1. Introduction

This policy is designed to help you understand what personal data we collect, why and how we use it and who we share it with. It also explains the rights you have in connection with your personal data, including how to contact us or to make a complaint.

2. Responsible for the processing of your personal data

The entity controlling the processing of your personal data is Gerard.Law SRL ( “us”). Gerard.Law is a Belgian company with limited liability whose registered office is located at 1200 Woluwé-Saint-Lambert, avenue Marcel Thiry 79C box 4. Gerard.Law is registered in the Crossroads Bank of Enterprises under number 0837.890.057.

For any questions relating to this policy or to exercise your rights regarding your personal data, you may contact us via mail on the above address or via the following email address: info@gerard.law.

3. Processing of your personal data

Gerard.Law processes the personal data of its clients, the employees or other self-employed co-workers of its clients or contacts of its clients of which Gerard.Law receives the personal data via its clients, for the following purposes:

1. to provide you with our legal services as requested by you, i.e. legal advice, proceedings, transactional work, etc., and to exchange information with you and to answer your questions (via mail, e-mail, telephone, etc.) in relation to the provision of our legal services to you,
2. to comply with our legal obligations, among others, our obligations under the Anti-Money Laundering legislation,
3. to keep you informed about the latest legal news and insights relevant to your business via our newsletters and invitations to our seminars, to keep our database up to date, to use the information provided by you to better understand you and to improve our mailings and service offering,
4. for invoicing, administrative and other purposes.

4. Legal basis for processing your personal data

If you are a client, the processing by us of your personal data is necessary for the performance of the contract, regarding the provision of Gerard.Law’s legal services to you, to which you and Gerard.Law are parties.

Gerard.Law also processes your personal data to comply with its legal obligations to which Gerard.Law is subject, among others the legal obligations imposed by the Anti-Money Laundering legislation.

If you are an employee or self-employed co-worker of our client and our client has indicated you as its contact person, we process your personal data on the basis of our and our client’s legitimate interest to interact in relation to our legal services.

If you are a contact of our client and we have received your personal data from our client, e.g. because you are an expert , an accountant or you work together with our client in one way or another, we also process your personal data on the basis of our and our client’s legitimate interest to better organize our legal services to our clients.

We believe that our or our client’s legitimate interest to process the personal data concerned is not overridden by your interests or fundamental rights and freedoms. If you do not want your personal data to be processed for the above purposes, please contact us at info@gerard.law as you have the right to oppose to such processing.

As we have received your personal data to provide you with our legal services, we believe it is also in Gerard.Law’s legitimate interest to process your personal data to send you our newsletters and invitations to our seminars. As such, we keep you informed about the latest legal developments as well as all relevant information about Gerard.Law. You can object to the processing of your personal data for this purpose at any time and free of charge by clicking on ‘unsubscribe’ at the bottom of each newsletter or invitation. In such a case, we will remove you from our mailing list.

5. Type of personal data collected

We process the following personal data:

1. name, surname, job title, company name, company address, legal entity, email address, (mobile) phone and fax,
2. nationality, ID-card, national number, VAT number, bank account details, business register number,
3. preferred language, specific areas of interests, memberships, industry sectors, etc.,
4. matter or company related information: matter related information may include personal data of other natural persons. We do not process these personal data in a separate database. These personal data are part of the files processed in Gerard.Law’s document management system. Given our professional secrecy obligation as lawyers, Gerard.Law is exempted from informing the persons concerned about this processing.

The provision of some of your personal data may be a legal requirement and/or a requirement necessary to enter into a contract with Gerard.Law. Not providing them may result in not entering into the contract with Gerard.Law, or not enabling Gerard.Law to provide its legal services.

6. Personal data sharing

As a general rule, we do not share your personal data with third parties. 

In certain cases, we may do so:

1. when required by law or by court order,
2. when in relation to the services we provide, we may have to share your personal data with official authorities, experts, notaries, bailiffs, etc. in Belgium or abroad, if instructed as such by the client,
3. when useful or necessary for the purpose, to processors that process on our behalf, i.e. to perform certain (processing) activities; in such a case we conclude a processing agreement with these parties that have access to your personal data for the performance of their services,
4. for the purpose of our internal organization to provide you with the legal services you ask us to provide.

7. Retention period of your personal data

7.1. Processing of personal data for the purpose of providing you with our legal services

We process your personal data for as long as necessary for the provision by Gerard.Law of the legal services requested by you.

After our contractual relationship is terminated, we will process these personal data for as long as is necessary for tax, accounting or other legal requirements.

7.2. Processing of your personal data for the purpose of direct marketing

We will process your personal data to keep you informed about any legal news or insights relevant to your business via Gerard.Law newsletters or event invitations until you object to the processing of your personal data for this purpose. In such a case, we will immediately remove your personal data from our mailing lists.

8. Your rights

You have a number of rights in relation to the personal data we process on you, including:

• Right of access: you have the right to ascertain what type of personal data we hold about you, how we process your personal data, and to a copy of your personal data.
• Right to rectification: you have the right to have any inaccurate personal data which we hold about you updated or corrected.
• Right to erasure: in certain circumstances you may request that we delete the personal data that we hold on you.
• Right to restriction: you have the right to request that we stop using your personal data in certain circumstances including if you believe that the personal data we hold about you is inaccurate or that our use of your personal data is unlawful. If you validly exercise this right, we will store your personal data and will not carry out any other processing until the issue is resolved.
• Right to object: where we rely on our legitimate interests to process your personal data, you have a right to object to this use.
• Right to portability: you may request us to provide you with certain personal data which you have given us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and you may request us to transmit your personal data directly to another data controller where this is technically feasible.

To exercise your rights regarding your personal data, you may contact us via the following email address: info@gerard.law.

We may request that you provide proof of your identity for security reasons and in order to prevent the unauthorised disclosure or misuse of personal data.

Gerard.Law will process the respective requests within maximum one month after receipt of the request.

In case of direct marketing, we will remove your personal data upon your request and free of charge.

9. Complaints

If you have any questions, remarks or complaints in relation to this policy or how Gerard.Law processes your personal data, do not hesitate to send an email to info@gerard.law.

If you have any complaints about the way Gerard.Law processes your personal data, you can file a complaint with the Belgian Data Protection Authority (www.dataprotectionauthority.be).

10. Amendments

Gerard.Law reserves the right to amend this policy in order to comply with applicable privacy laws. We may revise this policy at any time by amending this policy. At all times you can find the current version of our privacy policy on our website.