By Steve Conley, Founder — Academy of Life Planning & Get SAFE
There is a moment most of us have experienced.
You are about to sign something. A contract, an agreement, a set of terms and conditions. The other party hands you a document — sometimes thick, sometimes thin, always dense — and waits. There is an unspoken pressure in the room. The assumption that you will sign. The implication that reading it all would be somehow awkward, time-consuming, or mistrustful.
So most people sign.
Not because they are careless. Not because they don’t care what they’re agreeing to. But because the document was designed to be signed, not read. The small print exists not to inform you — but to bind you.
That imbalance has a name. Information asymmetry. And it is one of the oldest, most reliable mechanisms of financial harm.
Why We Built The Leveller™
The Academy of Life Planning exists to restore human agency in financial decision-making. Our principles are clear:
Plan life before money. Advice out. Agency in. AI should support human judgement — not replace it.
But principles without tools are just ideas. And for years, one gap in our ecosystem nagged at me.
We could support people after financial harm had occurred — through Get SAFE, through Goliathon, through the justice and recovery work we do every day. But we had nothing to offer before the moment of harm. Nothing to put in someone’s hands at the point of signing.
The Leveller™ was built to fill that gap.
What It Does
The Leveller™ is an AI-powered contract intelligence tool. It does one thing, and it does it well.
You give it a document — upload a PDF, photograph the pages with your camera, or paste the text directly. It reads the document and returns a plain-English analysis identifying:
- Hidden costs — charges, fees, and financial obligations that aren’t immediately obvious
- Unfair clauses — terms that are one-sided, disproportionate, or legally questionable
- Risk-shifting language — wording that transfers liability from the provider onto you
- Power imbalances — structural features of the agreement that disadvantage the person signing
- A risk score out of 100 — a clear, honest signal of how safe this agreement is to sign
It is not legal advice. It is something arguably more valuable at the moment of decision: informed awareness. The kind of awareness that puts you on a level footing with the party asking you to sign.
The Moment That Made This Necessary
In my work with Get SAFE — supporting people affected by financial exploitation — I have heard hundreds of stories. Pension transfers. Unregulated investments. Care home contracts. Holiday club memberships. Mortgage conditions buried in the small print.
Almost every story had the same origin point.
A document. A signature. A moment when someone agreed to something they didn’t fully understand — not because they were foolish, but because the system was designed to obscure rather than inform.
The Leveller™ was built for that moment. For the person sitting across the desk from someone more informed, more resourced, and more legally protected than they are. For the human being who deserves to know what they’re signing before it’s too late to change their mind.
What This Means for Total Wealth Planners™
If you are an Academy member — or on the journey toward becoming a Total Wealth Planner™ — The Leveller™ is a tool worth understanding deeply.
Your clients will face moments of contractual pressure. Mortgage offers. Investment agreements. Business contracts. Employment terms. Care arrangements for elderly parents. Each of these is a potential point of harm — and a potential point of intervention.
The Leveller™ gives you something to offer at that point. Not advice. Agency. The ability to say: before you sign, let’s see what this actually says.
That is entirely consistent with our planning philosophy. We do not tell people what to do. We help them understand what they are facing — so they can make genuinely informed decisions.
It’s Live. On Both Platforms.
The Leveller™ is now available on the Apple App Store:
🔗 Download for iPhone and iPad
The Android version is in final testing and coming to Google Play imminently.
The web version is live at theleveller.app — accessible from any browser, on any device, right now.
A Personal Note
I built this from scratch. No prior experience of app development. No technical background. Just a clear sense of what needed to exist in the world — and enough stubbornness to keep going until it did.
It took longer than expected. It required learning things I had never encountered before. There were moments of real frustration — and moments of genuine pride when something worked for the first time.
But mostly, it was driven by the people I have met through Get SAFE. The ones who signed something they didn’t understand and spent years dealing with the consequences. They deserved a tool like this. They deserved it long before now.
If The Leveller™ helps even one person avoid that harm — it was worth every hour.
Try It. Tell Me What You Think.
Download it. Upload a contract — any contract. See what it finds.
Then tell me. Reply to this post, send me a message, or email me directly. Your feedback shapes what comes next.
Because this is version one. And version two will be better.
Know what you’re signing.
Steve Conley Founder, Academy of Life Planning & Get SAFE theleveller.app | get-safe.org.uk
The Leveller™ is a product of Get SAFE (Support After Financial Exploitation). It is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. It is an informed consent and contract awareness tool designed to support independent decision-making.
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