What data does Wokanda.net collect and process?

This question comes up in conversations with advocates more often than the question about commission – and I consider that good news about the profession's condition. A lawyer who, before registering in any tool, asks about the scope of processed data is doing exactly what professional secrecy requires of them. So I answer directly and without the marketing fog.

Data provided at registration – a minimum, and public at that

Registration on the platform is based on four elements:

• first and last name;
• phone number;
• the professional e-mail address of the advocate or attorney-at-law;
• the city where the practice is conducted.

Wokanda itself therefore collects a very limited set of data which, on top of that, is publicly available anyway. Recall that the register of advocates and the register of attorneys-at-law are publicly accessible to anyone on the websites of the competent chambers – together with the name, surname, city of practice and firm details. In other words, we are not building any knowledge base about counsel that could not be reconstructed in fifteen minutes from publicly available sources.

And what about case and client data?

This question matters more than the previous one, because it touches the essence of professional secrecy. The principle we have adopted is this: the platform is there to enable finding a provider and settling the action, not to store case files.

In practice this means three things. First, describing an engagement requires only the data necessary to perform it – the court, the date, the type of action, the scope. Second, the details of the case reach the provider only once the engagement has been accepted – that is, a specific, verified person, not tens of thousands of members of a discussion group. Third – and this is worth stressing – it is the counsel who remains the custodian of the secrecy and decides what scope of information to pass to the substitute. No tool takes that responsibility off their shoulders, and none should pretend to.

Data on the payment operator's side

A separate category is data processed in connection with payments. The payment institution responsible for delivering the automatic payment service within Wokanda.net collects the data standard in such a situation, arising from the Payment Services Act – identification data, settlement data and the data required by anti-money-laundering regulations (AML, KYC – know your client).

That institution is STRIPE, a fintech headquartered in San Francisco, operating in the European Union and in Poland under a licence issued by the Central Bank of Ireland. This is not a meaningless technical detail: the identification obligations towards a user of payment services follow from the law, not from the platform's policy, and any entity handling the flow of funds would have to meet them.

Why this matters at all – three reasons

1. Because professional secrecy has no emergency mode. The rush of finding a substitute for tomorrow does not suspend the obligations arising from the rules of practising the profession.
2. Because current practice is the weakest link here. A public post with a case number and handing files over a messenger to a person of unconfirmed identity is a standard that is hard to defend before the disciplinary ombudsman.
3. Because documentation works both ways. A trace of the arrangements protects not only the client but both counsel as well – in a dispute over the scope of the engagement or liability for the action.

Summary

The answer to the title question is: a minimum of counsel's identification data, public in the registers anyway, on the platform's side – and a standard, legally mandated scope of data on the side of the regulated payment institution. Everything concerning the substance of the case stays where it should: with the counsel, who is the custodian of the secrecy.

In my view, legal tech in professions of public trust deserves one basic evaluation criterion: does it reduce or increase the risk of a breach of secrecy. We believe an orderly engagement flow is safer in that respect than a post in a public group. And on that basis we ask for your trust.

Register and see what an engagement on Wokanda looks like →