OpenVerdict
Enter Platform

For institutions

What your campus needs from us.

Everything a procurement, privacy or IT review normally asks for, on one page. If something you need is missing, ask and we will add it here rather than answer one committee privately.

What the service is

OpenVerdict for Education is a free web tool from OpenVerdict Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. An instructor picks a real court case from our library, assigns it to a class or posts a one-off link, and students read the record, cast a verdict, write why, and answer the strongest argument against them before they can submit. The instructor gets a report of who took part, what they wrote, who changed their mind, and a gradebook they can export. There is nothing to install, no licence to buy and no integration to configure. It runs in a browser.

Data handling

A student on a one-off link gives a first name and nothing else. No email, no password, no account. An enrolled student signs in with an email address and types the name their instructor will see. Real names live in two tables and are readable by exactly two parties: the student and their instructor. Coursework, marks and feedback are readable by the same two. Votes count into the public tally under a juror number that is never linked to a name in public. We hold no student ID numbers, no dates of birth and no addresses.

The student data page lists every item we store, names who can read each one, and gives the deletion paths. It is the document to send to a privacy office.

Security

Where it runs

Hosting on Vercel and the database and authentication on Supabase, both in United States regions. Those are our only two subprocessors that touch student data.

Row-level security everywhere

Every table holding personal data has row-level security enabled, and access is decided by a policy in the database rather than by the page. A request that should not see a row is refused by Postgres, whatever the browser asks for.

Authorization inside the functions

Privileged operations run as database functions that check who is calling before they do anything. Deleting an assignment checks ownership, granting a role checks for an administrator, creating a class checks for an instructor. None of those checks can be skipped by calling the API directly.

Deadlines are enforced in the database

A locked assignment past its deadline refuses the submission in Postgres, not in the form. Editing the page in a browser does not buy a student extra time.

Transport

HTTPS everywhere, with HTTP Strict Transport Security set to two years on the domain, so a browser that has visited once will not try plain HTTP again.

Audit log

Privileged actions by administrators and editors are written to an append-only audit table by the database itself. There is no update or delete path through the API, so an account cannot erase its own trail.

No third-party scripts run on the education pages. There is no advertising network, no tag manager, no session recorder and no analytics SDK; page counting is first-party and written to our own database. Web fonts are served as a stylesheet from Google Fonts, which means Google sees the request for the font files, and that is the only outside request an education page makes.

The agreement we sign

We keep a data processing agreement template in the repository at docs/data-processing-agreement-template.md. Ask for it at openverdictofficial@gmail.com and we will send it as a document. It is a starting point for your counsel, not a take-it-or-leave-it form, and we will work from your institution's paper instead if that is easier.

  • Designation of OpenVerdict Inc. as a school official with a legitimate educational interest under FERPA.
  • Use of student data only to provide the service, and for nothing else.
  • No redisclosure to anyone outside the named subprocessors.
  • The subprocessor list, with notice before it changes.
  • The security measures described above.
  • Notice of a confirmed breach to the institution within 72 hours.
  • Deletion of the institution's student data within 30 days of termination, on request.
  • The institution's right to access, correct and delete its students' records at any time.
  • No advertising, no sale of personal information, and no use of student work to train models.

Accessibility

Our accessibility statement says what we test, what conforms and what does not yet. It names the known gaps rather than claiming a level we have not measured. If a student on your campus cannot use something here, tell us and we will treat it as a defect.

Support and incidents

One address for everything: openverdictofficial@gmail.com. Questions, data requests, bug reports and security reports all go there, and we reply within five business days. We have no paid staff and no phone line, and we would rather say that than advertise a service level we cannot hold.

Security researchers are welcome. Report a vulnerability to the same address and we will confirm receipt, tell you what we found, and credit you if you want to be credited. Please do not test against other people's classes.

Current status: no known incidents. Any confirmed incident affecting student data will be posted in this section with the date, what happened and what we did, and institutions with an agreement in place will be told directly within 72 hours of confirmation.

What an instructor needs to start

  • An academic email address, which opens classes and assignments straight away. Anyone else can request instructor access at the classes page and we approve it by hand.
  • Nothing to install, no extension, no plugin, no LMS integration.
  • No accounts for students. A link and a first name is the whole of it.
  • No purchase order, no licence and no cost. The platform is free and will stay free.

A short note for instructors

  • Ask for first names. Do not put student ID numbers, full legal names or anything else your registrar treats as protected into the name field. A first name and a last initial is enough for you to mark from.
  • Tell students what is public. Their votes count in the public tally and their arguments appear on the floor, both under a juror number and never under their name. Their written reasoning and their marks are seen by you alone. If you would rather the class argued only among itself, tick the private option when you assign the case.
  • Delete at the end of term. When the marks are in your gradebook, delete the class here. That removes the roster, the assignments, the students' verdicts and reasoning on those cases, the marks and the extensions in one action. Export the gradebook first, because deletion cannot be undone.
  • Point students at the detail. A student who asks what is kept should be sent to the student data page, which also carries the button that deletes everything they wrote.

OpenVerdict Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit incorporated in Tennessee, EIN 41-4726223. Our registered mailing address, the IRS determination letter and the certificate of incorporation are on the verification page or available on request. Funding and spending are on the financials page.

Last updated September 19, 2026.