Privacy Statement
PRIVACY STATEMENT
Methfessel & Werbel 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 Policy sets out how we collect, store, process, transfer, share and use your personal data, and which rights and options you may have in this respect.
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, and email messages that we send to you that contain 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 services and the 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 staff, visitors to its website or users of Internet Services. We may also collect Personal Information about you when you interact with us on social media sites and may also automatically collect information that may contain Personal Information as described below in the cookie policy.
Use of your personal information
We will use the personal data listed above if and to the extent necessary to achieve the following purposes:
To provide legal advice or other legal services which we have been retained for
To manage and administer you or your organization’s relationship with us, including billing and collection, marketing and support services, and taking other steps linked to the performance of our business relationship
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
To analyze and improve our services and promote our business, such as by sending you publications and invites
To protect the security of and managing access to our premises, IT and communication systems, online platforms, websites and other systems, preventing and detecting security threats, fraud or other criminal or malicious activities
For insurance purposes
Where applicable, and only as permitted by law with respect to the specific category of personal data, to assess your application to join us
To comply with court orders and to exercise and/or defend our legal rights
To assist or enhance your experience at an event
To help us manage health and safety risks to employees and visitors to our offices
To personalize and foster the quality of our communications and interaction with you
If you are provided legal services by us, we may share your contact details and limited information about our services to you or your organization with legal directories or other promotional publications or communications, in order to promote our business. We will only share your name and contact details. We may, where permitted by our professional confidentiality obligations, disclose information about our clients to third parties in connection with a transaction, such as a merger, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business, or our acquisition of another business.
For any other purposes related and/or ancillary to any of the above, or any other purposes for which your personal data was provided to us.
For our recruitment
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 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.
Cookie Policy
A cookie is a text file sent by a web server and placed on your computer by your web browser. Cookies can be usefully divided into two different types, session and persistent. Session cookies differ from persistent cookies primarily in that session cookies are temporary and expire and are normally deleted when you close your browser. Persistent cookies, in contrast, remain stored on your computer after you close your browser until they are deleted either because they expire or you delete them. The firm uses session cookies in connection with its Internet Services, except for Internet Services that require you to log in.
Cookies are often used to understand the number of unique users that have visited a specific page. Similarly, we may use or receive reporting from tracking scripts that recognize unique cookies issued by another website. These tracking scripts are not used to gather information on your use of the Internet unrelated to the firm, and they do not identify you unless you choose to provide Personal Information to the firm.
The firm’s Internet Services use cookies. The firm uses session cookies in connection with its Internet Services, specifically for cybersecurity purposes, to provide you with customizations of your experience, such as highlighting your recently viewed items and to track your activities on the Internet Services.
Although the firm uses the services of third parties in connection with these cookies, we do not allow the third-party service provider to use Personal Information about the users of our Internet Services.
None of these cookies are strictly necessary to access our Internet Services. 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 Internet Services may function differently and not as well. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our Internet Services will issue cookies when you logon to the firm’s Internet Services. For more information about how to manage your cookies preferences, you should use the “help” menu of your web browser or explore the customer support sections of your web browser. Please note that you need to configure each browser on each device that you use if you wish to opt-out or block some or all cookies.
Do Not Track Signals
“Do Not Track” signals are options available on your browser to tell operators of websites that you do not wish to have your online activity tracked. Our websites operate no differently if these “Do Not Track” signals are enabled or disabled. Our Internet Services do not allow any third parties to collect Personal Information about your online activities over time or across websites for their own purposes.
How long do we keep your personal data?
Your personal information will be retained in accordance with our data retention policy, which categorizes all of the information held by Methfessel & Werbel, and specifies the appropriate retention period for each category of data. Those periods are determined by the purpose for which the information is collected and used, taking into account the applicable data protection laws in the jurisdictions concerned, legal and regulatory requirements to retain the information for a minimum period, limitation periods for taking legal action, and Methfessel & Werbel’s business requirements.
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.
Contact Us
Should you need to contact us regarding answering questions, accessing, amending, or correcting your information and resolving issues and disputes, you may contact us at info@methwerb.com or by mail at 2025 Lincoln Highway, Edison, N.J. 08817.