MockDefense

MockDefense

Terms of Service

Effective June 1, 2026

These terms are a binding contract between you and MockDefense. They cover what the Service is, how billing works, the limits of AI-generated practice, and how disputes are resolved (by individual arbitration, unless you opt out). Please read them — especially the capitalized sections on disclaimers, liability, and arbitration.

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern your access to and use of the MockDefense website at mockdefense.org and related services (the “Service”), operated by Flow Studio LLC, a Illinois limited liability company (“MockDefense,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract to use the Service. By using it, you represent that you meet these requirements and that the information you provide is accurate. The Service is intended for personal, non-commercial use in preparing for academic examinations.

2. What the Service is — and is not

MockDefense is an AI-powered practice tool that simulates a doctoral defense committee asking questions about your work. It exists to help you rehearse. It is a practice aid for educational purposes only. It is not academic, legal, professional, or other expert advice, and it is not a substitute for your advisor, your dissertation committee, your institution’s requirements, or your own judgment.

AI-generated content can be wrong. The questions, feedback, scores, and any references the Service produces are generated by artificial intelligence and may be inaccurate, incomplete, outdated, or misleading. The Service may produce different results in different sessions for similar input. You are responsible for independently verifying any factual claim, methodological point, citation, or recommendation before relying on it.

No outcome is guaranteed. We do not guarantee that using the Service will help you pass, or improve your performance in, any real defense, examination, qualification, or review. A “pass” or “fail” outcome in a practice session is a simulated result for rehearsal only and has no academic standing.

3. Your account

You are responsible for the activity that happens under your account and for keeping your credentials and email account secure. You must provide accurate information, keep it current, and maintain only one account unless we agree otherwise. Notify us promptly at support@mockdefense.org if you suspect unauthorized use of your account.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

  • use the Service for any unlawful purpose or in violation of these Terms;
  • share, resell, or sublicense your account or access to the Service;
  • copy, scrape, harvest, or systematically extract content, or use bots or automated means to access the Service except as we expressly permit;
  • attempt to reverse engineer, decompile, or derive the source code, models, prompts, or underlying technology of the Service;
  • probe, circumvent, or interfere with usage limits, security, authentication, rate limiting, or anti-abuse measures, or use the Service to develop a competing product or to train a machine-learning model;
  • upload content that infringes others’ rights, that you are not permitted to share, or that is unlawful, harmful, or abusive;
  • overload, disrupt, or impair the Service or the infrastructure it runs on.

We may investigate and take action — including suspending or terminating your account — for any violation, and we may flag, throttle, or block usage that our systems identify as abusive.

5. Your content and your rights

You keep ownership of the material you submit to the Service, including your messages and any dissertation summary or notes you paste in (“Your Content”). You grant us a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, process, transmit, and display Your Content solely to operate and provide the Service to you (including sending it to the AI and infrastructure providers listed in our Privacy Policy). This license ends when you delete Your Content or close your account, except for residual copies kept for backups, legal compliance, or anti-abuse for the limited period described in our Privacy Policy.

You represent that you have the rights necessary to submit Your Content and that doing so does not violate any law or any obligation you owe to a third party (for example, confidentiality or embargo obligations to your institution, funder, or co-authors). Do not submit confidential, classified, embargoed, or third-party material you are not authorized to disclose. As stated in our Privacy Policy, we do not use Your Content to train AI models.

6. Our intellectual property

The Service, including its software, design, text, examiner personas, prompts, scoring logic, trademarks, and all related intellectual property, belongs to MockDefense or its licensors and is protected by law. We grant you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Service for its intended purpose, subject to these Terms. We reserve all rights not expressly granted. You may not use our name, logo, or marks without our prior written permission.

7. Beta service

The Service is currently offered as a beta. It is provided free of charge during the beta period, may contain errors, and may change, be limited, or be discontinued at any time without liability to you. Features available during beta may not be available later, and we may introduce paid plans as described below.

8. Subscriptions, billing, and refunds

This section applies when paid plans are active. Current pricing is shown on our pricing page.

Auto-renewing subscriptions. Paid plans are sold as auto-renewing subscriptions. When you subscribe, you authorize us, through our payment processor Stripe, to charge your payment method the then-current price for your plan on a recurring monthly basis until you cancel. Your subscription renews automatically at the end of each billing period at the then-current rate unless you cancel before the renewal date. These renewal terms — the price, billing frequency, and how to cancel — are also disclosed to you, and your affirmative consent is collected, on the checkout screen before any charge is made.

Cancellation. You may cancel at any time through the billing portal in your account settings. When you cancel, your plan continues until the end of the period you have already paid for, and it will not renew after that. We do not lock you into a contract.

Refunds. If you are unsatisfied, you may request a full refund within 14 days of a charge by emailing support@mockdefense.org, provided you have not substantially used the Service since that charge (for these purposes, completing more than one full mock-defense session beyond any free allowance counts as substantial use). After 14 days, or once you have substantially used the Service, payments are non-refundable except where a refund is required by law. Renewal charges are non-refundable, but you can cancel before any renewal to avoid the next charge. We may, at our sole discretion, grant a refund as a courtesy; doing so does not obligate us to grant future refunds.

Taxes. Prices are exclusive of taxes unless stated otherwise. We will charge applicable sales tax or VAT where required, calculated at checkout.

Price changes. We may change subscription prices. We will give you advance notice, and any change takes effect at your next renewal. If you do not agree to a new price, cancel before it takes effect.

Failed payments. If a charge fails, we may retry it and may suspend or downgrade your access until payment succeeds.

9. Termination

You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate your access, with or without notice, if you violate these Terms, if we are required to by law, if your use poses a risk to the Service or others, or if we discontinue the Service. On termination, your right to use the Service ends. Sections that by their nature should survive — including Sections 5, 6, and 10 through 16 — survive termination.

10. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE,” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement, and any warranty that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, accurate, or that AI-generated content will be correct or reliable. You use the Service at your own risk. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of these exclusions may not apply to you.

11. Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, MOCKDEFENSE AND ITS OWNERS, MEMBERS, AND SUPPLIERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, GOODWILL, ACADEMIC OR PROFESSIONAL OPPORTUNITY, OR THE COST OF SUBSTITUTE SERVICES, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO YOUR USE OF — OR INABILITY TO USE — THE SERVICE, EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) USD $100. These limitations apply regardless of the legal theory and form the basis of the bargain between us. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for fraud, gross negligence, willful misconduct, or any liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

12. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless MockDefense and its owners, members, and suppliers from and against any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to your use of the Service, Your Content, your violation of these Terms, or your violation of any law or the rights of any third party.

13. Dispute resolution; binding arbitration; class-action waiver

PLEASE READ THIS SECTION CAREFULLY — IT AFFECTS YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS, INCLUDING YOUR RIGHT TO SUE IN COURT AND TO HAVE A JURY TRIAL.

Informal resolution first. Before starting an arbitration, you agree to email us at support@mockdefense.org with a description of your dispute and to try in good faith to resolve it informally for at least 30 days.

Binding arbitration. If we cannot resolve a dispute informally, you and MockDefense agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms will be resolved by final and binding individual arbitration, administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules then in effect, rather than in court. The arbitrator decides all issues, except that a court may decide the enforceability of this arbitration provision and the class-action waiver below. The Federal Arbitration Act governs the interpretation and enforcement of this section.

Arbitration procedure and costs. The arbitration will be conducted by a single arbitrator. You may choose to participate by phone or video, by written submissions, or in person; any in-person hearing will take place in the county where you live or in Illinois, as the AAA rules provide. The AAA’s rules govern the allocation of filing, administrative, and arbitrator fees; where those rules or applicable law require us to bear your fees as a consumer, we will. The arbitrator may award the same individual relief a court could, and the award may be entered as a judgment in any court of competent jurisdiction. Coordinated or mass filings: if 25 or more similar arbitration demands are submitted by or with the help of the same or coordinated counsel, the parties agree the demands will be administered in staged batches to control costs, and any applicable limitations period is tolled for demands awaiting their batch.

Class-action waiver. You and MockDefense agree to bring claims only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person’s claims and may not preside over any form of representative or class proceeding. This class-action waiver is an essential part of this arbitration agreement. If a court or arbitrator decides it is unenforceable as to a particular claim, then that claim — and only that claim — must be brought in court rather than in arbitration, and the severability provision in Section 16 does not apply to this waiver.

Small-claims exception. Either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court if it qualifies.

Your right to opt out. You may opt out of this arbitration and class-action-waiver section by emailing support@mockdefense.org within 30 days of first accepting these Terms, stating that you opt out and including your account email. If you opt out, the “Governing law and venue” section below applies to disputes instead.

14. Governing law and venue

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. To the extent any dispute is not subject to arbitration, you and MockDefense agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Illinois and waive any objection to venue there. Nothing in these Terms limits any mandatory consumer-protection rights you have under the law of your country of residence.

15. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the “Effective” date above and post the revised Terms on this page, and may also notify you through the Service. Changes are not retroactive. Your continued use of the Service after an update means you accept the revised Terms; if you do not agree, stop using the Service and cancel any subscription.

16. General

These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and MockDefense regarding the Service and supersede any prior agreements. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest remains in effect, and the unenforceable provision will be limited to the minimum extent necessary. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets. We are not liable for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control. We may provide notices to you by email or through the Service.

17. Contact us

Questions about these Terms:

Flow Studio LLC 1 E Erie St, Suite 525-2938, Chicago, IL 60611 Email: support@mockdefense.org