Legal Tech Moderation

The moderation problem

Legal work requires reproducing offensive content verbatim — quoting a defendant's threats, transcribing harassment evidence, citing a slur that's central to a discrimination case. The platform must preserve that language exactly while still moderating its own user-to-user interactions.

Why a word list isn't enough

A word list redacts the very evidence a lawyer needs to quote, corrupting the record. It treats the quotation as if the user authored the abuse.

How The Profanity API handles it

Use context `legal` so quoting intent is recognized and evidentiary language is preserved, with `balanced` mode to still flag content where a user is the author of abuse rather than a citer of it.

const res = await fetch("https://api.theprofanityapi.com/v1/check", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Authorization": "Bearer " + process.env.PROFANITY_API_KEY,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({ text, context: "legal", mode: "balanced" }),
});

const { flagged, intent, score } = await res.json();