Not legal advice
The short version
A tool that acts like a lawyer is a tool you cannot check. This one is general HR information, delivered fast. It is not legal advice and it is not a substitute for a lawyer who knows your facts. Use it to understand a situation and to work out what to ask next — not as the last word before a decision you cannot take back.
Nobody here becomes your lawyer
Using the assistant, or reading anything on this site, creates no attorney–client relationship. The assistant answers the question you typed. It has not read your handbook, your contracts, your personnel files, or the facts you did not think to mention — and those are usually the facts that decide the outcome.
Not confidential, not privileged
Conversations with this tool are not privileged, and they are stored. Assume anything you type could surface later in litigation or an agency investigation. So keep questions general: describe the situation, not the person. Leave out names, Social Security numbers, medical details, and material from a privileged investigation. What we store, and for how long, is set out on the privacy page.
Coverage stops at seven states
The assistant is built on a curated body of federal law plus seven states: California, Nevada, Texas, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Utah and Florida. That is the entire list. If your employee works anywhere else, we have no state law for that place — and an answer that looks like it covers your eighth state should not be trusted. Ask a lawyer licensed there instead.
Law changes, and an answer ages
Rates and thresholds move on the calendar; courts and legislatures move the rest without warning. An answer reflects what our sources said on the day it was written, so an answer you saved months ago may quietly be wrong today. Re-ask rather than reuse, and check the date on anything you are about to put into a policy.
Follow the citations — that is the point
Answers cite the rules they rest on, and the citation is the part you can actually verify. Open it. Read the section. If a summary and the underlying rule disagree, the rule wins. If an answer gives you nothing you can check, treat it as a lead to chase, not an authority to act on.
When it declines, believe it
Sometimes the assistant will decline to answer rather than guess. That is deliberate, not a malfunction: it means we do not have verified law for that question, and a confident guess would be the most dangerous thing we could hand you. Those declines are the list we work from when we add coverage.
When to call an employment lawyer
These are the situations where a fast answer is not enough, and an hour of a lawyer's time is the cheapest thing in the room:
- You are terminating someone who has recently complained — about pay, safety, harassment or discrimination — or who has a complaint sitting in their file.
- Anything touching a protected leave: pregnancy, a serious health condition, a disability accommodation, military service.
- A layoff, a reduction in force, or closing a site.
- A charge, claim or demand letter has arrived — from an agency such as the EEOC or a state labor or civil-rights agency, or from an employee's attorney.
- You are asking someone to sign away a claim: severance, a separation agreement, a release, a settlement.
If anything here is unclear
Email maggievinas@outlook.com.