The Complimentary Account: What Ten Instruments Actually Gets You

Every account on Legalise starts the same way, and does not require a card to get there. It is called the Complimentary account, and it used to be called a trial, which is worth explaining because the old word carries an assumption that no longer applies here.

No clock

A trial implies a countdown. This account does not have one. There is no expiry date attached to it, no day it stops working on its own, and nothing that pressures you to decide before a deadline passes. What limits a Complimentary account is not time, it is a fixed allowance: ten instruments, once, for the life of the account. A generation, a compilation or a review each uses one, the same definition of an instrument that applies to a paid membership. You can use all ten in an afternoon or spread them across six months; the account behaves the same way either way.

Three folders on the Desk

A Complimentary account can hold up to three case files on the Desk, saving and organising generated work the same way a paid account does, just with a smaller number of active folders at once. Sharing, reminders and the rest of the Desk's features work the same regardless of tier.

What is not limited at all

The parts of the platform that are research rather than drafting do not touch the instrument allowance and are not narrowed for a Complimentary account. The full case law database, all eight courts and the entire corpus, is open to any signed-in account. So is the statute library, the glossary, and every reference tool the platform publishes. None of that sits behind the membership. The membership is what pays for drafting, review and compilation; the research layer is free to anyone with a verified account, whether they ever spend a single instrument or not.

What happens at zero

Once the ten instruments are used, drafting, review and compilation stop working until the account is upgraded. Nothing on the Desk disappears. Everything you have already saved stays exactly where it was, fully readable, and the research tools remain open exactly as before. The only thing that changes is that generating something new requires moving to the paid membership.

If you were previously on a paid membership and it lapsed without renewal, you land here rather than being cut off outright: the account falls back to Complimentary limits rather than to nothing, measured against the lifetime instrument count the account has actually used, which is why a lapsed account does not quietly regain a fresh allowance simply by lapsing.

Why this is worth understanding before you sign up

A Complimentary account is a genuine way to use the platform's research tools indefinitely, not a time-boxed sample designed to expire before you have made a decision. The ten instruments are there to let you actually draft, review or compile something real before deciding whether the membership is worth it, on your own schedule rather than one imposed on you.