How Tima is used responsibly
Tima is MiLAWYER's AI assistant. It helps people in Sierra Leone understand the law and take the next step, and helps lawyers and students with their work. Used carelessly, AI can mislead the people who most need help, so these are the rules Tima works by.
1. Answers come from the law of Sierra Leone
- Research with Tima and Letters and forms explain the law only from the laws and judgments in the MiLAWYER library. Every point links to the provision it comes from, so you can read it yourself.
- In Research with Tima, any statement Tima can't match to the text in the library is removed automatically, and Tima says when the library doesn't answer the question instead of guessing.
- In everyday conversation, Tima gives general legal information and is instructed never to invent the name of a law, a section or a case.
- Laws come from official sources, such as the Law Reform Commission of Sierra Leone, and each is credited to its source. A law whose current status hasn't been checked is marked “not yet checked”. Text read from a scan is checked by a person before it is published.
2. Lawyers check Tima's work
- Under any answer from Tima, or any letter it drafts, you can tap Ask a lawyer to check this. A verified Sierra Leonean lawyer confirms or corrects it, free.
- With your agreement, and after the lawyer removes anything that could identify you, checked answers are published for others with the same problem: Answers checked by lawyers.
- Every Know your rights lesson is written by a verified lawyer, checked by a second one before it goes live, and checked again every year.
- Lawyers on MiLAWYER are verified from their current practising certificate, and verification ends with each practising year.
3. Your information is handled with care
- Your conversations with Tima are not stored by MiLAWYER. We keep only how much Tima was used, to count credits and costs.
- Letters drafted with Tima are not saved, unless you ask a lawyer to check one. Files you give Tima to read are deleted within a day.
- A lawyer checking an answer never sees your name. Nothing is published without your agreement, and you can take a published answer down at any time.
- Tima is built on Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, what is sent to Tima is not used to train AI models.
- Don't share ID numbers, bank details or passwords with Tima. Impact figures are only ever published as anonymised totals.
4. People at risk come first
- When someone describes violence, an arrest, an eviction or a court date, Tima tells them first to get help from a lawyer, the Legal Aid Board or emergency services, and shows safety and support services.
- Pages about violence have a Leave quickly button, and Discreet mode (in your account settings) hides case details on screen for anyone who shares a phone.
5. What Tima will not do
- Tima is not a lawyer. It gives legal information, not legal advice, and it can't represent you or go to court for you.
- It answers about the law of Sierra Leone only.
- It tells you honestly that it is an automated assistant, not a person.
- For students, it teaches and helps plan work, but won't write graded coursework for them to hand in as their own.
6. Humans stay responsible
MiLAWYER runs by itself, but people oversee it: administrators verify lawyers, review scanned laws, act on reports and can remove anything that is wrong. If Tima gets something wrong, ask a lawyer to check it, or tell us. We fix the library, the guides or Tima's instructions.