MSBA Connect Terms of Service
These terms govern use of MSBA Connect (“Connect”). To use Connect, you must agree to these terms with the Maryland State Bar Association.
These terms include a number of important provisions that affect your rights and responsibilities, such as the disclaimers in Disclaimers, limits on MSBA’s liability to you in Limits on Liability, your agreement to cover MSBA for damages caused by your misuse of Connect in Your Responsibility, and an agreement to arbitrate disputes in Disputes.
Subject to these terms, MSBA gives you permission to use Connect. Everyone needs to agree to these terms to use Connect.
Your permission to use Connect is subject to the following conditions:
MSBA may investigate and prosecute violations of these terms to the fullest legal extent. MSBA may notify and cooperate with law enforcement authorities in prosecuting violations of the law and these terms.
MSBA reserves the right to change, redact, and delete content on Connect for any reason. If you believe someone has submitted content to Connect in violation of these terms, contact us immediately.
You must create and log into an account to use some features of Connect.
To create an account, you must provide some information about yourself. If you create an account, you agree to provide, at a minimum, a valid e-mail address, and to keep that address up-to-date.
You agree to be responsible for all action taken using your account, whether authorized by you or not, until you either close your account or notify MSBA that your account has been compromised. You agree to notify MSBA immediately if you suspect your account has been compromised.
MSBA may restrict, suspend, or close your account on Connect according to its policy for handling copyright-related takedown requests, or if MSBA reasonably believes that you’ve broken any rule in these terms.
Nothing in these terms gives MSBA any ownership rights in intellectual property that you share with Connect, such as your account information, posts, or other content you submit to Connect. Nothing in these terms gives you any ownership rights in MSBA’s intellectual property, either.
Between you and MSBA, you remain solely responsible for content you submit to Connect. You agree not to wrongly imply that content you submit to Connect is sponsored or approved by MSBA. These terms do not obligate MSBA to store, maintain, or provide copies of content you submit, and to change it, according to these terms.
Content you submit to Connect belongs to you, and you decide what permission to give others for it. But at a minimum, you license MSBA to provide content that you submit to Connect to other users of Connect. That special license allows MSBA to copy, publish, and analyze content you submit to Connect.
When content you submit is removed from Connect, whether by you or by MSBA, MSBA’s special license ends when the last copy disappears from MSBA’s backups, caches, and other systems. Other licenses you apply to content you submit, such as Creative Commons licenses, may continue after your content is removed. Those licenses may give others, or MSBA itself, the right to share your content through Connect again.
Others who receive content you submit to Connect may violate the terms on which you license your content. You agree that MSBA will not be liable to you for those violations or their consequences.
You agree to indemnify MSBA from legal claims by others related to your breach of these terms, or breach of these terms by others using your account on Connect. Both you and MSBA agree to notify the other side of any legal claims for which you might have to indemnify MSBA as soon as possible. If MSBA fails to notify you of a legal claim promptly, you won’t have to indemnify MSBA for damages that you could have defended against or mitigated with prompt notice. You agree to allow MSBA to control investigation, defense, and settlement of legal claims for which you would have to indemnify MSBA, and to cooperate with those efforts. MSBA agrees not to agree to any settlement that admits fault for you or imposes obligations on you without your prior agreement.
You accept all risk of using Connect and content on Connect. As far as the law allows, MSBA and its suppliers provide Connect as is, without any warranty whatsoever.
Connect may hyperlink to and integrate forums and services run by others. MSBA does not make any warranty about services run by others, or content they may provide. Use of services run by others may be governed by other terms between you and the one running service.
Neither MSBA nor its suppliers will be liable to you for breach-of-contract damages their personnel could not have reasonably foreseen when you agreed to these terms.
As far as the law allows, the total liability to you for claims of any kind that are related to Connect or content on Connect will be limited to $50.
MSBA welcomes your feedback and suggestions for Connect.
You agree that MSBA will be free to act on feedback and suggestions you provide, and that MSBA won’t have to notify you that your feedback was used, get your permission to use it, or pay you. You agree not to submit feedback or suggestions that you believe might be confidential or proprietary, to you or others.
Either you or MSBA may end the agreement written out in these terms at any time. When our agreement ends, your permission to use Connect also ends.
The following provisions survive the end of our agreement: Your Content, Feedback, Your Responsibility, Disclaimers, Limits on Liability, and General Terms.
Maryland Law will govern any dispute related to these terms or your use of Connect.
You and MSBA agree to seek injunctions related to these terms only in state or federal court in Maryland. Neither you nor MSBA will object to jurisdiction, forum, or venue in those courts.
Other than to seek an injunction or for claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, you and MSBA will resolve any Dispute by binding American Arbitration Association arbitration. Arbitration will follow the AAA’s Commercial Arbitration Rules and Supplementary Procedures for Consumer Related Disputes. Arbitration will happen in Maryland. You will settle any dispute as an individual, and not as part of a class action or other representative proceeding, whether as the plaintiff or a class member. No arbitrator will consolidate any dispute with any other arbitration without MSBA’s permission.
Any arbitration award will include costs of the arbitration, reasonable attorneys’ fees, and reasonable costs for witnesses. You and MSBA may enter arbitration awards in any court with jurisdiction.
If a provision of these terms is unenforceable as written, but could be changed to make it enforceable, that provision should be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable. Otherwise, that provision should be removed.
You may not assign your agreement with MSBA. MSBA may assign your agreement to any affiliate of MSBA, any other company that obtains control of MSBA, or any other company that buys assets of MSBA related to Connect. Any attempted assignment against these terms has no legal effect.
Neither the exercise of any right under this Agreement, nor waiver of any breach of this Agreement, waives any other breach of this Agreement.
These terms embody all the terms of agreement between you and MSBA about use of Connect. These terms entirely replace any other agreements about your use of Connect, written or not.
You may notify MSBA under these terms, and send questions to MSBA, at info@msba.org.
MSBA may notify you under these terms using the e-mail address you provide for your account on Connect, or by posting a message to the homepage of Connect or your account page.
MSBA last updated these terms on April 5, 2019, and may update these terms again. MSBA will post all updates to Connect. For updates that contain substantial changes, MSBA agrees to e-mail you, if you’ve created an account and provided a valid e-mail address. MSBA may also announce updates with special messages or alerts on Connect.
Once you get notice of an update to these terms, you must agree to the new terms in order to keep using Connect.