Privacy Statement

We may collect your information in the following occasions:

• In the course of providing services to you or our clients and performing due diligence checks in connection with our services (or discussing possible services we might provide), we will collect or obtain personal data about you. 
• We may also collect personal data from you when you use our Website. 
• We may collect or obtain such data because you give it to us (for example in a form on our Website), because other people give that data to us (for example your employer or adviser, or third party service providers that we use to help operate our business) or because it is publicly available. 
• We may also collect or obtain personal data from you because we observe or infer that data about you from the way you interact with us or others. For example, to improve your experience when you use our Website and ensure that it is functioning effectively, we (or our service providers) may use cookies (small text files stored in a user’s browser) and Web beacons which may collect personal data. Additional information on how we use cookies and other tracking technologies and how you can control these can be found on https://www.deloittelegal.be/lg/en/footerlinks1/cookies.html

The personal data that we collect or obtain may include:

• Identification and contact information (e.g. your name; age; date of birth; gender; e-mail address; telephone number; home address; country of residence, etc.)
• Information about your lifestyle and social circumstances (for example, your pastimes); 
• Information about your family circumstances (for example, your marital status and dependents);
• Employment and education details (for example, the organization you work for, your job title and your education details); 
• Financial and tax-related information (for example your income and tax residency);
• Information that you provided in the context of the services you required us to perform;
• Any other information such as your postings on any blogs, forums, wikis and any other social media applications and services that we provide; your IP address; your browser type and language; your access times; complaint details; details of how you use our products and services; details of how you like to interact with us and other similar information.
  

The personal data we collect may also include so called ‘sensitive’ or ‘special categories’ of personal data, such as details about your:

• dietary requirements (for example, where Deloitte Legal – Lawyers would like to provide you with lunch during a meeting);
• health (for example, so that we can make reasonable accommodations for you in our buildings, products and services); and 
• sexual orientation (for example if you provide us with details of your spouse or partner).

The types of personal data and special categories of personal data that we collect may vary depending on the nature of the services that we provide to you or our client, or how you use our Website. In some rare circumstances, we might also gather other special categories of personal data about you because you volunteer that data to us or we are required to gather that data as a result of legal requirements imposed on us.

Where we are provided with personal data about you by our client, we use reasonable efforts to include clauses into the contract with the client that will require them to comply with the privacy laws and regulations relevant to that information; this may include, for example, that the client has provided you with notice of the collection (and other matters) and has obtained any necessary consent for us to process that information as described in this privacy statement.

We understand the importance of protecting children's privacy. Our Website and services are not designed for, or intentionally targeted at, children. It is not our policy to intentionally collect or store information about children.

Use of personal information to provide services to our clients

We will use your personal data to provide you or our client with the requested services. As part of this, we may also use your personal data in the course of correspondence relating to the services. Such correspondence may be with you, our client, other law firms, our service providers or competent authorities (including but not limited courts, administrative authorities, notaries, bailiffs, etc.). We may also use your personal data to conduct due diligence checks relating to the services. Because we provide a wide range of services to our clients, the reason why we use personal data in relation to our services also varies. For example, we might use personal data about a client’s employees, representatives, customers, business partners or family members:

• to represent them in court;
• to advise them about their legal position;
• in the course of conducting an audit (or similar activity) for a client
• to contact him/her during the performance of our services and keep them informed of the project’s progress or in order to communicate them our projects’ deliverables.

Use of personal information for other activities that form part of the operation of our business

We may also use your personal data for the purposes of, or in connection with:

• applicable legal or regulatory requirements
• requests and communications from competent authorities
• administrative purposes
• financial accounting, invoicing and risk analysis purposes
• client relationship purposes, which may involve: (i) sending you thought leadership or details of our products and services that we think might be of interest to you; (ii) contacting you to receive feedback on services; and (iii) contacting you for other market or research purposes. In all above cases, we give you the opportunity to decline our offers and requests at any time. In specific cases if needed, for example in case you are not yet a client, we will make sure to obtain your prior consent before sending you communications’ materials or other marketing requests (see also below, “The legal grounds we use for processing personal information”);
• recruitment and business development purposes (for example testimonials from a client’s employees may be used as part of our recruitment and business development materials with that employee’s permission)
• services we receive from our professional advisors, such as lawyers, accountants and consultants
• protecting our rights and those of our clients.

Use of personal information collected via our Website

In addition to the purposes connected to the operation of our business above, we may also use your personal data collected via our Website:

• to manage and improve our Website
• to tailor the content of our Website to provide you with a more personalised experience and draw your attention to information about our products and services that may be of interest to you
• to manage and respond to any request you submit through our Website.

We are required by law to set out in this privacy statement the legal grounds on which we rely in order to process your personal data.

As a result, we use your personal data for the purposes outlined above because : (a) of the legal and regulatory obligations that we are subject to, such as keeping records for regulatory or tax purposes or providing information to a public body or law enforcement agency or (b) the information is required in order to provide our services to you or our client. (c) of our legitimate interests in the effective delivery of our services to you or our client; (d) of our legitimate interests in the effective and lawful operation of our business so long as such interests are not outweighed by your interests;

To the extent that we process any sensitive personal data relating to you for any of the purposes outlined above, we will do so because either: (i) you have given us your explicit consent to process that data; (ii) we are required by law to process that data in order to ensure we meet our ‘anti-money laundering’ obligations (or other legal obligations imposed on us); (iii) the processing is necessary to carry out our obligations under employment, social security or social protection law; (iv) the processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims or (v) you have manifestly made the data public.

Where we are legally required to obtain your explicit consent to provide you with certain marketing materials , we will only provide you with such marketing materials where we have obtained such consent from you. We have a legitimate interest to send you an invitation e-mail in order to obtain your consent. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. This withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of processing based on your consent before the withdrawal.

In some cases we are allowed to send you direct marketing (e.g. by e-mail) without obtaining your consent. Such is the case if we have obtained your electronic contact details in the context of the sale of our services. The direct marketing we send to you shall always relate to our own similar services.

If you do not want to continue receiving any marketing materials from us, you can click on the unsubscribe function in the communication or e-mail.

In connection with one or more of the purposes outlined in the “Why we use information about you for?” section above, we may disclose details about you to: third parties that provide services to us; competent authorities ((including but not limited to courts, administrative authorities, notaries, bailiffs, etc.)); other law firms, your employer and/or their advisers; your advisers; organizations that help us reduce the incidence of fraud and other third parties that reasonably require access to personal data relating to you for one or more of the purposes outlined in the “How we use information about you?” section above.

Our Website hosts various blogs, forums, wikis and other social media applications or services that allow you to share content with other users (collectively “Social Media Applications”). Importantly, any personal information that you contribute to these Social Media Applications can be read, collected and used by other users of the application. We have little or no control over these other users and, therefore, we cannot guarantee that any information that you contribute to any Social Media Applications will be handled in accordance with this privacy statement.

Please note that some of the recipients of your personal data referenced above may be based in countries outside of the European Union whose laws may not provide the same level of data protection. In such cases, we will ensure that there are adequate safeguards in place to protect your personal data that comply with our legal obligations. Where the recipient is not Deloitte Legal – Lawyers, the adequate safeguard might be a data transfer agreement with the recipient based on standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission for transfers of personal data to third countries.

Further details of the transfers described above and the adequate safeguards used by Deloitte Legal – Lawyers in respect of such transfers are available from us by contacting belgiumprivacy@deloitte.com.

We may also need to disclose your personal data if required to do so by law, a regulator or during legal proceedings.

We may share non-personal, de-identified and aggregated information with third parties for several purposes, including data analytics, research, submissions, thought leadership and promotional purposes.

We use a range of physical, electronic and managerial measures to ensure that we keep your personal data secure, accurate and up to date. These measures include:

• education and training to relevant staff to ensure they are aware of our privacy obligations when handling personal data
• administrative and technical controls to restrict access to personal data on a ‘need to know’ basis
• technological security measures, including fire walls, encryption and anti-virus software
• physical security measures, such as staff security passes to access our premises.

Although we use appropriate security measures once we have received your personal data, the transmission of data over the internet (including by e-mail) is never completely secure. We endeavor to protect personal data, but we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to us or by us.

You have various rights in relation to your personal data. In particular, you have a right to:

• obtain confirmation that we are processing your personal data and request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• ask that we update the personal data we hold about you, or correct such personal data that you think is incorrect or incomplete
• ask that we delete personal data that we hold about you, or restrict the way in which we use such personal data
• withdraw consent to our processing of your personal data (to the extent such processing is based on consent)]
• receive a copy of the personal data concerning you, which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and to transmit such personal data to another party (to the extent the processing is based on consent or a contract)
• object to our processing of your personal data.

To exercise any of your rights, or if you have any other questions about our use of your personal data, please email belgiumprivacy@deloitte.com or write to us at the address below:

Privacy Office
Gateway building, Luchthaven nationaal 1 J,
B-1930 Zaventem, Belgium

We may modify or amend this privacy statement from time to time.

To let you know when we make changes to this privacy statement, we will amend the revision date at the top of this page. The new modified or amended privacy statement will apply from that revision date. Therefore, we encourage you to periodically review this statement to be informed about how we are protecting your information.