Privacy Notice

Last Updated: May 30, 2023 

Ward Damon, PL, and its affiliated businesses (collectively, “Ward Damon,” “Firm,” “we,” “our”) understand your concerns about privacy and are therefore committed to protecting the privacy and personal information that we collect in the course of operating our business as a provider of legal and other related services. 

This Privacy Notice (“Notice”) describes how we collect, use, share, or otherwise process personal information in the course of operating our business, and website (www.warddamon.com), as well as our other digital properties that link to this Notice, including our website, and digital communications (collectively, “Digital Services”). This Notice does not address our other obligations to our clients. Those obligations are described in our terms of engagement or otherwise arise as a result of applicable law or ethics. By providing your personal data to us (whether via our website, by email, in person or over the phone), you agree to the processing set out in this Notice. Further notices highlighting certain uses we wish to make of your personal information together with the ability to opt in or out of selected uses may also be provided to you when we collect personal data from you. 

For purposes of this Notice, “Personal Information” means information that identifies, relates to, describes, or can reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, to a specific natural person. It does not include information that is considered anonymous, de-identified, or aggregated by applicable law.

1. The Types of Information We Collect

The types of Personal Information we collect about you depend on your interactions with our Firm. 

We collect Personal Information that you provide to us. For example, we may collect personal information when you contact us, request that we send you newsletters, alerts, or other materials, register for a webinar or event, fill out a form, respond to a survey, comment on a blog, or otherwise communicate with us. We do not collect any personal information about you unless you voluntarily provide it to us. 

Depending on the context of your interactions with us, the categories of Personal Information we may collect from you include, but are not limited to:

• Basic personal details such as your name, social security number, and job title;
• Contact data such as your telephone number and postal or email address;
• Financial data such as payment related information or bank account details;
• Demographic data such as your address, preferences or interests;
• Website usage and other technical data such as details of your visit to our website or information collected through cookies and other tracking technologies;
• Personal data provided to us by or on behalf of our clients or generated by us in the course of providing our services, which may, where relevant, include special categories of personal data;
• Recruitment related data such as your curriculum vitae, your education and employment history, details of professional memberships and other information relevant to potential recruitment to the Firm;
• Data that you may provide to us in course of registering for and attending events or meetings, including access and dietary requirements;
• Information pertinent to fulfilling our services to you; and,
• Any other personal data that you voluntarily provide to 

We also collect certain information through automatic means. For example, we use cookies and other technologies to collect certain information when you use www.warddamon.com or other sites linked to it (collectively, “our websites”). The information collected through our websites includes location, IP address, browser type, and content viewed. We do not respond to “Do Not Track” signals at this time. 

We do not direct any of our websites to children or individuals under eighteen (18) years of age. If you are under eighteen (18) years of age, do not use our websites. 

We may obtain Personal Information from other sources, such as our clients, employees, or business partners, or from business contact databases and enrichment services. We may also receive information about you from social media platforms, such as when you interact with us on those platforms or access our social media content. We may collect information about you from publicly available sources, such as public social media profiles, publications, and other websites or materials available through search engines.

2. How We Use or Process The Information We Collect 

We only use your Personal Information for legal and legitimate interests. We may use the information we collect for various purposes, including:

• 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 may 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.
  
  
• Marketing: We may process certain of your Personal Information for direct marketing based on your You have the option to withdraw your consent at any time. We also may process your location data, IP address, and content viewed on our websites.
  
  
• 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 the 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 websites or services, tailoring website and news content, setting preferences in our websites 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.

We may use anonymous, de-identified, or aggregate information that does not reasonably identify you for any purpose, as permitted by applicable law.

3. How We May Share the Information We Collect

Ward Damon does not sell your Personal Information. We also do not share Personal Information that reasonably identifies you with unaffiliated entities for their independent use except when we have your permission, are doing so at your direction, as needed to comply with our legal obligations, as permitted by applicable law, or as otherwise described in this Notice. 

We may also disclose the categories of information we collect to the following categories of recipients in furtherance of the purposes described above:

• Service Providers: We may share information to service providers that perform services for us and who are obligated to secure the information, such as 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 These service providers may be located anywhere in the world. 
• Legal Compliance: We may 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 governmental authorities or to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, or that of you or others anywhere in the world.
  
  
• Parties in Connection with a Business Transaction: We may share your Personal Information with advisors, potential transactional partners, or other third parties in connection with the consideration, negotiation, or completion of a transaction in which we are acquired by or merged with another company or firm or we sell, liquidate, or transfer all or a portion of our assets, as well as any bankruptcy or corporate reorganization. 

• Others with your Consent or at your Direction: This shall include if we notify you that your information may be shared and you provide such information or if you use Ward Damon to interact with a third party. For example, we may share your name and contact information with a business partner who co-sponsors an event you attend or publication you sign up for or with a social media service if you share or like our content. 

We may share anonymous, de-identified, or aggregate information that cannot reasonably identify you with others for any purpose, as permitted by applicable law. Please note that any Personal Information that you post to a profile, blog, comment section, or forum on our Digital Services or social media pages may be available to other users of those forums or, in some cases, made publicly available. 

The recipients of your Personal Information may be located outside of the jurisdiction where you reside. The laws of these other countries may not provide the same level of protection as the laws of your home country. By providing us with Personal Information about yourself, you acknowledge the disclosure of such Personal Information to these recipients. Any processing of your Personal Information outside of your jurisdiction will be in accordance with this Notice. 

To limit our right to share your Personal Information, please contact us in accordance with the How to Contact Us section below. 

 4. Protection and Storage of the Information We Collect

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  

With limited exceptions, e.g., Employment Applications, 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 where we need to retain such information to satisfy legal and professional ethical obligations.

6. Your Rights

Except as otherwise enumerated in this Notice, this Notice 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 or review their privacy notices or policies 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 Notice. Those obligations are described in our terms of engagement or otherwise arise as a result of applicable law or ethical obligations. 

Subject to local law, you may have certain rights regarding Personal Information we have collected about you. Such rights might include the right to (a) know what personal information we have collected about you, (b) know what personal information about you was disclosed to third parties, (c) update or correct such information if you believe there is an inaccuracy, (d) restrict the processing of your Personal Information, (e) request deletion of your Personal Information, (f) object to our use of your Personal Information, or (g) request transmission of your Personal Information to another data controller. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights, except that the deletion of your Personal Information may prevent us from providing you content, invitation, or benefit that depends on the processing of your Personal Information.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights provided under local law, you can contact us here.

7. How to Contact Us 

We welcome your inquiries and comments. But please note that if you are not a client, we may not be able to treat the information you send us as confidential or privileged. If you wish to contact us regarding legal or other services, please contact an attorney at our office. You can find a list of our offices and our attorneys on our main website (www.warddamon.com).

If you would like to contact us with questions about our privacy or data protection practices, please send us an email via our Contact Us page.

8. Changes to this Privacy Notice 

We may update this Notice periodically, and will revise the date at the top of this Notice to reflect the date when such update occurred. If we make any material changes in the way we collect, use, and/or share the Personal Information that you have provided, we will endeavor to provide you with notice before such changes take effect, such as by posting a prominent notice on the Ward Damon website.