1. Respect for the court
Notes describe judgments in neutral, factual language and quote the court accurately. We do not mock or sensationalise cases. Reader comments that attack judges, parties or witnesses are removed.
2. Independence of the court
We do not profile individual judges, rank them or predict how they will decide. Notes report what the court decided and why, not speculation about motives.
3. Protecting people who are anonymised
We keep every anonymisation in a judgment and never add details from other sources. In family, criminal, medical and children's cases, notes leave out the names of private individuals and details that could identify them when put together, such as small towns, schools, employers or exact dates. Comments that try to identify anyone are removed.
4. Avoiding discriminatory harm
Notes describe people in respectful terms, using the court's own descriptions. Characteristics such as race, religion, disability or sexuality are mentioned only where the court treated them as relevant.
5. Fairness
We aim to write a note on every new judgment, not a hand-picked selection. Each note sets out both sides' arguments and the court's reasons. We review notes and reader reports for one-sided summaries and correct them.
6. Privacy
Notes do not reproduce judgments in full, and include only the personal information needed to explain the case. We follow UK data protection law. Anyone named in a note can ask us to correct it or remove details.
7. Search engines and scraping
Only our own case notes, which contain short quotations, are open to search engines. Where we show the full text of a judgment, that page is hidden from search engines. We protect the site against bulk scraping and do not offer bulk downloads of judgment text.
8. Being open about AI
Every note says that it was written with AI and checked against the judgment, and links to how our notes are made. Every note links to the official judgment.
9. Keeping notes accurate
We check regularly for corrected or withdrawn judgments, rewrite notes when a judgment changes, and take them down when it is withdrawn. Software checks quotations, paragraph numbers and citations before anything is published.
Corrections, complaints and removal requests
Email editors@becivil.co.uk. Tell us the case and what you would like us to change. A court, a party or anyone named in a note can ask us to correct it or take it down, and we act on these requests promptly.