As professionals engaged in the provision of legal services to clients primarily in North America, Downs Rachlin Martin PLLC (‘the firm’, ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘our’) is committed to safeguarding the privacy of confidential and personal information. It is the policy of the firm to comply with the rules of professional conduct that impose a duty upon lawyers and their staff to preserve and protect such information.
This Online Privacy Statement (the “Privacy Statement”) is based on the privacy and data protection principles common to the countries in which we operate. We apply it to comply with law, to preserve client confidentiality and to represent our clients as effectively as possible within the bounds of the law. This Privacy Statement is specifically addressed to parties outside the firm who visit or use the firm’s websites, our social media sites, our extranets, and commercial email messages that we send (collectively, the “Online Services”). This Privacy Statement is intended to advise our clients, prospective clients, interested law students, job applicants, website visitors, vendors, and other third parties about the firm’s privacy policies that may be applicable to you. In the event of a conflict between this Privacy Statement and our ethical duties, our ethical duties shall govern and control.
Confidentiality of Client Information
Consistent with our professional obligations and our commitment to excellence, it is the policy of the firm to exercise the utmost discretion regarding the information our clients entrust to us. The firm accepts and processes client information subject to the client’s direction and control, and the firm maintains reasonable and appropriate, although not infallible, security precautions. As a regional firm, we operate systems that may make data related to your matters accessible from our various offices around the region and may transfer client data between our offices.
We never trade, sell or share your information with any unrelated parties except as necessary or appropriate to conduct the firm’s legal and business activities, subject to appropriate confidentiality, privacy and information security commitments provided by the receiving party, or to further your interests or as permitted or required by law or as authorized or directed by you.
Please feel free to raise any questions, concerns or specific directions you may have regarding the privacy and security of your information to the attorney who is handling your matter or to our Privacy Manager.
How We Collect and Use Personal Information
“Personal Information” is any information that can be used to identify you or that we can link to you personally. The firm does not collect Personal Information from visitors to this website or from our users of Online Services except where it is voluntarily provided by you. If you do provide Personal Information, we may use it to:
- provide you with legal services, if you are or become a client of the firm, and/or address any requests or inquiries you may have
- conduct, monitor and analyze our business or web site operations
- perform our recruiting and hiring process
- contact you (unless you tell us not to) regarding legal developments or law firm events or services that may be of interest to you
- enter into or carry out contracts of various kinds
- pursue our legitimate interests of business development and general marketing
- ensure that we deliver the best possible service to our clients, and/or
- comply with legal obligations and professional responsibilities.
Information that May Be Collected Automatically
When you use our website, we may automatically obtain information about your internet protocol (“IP”) address, operating system and the web browser that you use to access the site.
With all website visitors, even those who do not complete any forms or otherwise seek our services, certain information is automatically collected through the use of Google Analytics’ cookies. A cookie is a text file sent by a web server and placed on your computer by your web browser.
Through Google Analytics, the website collects online identifiers, including cookie identifiers, IP addresses and device identifiers. Google Analytics collects information and reports website usage statistics without personally identifying individual visitors. This information helps us administer, protect, and improve our services; analyze usage, and improve users’ experience. To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics, visit the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-on.
The firm’s secure, client-specific extranet sites use cookies to track logins, to filter data that a logged-in user can access, and for cybersecurity purposes. These cookies also identify users who have changed their initially-assigned default password. We use this information to help customize the user’s experience on the site, to provide security, and for the other purposes specified in our Statement.
You may reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to allow your browser to alert you when a cookie is set, however, certain parts of the Online Services may function differently and not as well. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our Online Services will issue cookies when you log in to the firm’s Online Services. You will need to configure each browser on each device that you use if you wish to opt-out of or block some or all cookies.
Disclosure and Transfer of Personal Information
We do not disclose any Personal Information collected from the Online Services to unrelated parties outside of the firm except in limited circumstances such as:
- disclosures to our agents, 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 it is necessary to provide a service that you have requested, or
- as permitted or required by law, or
- as otherwise authorized or directed by you.
We may transfer your Personal Information to other offices of the firm for the purposes set out for use of Personal Information in this Privacy Statement. Such transfers may involve the transfer of your information between jurisdictions and outside of the jurisdiction in which you submitted your information, including to jurisdictions that the European Union may deem to not provide “adequate” data protection. Please do not provide us any information that you do not wish to be transferred between our offices.
Commercial Electronic Communications
We may periodically send you relevant alerts, newsletters, and event invitations by email. If you do not want to receive such communications, you may unsubscribe to any or all of the communication channels via the link at the bottom of each one. To help improve our marketing activities, we often receive a confirmation when you open an email or click on a link included in one of these emails, if your computer supports such capabilities.
Data Security
We maintain reasonable and appropriate physical, electronic and procedural safeguards intended to maintain the confidentiality of Personal Information provided by a visitor to this website and through other Online Services. Nonetheless, the transmission of information via the Internet is not completely secure and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent to us electronically over cellular and wireless networks that we do not control.
Access
If you are an individual, you may have the right to make reasonable requests to review, delete and correct the Personal Information we hold about you. We may charge you a reasonable fee to receive a copy of this data. For a copy of or reasonable access to your Personal Information, please contact us.
Children
In order to respect the privacy of minors, the firm does not knowingly collect, maintain or process Personal Information submitted online voluntarily via our Online Services by anyone under the age of 18 except for purposes of providing family-related legal services to clients.
Your California Privacy Rights
Under California Civil Code Section 1798.83, California customers are entitled to request information relating to whether a business has disclosed personal information to any third parties for such parties’ direct marketing purposes. The firm does not sell or share your Personal Information with third parties for their direct marketing purposes.
Consultants, Suppliers and Vendors
In order to support our provision of legal services to our clients, we may maintain business information about prospective or ongoing consultants, suppliers, and vendors. We use this information for internal purposes and do not share this data with unrelated third parties.
We require consultants, suppliers, and vendors to maintain data protections consistent with reasonable and appropriate obligations of data processors including, where applicable, the European Union’s data protection laws and regulations. Any prospective consultants, suppliers, or vendors with questions about our policies and expectations should contact our Privacy Manager.
Changes to this Privacy Statement
The effective date of this statement is May 25, 2018.
We may change this Privacy Statement from to time, in accordance with evolving privacy practices. We encourage you to periodically review this page. If we make any material changes in the way we collect, use and/or share the Personal Information that you have provided, we will notify you by posting a prominent notice of the changes on https://www.drm.com/. Your continued use of the Online Services after the effective date of the new Privacy Statement will be taken to indicate your consent to the practices it describes.
For More Information
If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Statement, or about Downs Rachlin Martin’s data protection program, please contact our Privacy Manager.