Schweizer & Associates, PLLC is committed to protecting your privacy. Information or data about you or that can be used to identify you, such as your name, address(es), telephone number(s), e-mail address(es) or other information or data, may be referred to below as “personal information”. References in this Privacy Policy to “we,” “us,” “our” or “Schweizer & Associates, PLLC” are references to the law firm of Schweizer & Associates, PLLC, a North Carolina Professional Limited Liability Company, providing legal services in North Carolina. Please read the following Privacy Policy to understand how your personal information will be collected, stored, used and disclosed. This Privacy Policy may change periodically and without notice.
1. When and how we collect personal information
We collect personal information about you when you voluntarily choose to disclose such information to us, directly or indirectly through a representative. For example, you may disclose personal information to us when you submit information by mail, telephone, fax, or electronically, when you sign up for newsletters, alerts, whitepapers, legal insights and other marketing communications, or when you sign up to attend an event or program in person or online.
We may also collect personal information about you from another source, for example, from a business associate of yours, your representative, an expert or a publically available source. If you provide personal information to us about someone else (such as one of your employees or business associate), you acknowledge that you are authorized to disclose that information to us and that, without taking any further steps, we may collect, use, store and disclose that personal information as described in this Privacy Policy as if it were disclosed to us directly by such other person.
We also collect certain information through automatic means. For example, we use cookies and other technologies to collect certain information when you use the www.jonesday.com website or other sites linked to it (collectively, “our websites”). The information collected through our websites include location, IP address, browser type, and content viewed.
We also collect personal information when you apply for a position, such as a partner, employee or intern, through our website or through a recruiter. This information could include, among other things, educational background, school transcripts, writing sample, current and prior employment, qualification details, professional licenses, references, national ID number or work permits to work in the jurisdictions for which you applied, and photo.
We do not direct our website or any of our marketing to children or individuals under eighteen (18) years of age. Individuals under eighteen (18) should consult with their parent or guardian about the use of this website.
2. Why we use or process personal information
We only use your personal information for a legal and legitimate interest, such as:
Legal Services: We will use and process your personal information for providing legal services, promoting and marketing our legal services, assisting with managing, enhancing and improving our legal services, communicating with you about those legal services, and complying with our legal and ethical obligations related to those legal services.
Recruiting: If you are a candidate for a position with the firm, we will use personal information about you in connection with recruiting you, processing your application for the position, or, if applicable, extending an offer to you or hiring you. Where the information provided is sensitive (such as your racial background or your state of health) you expressly consent to our use of the information to assess your application and to allow us to carry out equal opportunities monitoring. You may also provide us with your email address to receive information on open positions with the firm. Doing so could trigger an email from us to you inviting you to complete an application or to send your curriculum vitae, resume or other information.
Contract performance: We may use or process personal information in connection with pre-contract activities and discussion with you, and to perform a contract that we have with you.
Legal obligations: We will use or process personal information as necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject. This includes using or processing personal information for defense of claims against us and satisfying any government reporting obligations and requests.
Other legitimate interests: We will process your personal information for any of our other legitimate interests not described above. These include analyzing use of our website or services, tailoring website and news content, setting preferences in our website or electronic mailings, improving our websites, offering and managing programs and events, fulfilling our obligations to our clients and others, and managing our client and vendor relationships.
3. How and where we disclose personal information
We will not sell, trade, or rent your personal information.
We operate our website from the United States of America and store the information we collect through our websites in the United States of America. We market and provide legal services only in North Carolina.
We will also disclose your personal information to third party service providers that perform services for us and who are obligated to secure the information, such as attorneys, special consultants, expert witnesses other outsourced service providers, continuing legal education providers, information technology suppliers, analytics providers, mailing providers, joint marketing or event providers, caterers, and security providers.
We will also disclose your personal information as required by a court order or any other legal or regulatory requirement, including in response to requests from public and government authorities to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, or that of you or others.
4. Our efforts to protect personal information
We take reasonable measures to protect personal information from misuse, interference, and unauthorized loss, access, modification or disclosure. We undertake industry standard data protection practices, including by deploying a variety of commercially available software and hardware security tools. We will take such measures with respect to your personal information using security measures that we use for personal information of others, and we will do so in compliance with all applicable data protection laws and our professional secrecy and ethical obligations. Unfortunately, despite such measures, no data transmission over the Internet and no database or other depository of information can be one hundred percent secure. As a result, while we will strive to protect your personal information, we cannot and do not guarantee or warrant the security of any of your personal information. We will not be and are not liable for disclosures of your personal information due to errors in transmission, networks that we do not control, or unauthorized acts of third parties.
5. How long we keep personal information
If you have applied for a specific position with us and join us for that or any other position, your personal information will retained for at least so long as you continue to retain a position with us and thereafter for at least the minimum period required by applicable law. If you have applied for a position with us but do not join us for that or any other position or if you did not apply for a specific position, we may retain your personal information in order to consider you for any future positions. We will do so, however, only if you grant your consent to such extended retention. If you do not grant such consent, then we will retain your personal information only as necessary to comply with all applicable laws.
Except for applications for positions as provided above, we will keep your personal information until such time as we no longer expect to need to use it for any legal and legitimate purpose and otherwise in accordance with all applicable laws. At the appropriate time, we will take reasonable steps to destroy your personal information or ensure that your personal information is de-identified, except were we need to retain such information to satisfy legal and professional ethical obligations.
6. Your rights with regard to your personal information
Except as otherwise expressly discussed in this Privacy Policy, this policy only addresses our use and disclosure of personal information we collect from you. To the extent that you disclose your personal information to third parties, including any third party website linked from any of our websites, you are subject to the privacy customs and policies of those third parties. We encourage you to ask questions before you disclose any personal information to such third parties.
Our other obligations to you as our client, if applicable, are not addressed by this Privacy Policy. Those obligations are described in our terms of engagement or otherwise arise as a result of applicable law or ethics.
If you would like to make a complaint about how we handled your personal information, or make a complaint about a breach of data protection laws, please contact us. Complaints will be investigated and the outcome of the investigation will be communicated to you after the complaint is made in accordance with applicable law. You may have a right in some locations to file a complaint with your local data protection authority.
7. Additional Marketing Notice
We may process additional personal information provided by you for marketing purposes, for example in correspondence relating to an event, when you let us know what legal areas you are interested in, and when you wish to be contacted by us.
8. Questions about the Privacy Policy
Privacy and security is important to us. We are committed to building a trusting relationship with you, and we will continually monitor feedback and seek to improve our services to meet your needs. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or the practices of this website, or if you would like to provide comments, please contact us.