Privacy Policy

Data Protection Statement/Information according to Art 13 and 14 GDPR

T +43 1 512 2613
F +43 1 512 2613 888

office@schindlerattorneys.com
www.schindlerattorneys.com

1. General / Personal data

We, Schindler Rechtsanwälte GmbH, will collect, process and use your personal data only upon your consent and/or instruction or appointment for the purposes agreed with you or where there is any other legal basis as per Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation/GDPR); this will be done in compliance with data protection and civil law provisions. Only personal data that is required for rendering and handling our services as your legal counsel or which you provide to us on a voluntary basis will be collected. Personal data means all data which includes details regarding personal or factual circumstances, such as, for example, name, address, email address, phone number, date of birth, age, gender, social security number, video recordings, photos, voice recordings of persons, and biometric data, such as fingerprints. Personal data may also include sensitive data, such as health data or data related to criminal proceedings.

If you have not provided us with your personal data yourself, we have received it from our clients, business partners, service providers or cooperation partners for whom you may work as a representative or employee or through whom you are invited to our events. In addition, we may have collected your personal data ourselves, e.g. via publicly accessible sources such as corporate websites, lists of participants at events or business directories.

2. Your rights

In compliance with our professional duty as a lawyer to maintain secrecy, you as our client or as a data subject in general have a right of access to your stored personal data, its source and recipient and the purpose of data processing as well as a right to rectification, a right to data portability, a right to object, a right to restriction of processing and blocking or erasure of inaccurate or inadmissibly processed data at any time.

In the case of changes of your personal data please inform us accordingly.
You may withdraw your consent to use of your personal data at any time. Your request for access, erasure, rectification, objection and/or data portability (in the last case: unless this involves a disproportionate effort) may be sent to this law firm’s address stated in Clause 12 of this Statement.

If you are of the opinion that processing of your personal data by us infringes applicable data protection law or that your claims under data protection law have been infringed in any other way, you may lodge a complaint with the competent supervisory authority. In Austria the competent authority is the Austrian Data Protection Authority [Datenschutzbehörde].

3. Data security

Your personal data is protected through appropriate technical and organizational measures. Those measures include but are not limited to protection against unauthorized, unlawful or accidental access, processing, loss, use and tampering.
Irrespective of our efforts to observe an appropriately high standard of due diligence at all times it cannot be excluded that information which you have provided to us via the internet will be inspected and used by other persons.

Please note that we, therefore, assume no liability whatsoever for disclosure of information due to errors in data transfers that were not caused by us and/or unauthorized access by third parties (e.g. hacker attack on email account or phone, interception of fax messages).

4. Use of data

We will not use any data provided to us for purposes other than the purposes covered by the mandate agreement or your consent or otherwise by any provision in conformity with the GDPR. This does not apply to use of data for statistical purposes, provided that the data provided has been anonymized. Please note that under certain circumstances, we might abstain from accepting an engagement if you fail to provide, or provide incomplete personal data which is necessary to execute and implement our legal services.

We process your personal data in particular for the following purposes:

• Based on your appointment or for the preparation of our client relationship with you, thus for the implementation of pre-contractual measures or for the fulfilment of contractual obligations (Art 6 (1) (b) GDPR);
• Based on your express consent, for example to order our newsletter or to be named as a reference (Art 6 (1) (a) GDPR); you can revoke your consent at any time, whereby the revocation does not affect the lawfulness of the previous processing;
• To comply with our legal and professional obligations, in particular in connection with the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing (Art 6 (1) (c) GDPR).

The processing serves in particular the performance and handling of our legal services. If you do not provide us with the data required to establish the mandate, we cannot accept the mandate.

If you are an opponent of our client or another person involved (e.g. respondent) in a matter that we are handling for our client, we also process your personal data. We obtain this personal data either from our client or from available public sources, as well as from third parties.

We also process your personal data if you are a supplier or business partner of ours, and in particular

• To carry out pre-contractual measures or to fulfil our contractual obligations (Art 6 (1) (b) GDPR); or
• To comply with our legal obligations (Art 6 (1) (c) GDPR); or
• If we have received consent from you to process data (Art 6 (1) (a) GDPR).

Furthermore, we may process your personal data to ensure the IT security and IT operation (e.g. setting up firewalls, virus scanners) of our law firm, in particular if you visit our website or communicate with us via email (Art 6 (1) (f) GDPR).

If you apply for a job at our law firm, we will process the personal data you have provided for the purpose of carrying out the application process (Art 6 (1) (b) GDPR). We will only include you in our evidence list if you wish to do so and have given your consent (Art 6 (1) (a) GDPR). If you are included in our evidence list, we may contact you if a position becomes available that could suit you.Zum Zweck unseres Eigenmarketings können wir Ihnen Informationen über unsere Dienstleistungen und Veranstaltungen zusenden und Ihre personenbezogenen Daten in diesem Zusammenhang verarbeiten (Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR).

We do not process your data on the basis of a decision based solely on automated processing (e.g. profiling) which produces legal effects vis-à-vis you or which similarly significantly affects or is likely to affect you.

5. Transfer of data to third parties

Within our law firm, only those departments or employees receive your personal data to the extent that this is necessary for processing for the corresponding purposes.

We only transfer your personal data to third parties if there is a valid legal basis for the transfer and the transfer does not violate our professional duty of confidentiality. This includes in particular the following recipients:

• independent lawyers with whom we cooperate;
• courts and authorities;
• opponents and their representatives;
• tax advisers and auditors;
• Banks and insurance companies;
• Other service providers (e.g. postal services, taxis).

In addition, processors commissioned by us (e.g. IT service providers) receive your personal data and only process your data on our behalf and in accordance with our instructions. In particular, the processors are not permitted to use your personal data for their own purposes.

Some of the recipients of your personal data stated above are located or process your personal data outside your country. The data protection standard in other countries may not be the same as the one in Austria. However, we transfer your personal data only to countries for which the European Commission has decided that they offer an adequate level of data protection; if this is not the case, we take measures to ensure that all recipients offer an adequate level of data protection, for which purpose we conclude standard contractual clauses (2010/87/EU and/or 2004/915/EC).

6. Communication and notification of data breaches

We endeavor to ensure that data breaches will be noticed early and immediately communicated to you and notified to the competent supervisory authority, where applicable, including the relevant categories of data concerned.

7. Retention of data

We will not retain data longer than necessary to fulfil our contractual and/or legal obligations or to defend us against any liability claims that may arise.

Depending on the respective processing purpose, a different retention period is required.

We are legally obliged to keep our files and documentation for a period of seven years for reasons of tax law. In individual cases, for example for the assertion and defence of legal claims, we keep our files for up to 30 years after the end of the mandate.

Data of applicants who are not employed by us are generally deleted after seven months, unless we have received consent to keep records or there is another legal basis for retention.

8. Cookies

This website uses “cookies” to make our offer more user-friendly, more effective and safer.
A “cookie” is a small text file which we transmit to the cookie file of a browser on the hard disk of your computer via our web server. This enables our website to recognise you as a user when a connection is established between our web server and your browser. Cookies help us to establish the frequency of use and the number of users of our website. The content of the cookies used by us is limited to an identification number which no longer allows any direct reference to the user. The main objective of a cookie is to identify visitors to the website.
Two types of cookies are used on this website:

• Session cookies: are temporary cookies which are stored in the cookie file of your browser until you leave our website and are automatically deleted at the end of your visit.
• Persistent cookies: are saved on your terminal equipment and allow us to recognise your browser on your next visit in order to achieve better user-friendliness.

You may adjust your browser settings so that you will be informed about the placement of cookies and only allow them on a case-by-case basis, accept them for specific cases or generally refuse or automatically delete cookies when you close your browser. The functionality of this website may be restricted as a result of deactivating cookies.

9. Server log files

In order to optimise this website in terms of system performance, user-friendliness and provision of useful information about our services, the website provider automatically collects and stores information in so-called server log files, which your browser automatically transfers to us. This includes your internet protocol address (IP address), browser and language settings, operating system, referrer URL, your internet service provider and the date/time.
This data will not be combined with personal data sources. We reserve the right to check this data at a later date if we learn of specific indications of unlawful use. Die Rechtsgrundlage für die genannte Datenverarbeitung ist unser berechtigtes Interesse an der Funktionalität, stabilität und Sicherheit unserer Webseite.

10. SSL or TLS encryption

This site uses SSL or TLS encryption for security reasons and for the protection of the transmission of confidential content, such as the inquiries you send to us as the site operator. You can recognize an encrypted connection in your browser’s address line when it changes from “http://” to “https://” and the lock icon is displayed in your browser’s address bar.
If SSL or TLS encryption is activated, the data you transfer to us cannot be read by third parties.

11. Other

We reserve the right to update this Data Protection Statement/Information to reflect legal and technical requirements or changes in our business.

12. Our contact details

Protection of your data is of particular importance to us. Please do not hesitate to contact us using the contact details stated below at any time if you have any questions or if you want to withdraw your consent.