This privacy policy applies to Womble Bond Dickinson (US) LLP (“WBD US”, “we”, “us” or “our”), a limited liability partnership based in the United States, with our main office located at One West Fourth Street, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 27101.
WBD US is a data controller for the purpose of data protection law, in respect of your personal information. As a data controller, we are responsible for ensuring that when we process personal information we comply with data protection law and use such information in accordance with our client’s instructions and our professional duty of confidentiality.
In this privacy policy where we use the words personal information, we use these words to describe information that is about you and which identifies you. Your personal information will be held by WBD US. Womble Bond Dickinson is the collective name and brand which the members of Womble Bond Dickinson (International) Limited (WBD US and Womble Bond Dickinson (UK) LLP (“WBD UK”) and their respective controlled, managed, affiliated and member firms (each, a “WBD Entity” and together, the “WBD Entities”) provide legal or other services to clients around the world. Womble Bond Dickinson (International) Limited does not practice law. WBD US and WBD UK operate as independent and autonomous law firms.
This privacy policy may change from time to time and in response to guidance and best practice advice issued by data protection regulators. We encourage you to review this policy regularly. We will inform you of changes via our website at www.womblebonddickinson.com, and, if you are a client, we will inform you of any key changes in writing.
- What personal information do we collect and use?
- How personal information is collected and your responsibilities
- Children
- Visitors to our website
- How and why we collect data and use your personal information
- Marketing communications
- Who we share your personal information with
- Transferring your personal information out of the EEA
- How long will your personal information be kept
- How we protect your personal information
- Your rights with respect to your personal information
- Do Not Track requests; Third-party tracking
- Notice to California residents
- Third-party websites
- Blogs, social media, video and all multimedia
- Contact information
1. What personal information do we collect and use?
The type of personal information we collect and process depends on our relationship with you and the context in which we obtain and use it.
Clients: where we are advising and/or acting for you
We will require certain personal information to be able to provide our services to you. If you do not provide personal information we ask for, it may delay or prevent us from providing services to you.
Types of information we may collect:
- Your name
- Your contact information (e.g., address, phone number, mobile phone number, email address)
- Matter information (i.e., information relating to the matter in which you are seeking our advice or representation)
- Financial information so far as is relevant to your instructions (e.g., the source of funds if you are instructing us on a purchase transaction or your bank details if we will transfer money to you)
- Information about your use of IT, communication or other systems (e.g., if you use our secure online client portals or leave a voicemail)
- If you are a business client, information provided by you about other individuals in connection with advice we are providing the business (e.g., employee information)
Business development and website use: if we are advising and/or acting for you, if we have or would like to have a business relationship with you, or if you visit our website
This personal information will be used to develop our business and the services we provide.
Types of information we may collect:
- Your name
- Your contact information (e.g., email address, LinkedIn profile)
- Information about your occupation and professional information (e.g., job title, company, professional experience)
- Your marketing preferences if you subscribe to our updates and communications via our website
- Details about the services or business and/or legal updates you specifically request from us (e.g., client alerts)
- Technical information (e.g., internet protocol (IP) address, browser type, operating system)
2. How personal information is collected and your responsibilities
We will collect personal information from you in person when we meet you or through correspondence with you in relation to your matter, via our website (e.g., by subscribing to our email alert service or a request for information through our “Contact us” form on the website) (see Section 4 below on “Visitors to our website”) and secure online client portals.
We may receive personal information from third parties to use in the course of providing our legal and professional services. The processing of this personal information may be necessary for the progression of your matter and to enable us to act in your best interests as your legal and professional adviser.
The sources we may also collect personal information from include:
- Publicly accessible sources
- Direct from a third party (e.g., from a client, such as information about their employees, other parties involved in the legal proceedings, such as the lawyer acting on the other side and client due diligence providers
- A third party with your consent (e.g., your bank, another financial institution or advisor; consultants and other professionals we may engage in relation to your matter; your employer, medical and health professionals)
- Our IT systems (e.g., case management, document management, and time recording systems)
- Automated monitoring of our website and other technical systems, (e.g., our computer networks and connections, communications systems, email, voicemail, and instant messaging systems)
When we provide our services to you, we may hold and use personal information about you, your officers and/or your employees or other third parties. When you provide personal information to us relating to a third party you confirm that you have any necessary permission or authority to do so. You are also responsible for ensuring that the provision of that personal information complies with data protection and other applicable law. You must have the authority to disclose personal data if it relates to someone else and all data disclosed should be complete, accurate and up to date.
Children under 16 years old are not the target audience of this website. By making this website available to the public, we do not intend to solicit personal information from these children. If you are under the age of 16, please do not provide any personal information about yourself to us.
We may collect details of visits to our website that do not reveal a viewer’s specific identity or directly relate to an individual. We collect statistical information about the number of visitors to our website. This information includes referring webpages, pages visited, time spent on webpages and content searched. We use this information to help us manage and administer our website, improve the content of our website, and customize and improve the website user experience. We use Google Analytics to collect this information. Further information can be obtained from the Google Privacy Policy.
We use cookies and other monitoring technologies to track user preferences. A cookie is a small data file that certain websites write to your hard drive when you visit them. If you prefer not to receive cookies through our website, you can set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies and refuse the cookie when your browser alerts you to its presence. You can also refuse all cookies by turning them off in your browser. If you choose not to accept cookies, some of the features of our site may be disabled or rendered unusable.
5. How and why we use your personal information
Under data protection law, we can only use your personal information if we have a proper reason for doing so, for example:
- To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
- For our legitimate interests (see below) or those of a third party
- For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract
- With your consent.
A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your personal information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal information for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal information for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).
The table below explains what we use your personal information for and our reasons for doing so. Generally, we will collect personal information to:
- Provide legal and professional services to you, to manage our relationship and comply with our legal obligations arising from it
- Provide you with information about our business and the services we offer including relevant communications
- Help us improve our business and the services we offer.
The information above does not apply to any special category personal information which you may have provided to us or authorized us to obtain from a third party, and which we will usually only process with your explicit consent. However, in some circumstances in connection with a matter, we may receive special category personal information from third parties and we can lawfully process it without your consent where it is necessary to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim or claims or whenever courts are acting in their judicial capacity.
We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
We may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
We may use your personal information to send you updates (by email, telephone or mail) about legal developments that might be of interest to you and/or information about our services, including new services.
We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information for our business development purposes (see Section 5 above on “How and why we use your personal information”). This means we do not usually need your consent to send you legal updates and information about our services. However, where consent is needed (e.g., to send you electronic communications), we will ask for this consent separately and clearly.
We will always treat your personal information with the utmost respect and, other than with the WBD Entities, we will never sell or share it with other organizations for marketing purposes.
You have the right to opt out of receiving marketing communications at any time by using the “unsubscribe” link in our emails or by emailing us at info@wbd-us.com.
We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you instruct us to provide further services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.
7. Who we share your personal information with
We share personal information with:
- Professional advisers whom we instruct on your behalf or refer you to (e.g., medical professionals, accountants, tax advisors or other experts)
- Other third parties where necessary (e.g., expert witnesses, courts or tribunals)
- WBD Entities (e.g., to enable us to conduct conflict searches)
- Our insurers and brokers
- Our financial institutions
- External service suppliers, representatives and agents that we use to make our business more efficient (e.g., typing services, marketing agencies, document collation or analysis suppliers)
Our IT support and service providers may also access your personal information as a consequence of their providing support to us. When we do so, they are required to act in accordance with our instructions and keep your personal information secure.
We will share your personal information with third parties (such as the police and other law enforcement agencies) where we are under a duty to do so in order to comply with any legal, professional or ethical obligation (such as to comply with our anti-money laundering obligations), or in order to enforce or protect any of our rights, property or safety (or those of our partners, employees or clients).
If we sell or buy any business or assets, we may disclose personal information held by us to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets. If we or substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party (or are subject to a reorganization), personal information held by us will be one of the transferred assets.
8. Transferring your personal information out of the EEA
We are headquartered in the United States and we will process your personal information in the United States. Your personal information will be transferred and stored in the United States.
If we transfer personal information outside the European Union (EU) or the European Economic Area (EEA), we will implement appropriate and suitable safeguards to ensure that such data will be protected as required by applicable data protection law. For further information as to the safeguards, we implement please contact info@wbd-us.com.
9. How long your personal information will be kept
We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements and obligations.
When it is no longer necessary to retain your personal information, we will delete or anonymize it. In some circumstances, we may anonymize your personal information (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of it, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
In some circumstances, you can ask us to delete your information (see Section 11 below on “Your rights”).
For clients, at the conclusion of our representation, we will return, upon request, any hard copy materials which you have furnished to us. We will store files with respect to the matter for a minimum of six (6) years following the conclusion of our representation, and we will provide one of your representatives with access to those files upon request. After six (6) years from the conclusion of our representation, we will review the stored files with respect to whether they should be retained or destroyed. We reserve the right to destroy the files at any time after six years from the conclusion of our representation without further notice to you.
10. How we protect your personal information
We implement a variety of technical and organizational measures to help protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, and transfer.
Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information transmitted to the website and any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your personal information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorized access.
The following is a summary of the data protection rights available to individuals in the EU and the EEA in connection with their personal information. The rights may only apply in certain circumstances and are subject to certain exemptions. Please see the table below for a summary of your rights. You can exercise these rights using the contact details at the end of this privacy policy.
12. Do Not Track requests; Third-party tracking
Unless your browser settings are configured to make your online activities and publicly available information about your online activities (i.e., technical information described above) invisible to usage analytics tools, we do not presently have the capability to omit you from usage analytics to the extent your browser only sends us a “do not track” message and does not otherwise screen you from tracking without any action on our part. Third parties, other than our service providers, do not have our authorization to track which websites you visited prior and after visiting our website. That said, we cannot control all third party tracking and there may be some third party tracking over time and across third-party websites that occurs without our knowledge or consent.
13. Notice to California residents
We do not share your personal information with third parties for direct marketing purposes by such third parties.
Our website may contain links to independent third-party websites and services, including social media pages such as LinkedIn and Twitter. We provide these links for your convenience, and you access them at your own risk. We have no control over and do not monitor the content or policies (including privacy policies) of these third-party websites and have no responsibility for, and no liability with respect to, their content, accuracy, or reliability. Unless expressly stated, we do not endorse any of the linked websites or any product, service, or publication referenced herein or therein. We will remove a link to any site from our website upon request of the linked entity.
15. Blogs, social media, video and all multimedia
The postings on our website were created for general informational purposes only and do not constitute legal advice or a solicitation to provide legal services. Although we attempt to post complete, accurate and up-to-date information, we assume no responsibility for its completeness, accuracy or timeliness. The information in our website is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute an attorney-client relationship. Readers should not act upon this information without seeking professional legal counsel. We do not owe any duty of confidentiality to any persons who send unsolicited email messages, mail, or facsimiles to our firm, lawyers, or other employees listed on this website without our advance and express authorization. Our receipt of unsolicited information will not preclude us from representing any actual or potential adverse party.
We grant permission to readers to link to this site so long as our website is not misrepresented. Our website is not sponsored or associated with any other website unless so identified.
If you wish for a WBD Entity to consider representing you, please obtain contact information from the “Contact us” page of our website. One of our lawyers will be happy to discuss the possibility of representation with you. However, our lawyers are licensed only in the listed jurisdiction(s) and do not wish to represent anyone who viewed this website in a jurisdiction or state where the website fails to comply with all laws and ethical rules of that jurisdiction or state.
Although we wish to hear from you, information exchanged in a blog does not create an attorney-client relationship. Please do not post any information that you consider to be personal or confidential. We retain the right, in our sole discretion, to refrain from posting or to remove comments.
If you have any questions about this privacy policy, please let us know by email at info@wbd-us.com, or at One West Fourth Street, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 27101, Attention: General Counsel’s Office or by phone at 1.336.721.3600.
