Privacy Statement and Cookies Policy
As professionals engaged in the provision of legal services to clients, Verity Legal Partners, is committed to protecting the privacy of confidential and “Personal Information” (information that directly or indirectly identifies individuals who may be clients, staff, agents, lawyers, law students, job applicants or others inside or outside the firm). It has always been and remains the policy of the firm to comply with the rules of professional conduct, which impose a duty to preserve and protect confidential client information, upon lawyers and their associated personnel.
This Privacy Statement and Cookie Policy is based on the privacy and data protection principles common to the jurisdiction in which we operate. We apply it in light of our overarching obligations to comply with the law, to preserve client confidentiality and to represent our clients as effectively as possible within the bounds of the law. This statement is intended to summarize the firm’s data protection practices generally, and to advise our clients, interested law students, job applicants, website visitors, and other third parties about the firm’s privacy policies that may be applicable to them.
This statement is also specifically addressed to parties outside the firm who provide Personal Information to the firm or who visit or use the firm’s websites, our social media sites, our extranets, as well as email messages that we send to you that contains a link to this statement (collectively, the “Internet Services”). This Statement also describes how the firm collects, processes and discloses Personal Information in connection with the provision of legal and Internet services.
Collection and Use of Personal Information
The firm collects Personal Information in the course of providing legal services to clients and as provided by visitors to its websites or users of Internet Services. We may also collect Personal Information about you when you interact with us on social media sites and from other third parties any may also automatically collect information that may contain Personal Information as described below in the cookie policy.
We collect the following categories of Personal Data about Site visitors, clients, prospective clients and other third parties:
- Basic data: Name, gender, title, organization, job responsibilities, phone number, mailing address, email address, contact details and information about family life including hobbies and interests.
- Special categories of data: in limited circumstances, where you have provided us with such information as it is necessary for a specific service, we are providing to you: religious or other beliefs, racial or ethnic group and health data.
- Client service data: Personal Data received from clients in respect of employees, customers or other individuals known to clients, invoicing details and payment history, and client feedback.
- Compliance data: Government identifiers, passports or other identification documents, dates of birth, beneficial ownership data, and due diligence data.
- Job applicant data: Data provided by job applicants or others on our Sites or offline means in connection with employment opportunities.
- Device data: Computer Internet Protocol (IP) address, unique device identifier (UDID), cookies and other data linked to a device, and data about usage of our Sites (Usage Data).
The purposes for which we use Personal Data, and the legal bases for such processing, are as follows:
- To provide legal advice and respond to inquiries we use basic data, registration data, client service data, and device data. We need to process your information in this wat in order to perform our obligations under our contracts with our clients.
- To manage our business operations and administer our client relationships we use basic data, special categories data, registration data and client service data. This processing is necessary in order to perform our obligations under our contracts with our clients (e.g. issuing and processing invoices).
- To make our Sites more intuitive and easier to use we use device data. It is necessary for our legitimate interests to monitor how our Sites are used to help us improve the layout and information available on our Sites and provide a better service to our Site users.
- To protect the security and effective functioning of our Sites and information technology systems we use basic data, registration data, and device data. It is necessary for our legitimate interests to monitor how our Sites are used to detect and prevent fraud, other crimes and the misuse of our Sites. This helps us to ensure that you can safely use our Sites.
- To address compliance and legal obligations, such as checking the identity of new clients and to prevent money laundering and/or fraud we use compliance data, basic data, registration data, transaction data, and device data. This processing is necessary for the purposes of complying with legal requirements to which we are subject.
- To consider individuals for employment and contractor opportunities and manage on-boarding procedures we use job applicant data and compliance data. The processing is necessary for the purposes of recruitment and on-boarding and for complying with legal obligations to which we are subject, and which may be subject to a relevant local recruitment privacy policy.
Confidentiality, Security, and Retention of Personal Information
Consistent with our professional obligations, it has always been the policy of the firm to exercise the utmost discretion regarding the information our clients entrust to us.
We maintain reasonable and appropriate, albeit not infallible, physical, electronic and procedural safeguards intended to maintain the confidentiality of Personal Information, including that provided by a visitor to this website and provided while using other Internet Services. We do not guarantee that our safeguards will always work.
We may retain information provided by you, including Personal Information, for as long as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, or to achieve the purposes for which the information was originally collected and for the purposes described in the Statement and in our applicable policies. If you wish to obtain more details on our information practices, please refer to the “Contact Us” section below.
Disclosure and Transfer of Personal Information
We do not disclose any Personal Information to unrelated parties outside of the firm except in limited circumstances. Such circumstances include disclosures to our agents or data processors or other contractors acting on our behalf and at our direction, subject to appropriate confidentiality, privacy and information security commitments provided by the receiving party, or where we believe it necessary to provide a service which you have requested, or as permitted or required by law, or as otherwise authorized or directed by you. Consistent with our professional obligations, we may provide Personal Information to regulatory authorities and law enforcement officials in accordance with applicable law or when we otherwise believe in good faith that the provision of such information is required or permitted by law, such as in connection with the investigation or assertion of our legal defenses or for our compliance matters.
Cookies Policy
We use and allow certain third parties to use cookies, web beacons, and similar tracking technologies (collectively, “cookies”) on our Sites, to improve your browsing experience because, among other purposes, it helps us remember your preferences. This information also makes it possible to improve our website (for example, by facilitating the statistical analysis of its use). In view of these purposes, your personal identity information of a sensitive nature, such as your credit card details, is not stored through cookies.
What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser, the hard drive of your computer, or the page you are viewing. Some cookies are deleted once you close your browser, while other cookies are retained even after you close your browser so that you can be recognized when you return to a website.
How do we use cookies?
We use cookies to provide the Sites and services, gather information about your usage patterns when you navigate this Site in order to enhance your personalized experience, and to understand usage patterns to improve our Site and services.
Cookies on our Sites are generally divided into the following categories:
- Strictly Necessary Cookies: These are required for the operation of our Sites. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas. These cookies are session cookies that are erased when you close your browser.
- Analytical/Performance Cookies: These allow us to recognize and count the number of users of our Sites and understand how such users navigate through our Sites. This helps to improve how our Sites works, for example, by ensuring that users can find what they are looking for easily. These cookies are session cookies which are erased when you close your browser. We use Google Analytics, and you can see below for how to control the use of cookies by Google Analytics.
- Functional Cookies: These improve the functional performance of our Sites and make it easier for you to use. For example, cookies are used to remember that you have previously visited the Sites and asked to remain logged into it. These cookies qualify as persistent cookies, because they remain on your device for us to use during a next visit to our Sites. You can delete these cookies via your browser settings.
- Targeting Cookies: These record your visit to our Sites, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed to recognize you as a previous visitor and to track your activity on the Sites and other websites you visit. These cookies qualify as persistent cookies, because they remain on your device for us to use during a next visit to our Sites. You can delete these cookies via your browser settings. See below for further details on how you can control third party targeting cookies.
What are your options if you do not want cookies on your computer?
You can review your Internet browser settings, typically under the sections "Help" or "Internet Options," to exercise choices you have for certain Cookies. If you disable or delete certain Cookies in your Internet browser settings, you might not be able to access or use important functions or features of this Sites.
Changes
We reserve the right to change this Statement at any time without advance notice. Should any new policy go into effect for our Internet Services, the firm will post it on this website and relevant Internet Services.
Further Information
You can find more information about cookies at: www.allaboutcookies.org
and for a video about cookies visit http://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies.
Internet Advertising Bureau
A guide to behavioural adverting and online privacy has been produced by the interent advertising industry which can be found
at: http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/
Contact Us
If you have questions or comments regarding this Privacy & Cookies Statement or our privacy practices, please contact us at info@verity-legal.com