How the rating works
The rating is a structured self-assessment. It counts how many common legal safeguards a business has in place, weighted by how much each one matters. It doesn’t predict lawsuits and isn’t a credit rating. It also doesn’t compare you with other businesses.
1. Only the questions that apply
There are 40 questions across six categories. 5 screening questions and your business profile decide which ones you see. For example, the employment questions only appear if you have employees or contractors, and data-privacy follow-ups only appear if you collect personal information. Questions you don’t see are left out of the score entirely. They don’t count against you.
2. Scoring each answer
Each question has a weight from 1 (helpful) to 3 (essential). A fully protective answer earns full credit and “No” earns none. Partial answers earn credit on a square-root curve, because getting partway there is usually most of the work: an answer worth half on paper, such as “Sometimes”, earns about 71%, and “Usually” earns about 87%. “Not sure” earns 30%. Not knowing is a gap in itself, so these items go on your plan as things to confirm. Answers such as “we don’t use any” are treated as not applicable and left out.
3. Category and overall scores
For each category we first work out the weighted share of available credit you earned (0–100%). We then place that share on the 0–100 reporting scale with one fixed, linear conversion: score = 45 + 0.55 × your share. Having everything in place scores 100, having nothing in place scores 45, and the order of results never changes. The conversion exists so that the letter grades read the way people expect: a typical business lands around C, not F. The overall score is a weighted average of the categories that apply to you:
| Contracts & Agreements | 20% |
| Regulatory Compliance | 20% |
| Intellectual Property | 15% |
| Employment & Labor | 15% |
| Data Privacy & Security | 20% |
| Corporate Governance | 10% |
If a category doesn’t apply, its weight is shared out among the others.
4. The website review
If you give us your website, we fetch the public homepage and up to six linked pages, such as privacy, terms, cookies, accessibility, contact and about. We read them as a normal visitor would. We never log in or submit forms. We look for:
- a privacy policy, terms of use and cookie notice, and whether they look current and name the laws that apply
- tracking and analytics tools, and whether a consent tool is present
- forms that collect personal information, and “Do Not Sell or Share” links where relevant
- an accessibility statement, business identification (legal name, address, contact) and trademark notices
When AI analysis is turned on, a language model reads the extracted page text along with these signals and writes the findings in plain English. Otherwise a fixed set of rules does the analysis. The website score goes through the same conversion and then makes up 20% of the related category scores, and each finding is added to your action plan.
5. The action plan
Every answer that isn’t fully protective becomes an action item. Priority depends on the question’s weight, how far the answer falls short and the category weight: High, Medium or Low. The plan is free and you can use it with any advisor.
6. The scale
Your overall score and each category score run from 0 to 100. Each score maps to a familiar letter grade, and we always show the two together, for example B+ (88/100). Within each letter band, “+” marks the top of the band and “−” the bottom. The overall score is the weighted average of the category scores that apply to you, and the overall grade comes from that number.
The scale is calibrated so the grades match everyday expectations. We tested it on hundreds of simulated answer sets. A business with nearly everything fully in place earns an A+. One with about four in five safeguards fully in place lands around A− or B+. One with about three in five lands around B− or B. A business with a typical mix of yes, no, partial and “not sure” answers lands around C− or C, and one with more gaps than safeguards lands around D. Answering “Not sure” to everything scores about 62 (D−). Not knowing is not the same as being protected.
| Grade | Score | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| A+ | 97–100 | Excellent |
| A | 93–96 | Excellent |
| A- | 90–92 | Excellent |
| B+ | 87–89 | Good |
| B | 83–86 | Good |
| B- | 80–82 | Good |
| C+ | 77–79 | Fair |
| C | 73–76 | Fair |
| C- | 70–72 | Fair |
| D+ | 67–69 | Weak |
| D | 63–66 | Weak |
| D- | 60–62 | Weak |
| F | below 60 | Significant gaps |
Limits
Results depend on the accuracy of your answers. The website review only sees public pages and can miss content. Laws vary by state, industry and size, and they change. Treat your results as a starting checklist, not a legal opinion.