through United States payment systems to United States accounts. If you are accessing the site from somewhere else, you are doing so on your own initiative, and we make no claim that Disbursely is appropriate or available for use in your location.

By using Disbursely, your firm confirms that it is organized and operating in the United States and that the people using it are doing so for business purposes.

3. What Disbursely does

Disbursely is settlement disbursement software for law firms. It lets your firm:

• Build a settlement distribution as line items, with a payee, payment method, and accounting code on each line
• Route that distribution through an approval process inside your firm
• Instruct payments out of your firm's own trust account by ACH, wire, instant payment, or printed check
• Keep a timestamped record of who created, edited, approved, and released each distribution
• Export the coding detail into your firm's accounting system

4. What Disbursely is not

This section matters more than most, so we are being blunt about it.

• We are not a bank, and settlement money is never ours. Payments are initiated from your firm's own trust account and are never routed through a Disbursely operating account. While a payment is in flight, balances stay segregated and are never commingled with our funds or with your firm's. We instruct payments on your firm's authority; the money is never ours to hold, spend, or lend.
• We are not your lawyer and we do not give legal advice. Nothing in the software or on our website is legal, accounting, or tax advice. Whether a particular disbursement is proper is your firm's judgment, not ours.
• We do not decide who gets paid or how much. The amounts, payees, liens, fees, and account details all come from your firm. We move what you tell us to move.
• We do not guarantee compliance with your bar rules. The software is built to support trust accounting requirements and to produce records that hold up to review, but your firm remains responsible for actually complying with the rules that apply to it.

5. Accounts and access

Access to Disbursely is invite-only. There is no public sign-up. Your firm's administrator invites users and assigns each one a role, and that role controls what the user can see, submit, approve, and release.

Your firm is responsible for:

• Deciding who gets an account and what role they hold
• Removing access promptly when someone leaves the firm or changes jobs
• Keeping login credentials confidential and not sharing accounts between people
• Everything done under your firm's accounts, whether or not you authorized it

Tell us at hello@disbursely.co right away if you think an account has been compromised.

6. Your firm's responsibilities

Because we act on your instructions, the accuracy of those instructions is on your firm. Specifically, your firm is responsible for:

• The numbers. Settlement amounts, attorney fees, lien amounts, case costs, and the client's net. Our software checks that a distribution adds up against the gross settlement, but a distribution can balance perfectly and still be wrong.
• The payees. Confirming that each recipient is who they say they are, and that the bank account or mailing address on file is correct. Payment fraud in legal settlements is common, and a payment sent to a verified-looking but fraudulent account is very difficult to recover.
• Sufficient funds. Making sure the trust account actually holds cleared funds for the matter before releasing payment.
• Trust accounting compliance. Following your state bar's rules on client funds, including any reconciliation and record-keeping requirements.
• Your own records. Keeping copies of what you need. Our records support yours; they do not replace your obligation to maintain them.

7. How money moves

Payments are initiated from your firm's trust account through your bank and through payment infrastructure we work with. A few practical consequences of that:

• Timing is not guaranteed. Delivery speed depends on the payment method, your bank, the receiving bank, cut-off times, weekends, and holidays. We show status as we receive it, but we cannot promise a payment will arrive by a particular moment.
• Some payments can be reversed and some cannot. ACH payments can be returned or reversed under network rules. Wires and instant payments are generally final once sent. Check the details before releasing.
• Failed and returned payments. If a payment is returned, we will flag it in the platform. Funds returned to your trust account remain your firm's responsibility to re-issue or resolve.
• We may pause a payment. If we or our payment providers have a reasonable concern about fraud, legal risk, or a rule violation, we may hold or decline to process a payment instruction. We will tell you when we do.

8. Fees

What your firm pays for the platform is set out in your order form or subscription agreement. Unless that agreement says otherwise:

• Standard ACH and printed check are paid by your firm as part of your subscription.
• Expedited payment methods carry a cost. Same-day ACH, wire, and instant payments cost more to send. Where a recipient chooses one of these faster methods, the cost of that method is shown before they select it, so nothing is deducted without the recipient seeing it first.
• Fees are non-refundable except where required by law or expressly stated in your agreement.
• We may change platform pricing on thirty (30) days’ notice, effective at your next renewal.

Your firm remains responsible for any fees its own bank charges, such as wire fees, returned item fees, or account maintenance charges.

9. Your data

Your firm's data stays your firm's data. That includes settlement records, recipient details, documents you upload, and the audit trail generated by your activity.

You give us permission to store and process that data for the purpose of running the service for you, keeping it secure, meeting our legal obligations, and improving how the platform works. We describe this in more detail in our Privacy Policy.

We do not sell your data, and we do not use your clients' information to market to them.

10. Security

We protect data in transit and at rest, including field-level encryption on sensitive values such as account numbers, routing numbers, and settlement amounts. Bank and accounting credentials are held server-side and are not exposed to the browser. Our current security practices are described on our website.

No system is perfectly secure. We commit to reasonable, current safeguards, not to a guarantee that a breach can never happen. If a breach affects your firm's data, we will notify you without undue delay and as required by applicable law.

11. Third-party services

Disbursely depends on outside services to work, including your bank, payment infrastructure providers, check printing and mailing providers, cloud hosting, and any accounting system you connect. Those providers have their own terms.

We choose our providers carefully and remain accountable to you for the service overall, but we are not responsible for a third party's own outage, error, or decision that is outside our control.

12. Availability and changes

We aim to keep Disbursely available and to schedule maintenance outside normal business hours where we can. We do not promise uninterrupted availability unless your agreement includes a specific service level commitment.

We improve the product continuously. We may add, change, or retire features. If we plan to remove something your firm actively relies on, we will give reasonable notice first.

13. Acceptable use

Don't use Disbursely to do anything illegal, to move money you are not entitled to move, to launder funds, to evade sanctions, or to get around your professional obligations. Don't try to break, probe, overload, reverse engineer, or copy the platform, and don't let anyone else do those things through your access.

We may suspend access immediately if we reasonably believe this section is being violated or that client funds are at risk.

14. Ownership of the software

We own Disbursely, including the software, design, and documentation. Your firm gets a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use it for the duration of your subscription. Nothing here transfers ownership of our intellectual property to you, or of your data to us.

If your firm sends us feedback or suggestions, we may use them to improve the product without owing you anything for it.

15. Confidentiality

Each side will protect the other's confidential information and use it only for purposes of this agreement. We understand that your firm's data includes client confidences and privileged material, and we treat it accordingly.

We will not disclose your firm's data to anyone except as needed to provide the service, with your permission, or where legally required. If we receive a subpoena or similar legal demand for your firm's data, we will notify you before responding unless we are legally prohibited from doing so, so that your firm has the chance to object or assert privilege.

16. Ending the agreement

Your firm may cancel as described in your subscription agreement. We may terminate for material breach that is not cured within thirty (30) days of written notice, or immediately for the acceptable use violations described above.

When the agreement ends:

• Access to the platform stops.
• For seven (7) years afterward, your firm can request an export of its data, and we will provide it in a structured format.
• After that window we delete or de-identify your firm's data, except where we are required to retain records by law.
• Payments already in flight will be allowed to complete or will be returned to your trust account.

Because these records may be needed to satisfy your firm's own bar record-keeping obligations, we recommend exporting a full copy before you cancel.

17. Disclaimers

Except as expressly stated in these terms or your subscription agreement, the service is provided "as is." To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the service will be error-free or uninterrupted, that it will detect every mistake in a distribution, or that using it will make your firm compliant with any particular rule or regulation.

18. Limits on our liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, neither side is liable to the other for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits or lost business, even if warned they were possible.

Our total liability arising out of or relating to the service is limited to the total amount your firm paid us in the three (3) months before the event giving rise to the claim.

These limits do not apply to your firm's obligation to pay fees, to either side's breach of confidentiality, to our gross negligence or willful misconduct, or to anything that cannot be limited under applicable law.

19. Indemnification

Your firm will defend and indemnify us against third-party claims arising from your firm's use of the service in breach of these terms, from the accuracy or propriety of a distribution your firm authorized, or from your firm's violation of law or professional rules.

We will defend and indemnify your firm against third-party claims that the Disbursely software itself infringes someone's intellectual property rights.

20. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. If a change materially affects your firm's rights or obligations, we will give at least thirty (30) days’ notice by email or in the platform before it takes effect. Continuing to use Disbursely after that means your firm accepts the updated terms.

We will always post the effective date at the top of this page.

21. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New Jersey, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Somerset County, New Jersey, and both sides consent to the jurisdiction of those courts.

Before filing anything, both sides agree to try to resolve the dispute in good faith by talking to each other first.

22. Contact

Questions about these terms:

Disbursely LLC
971 US Highway 202N, Ste R
Branchburg, NJ 08876
hello@disbursely.co