HOW WE WORK

A record, not a ranking

Two lifecycle states

Active means the product is on the market as of the observation date. Retired requires dated evidence of discontinuation, absorption, or redirect. Status records what the product is doing, not how much its vendor publishes.

Data-statement coverage

Each record also carries a coverage label describing only what was found in the checked sources. Published means a confidentiality statement, a training statement, and a data-location statement were all located. Partial means some but not all three were found. Not found means none of the three were found.

Coverage is a description of the vendor’s published material, never a judgement about the product. Many legitimate products simply do not publish a security page. A low coverage label is not a warning and does not affect where a record appears. The directory lists products; the reader decides what a gap means for their firm.

Evidence before inference

Every evidence field carries an observation date and source. Each record carries its own date, set when the record is entered, so records added on different days do not share a single timestamp.

We do not score tools, publish user reviews, or turn silence into a promise. No-training is shown only when a vendor says it in writing.

Firm-size bands

Firm-size filters record vendor language, not a CounselAtlas recommendation. We map an explicit solo-practitioner statement to Solo, small-firm language to 2-5, and mid-sized-firm language to 6-20. When the checked vendor source does not state a firm size, the record says Not stated and is omitted from firm-size-filtered results.

The sponsorship firewall

Paid placements must be labeled Sponsored and use sponsored link attributes. Sponsorship cannot alter a status, a coverage label, a confidentiality fact, or the order in which records appear.

Refresh cadence

Site and pricing paths are reviewed weekly, confidentiality and training statements monthly, and integrations and practice-area coverage quarterly. Records older than 90 days should be treated as awaiting re-check.