New York Affiliate Office Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy sets forth the policies of Atsumi & Sakai New York LLP (A&S New York) with respect to collection and use of personal information. “Personal information,” as used in this Privacy Policy, means information that identifies, or directly relates to identifiable, individuals.  This Privacy Policy is specifically addressed to our clients and to parties outside the firm who provide Personal Information to the firm or who visit or use the firm’s websites, our apps, our social media sites, or our extranets.

 

As a provider of legal services, A&S New York is committed to protecting the confidentiality and integrity of your personal information, and maintains appropriate technical and security arrangements in order to keep your personal information confidential and protect it against loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, or alteration, in accordance with applicable data protection and privacy laws.

 

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time and will post the updated Privacy Policy here. We recommend and encourage you to visit our website periodically to view the most recent version of our Privacy Policy.

 

 

Collection of Personal Information

We may collect personal information about you directly from you or another person acting on your behalf. We will also collect personal information about you if it relates to your instructions, transactions between you and us, and the services that we provide to you, your employer, or another business or entity associated with you.

 

You may browse areas of our website that do not require entry of login credentials without actively entering personal information. However, we may receive certain information automatically from your web browser or applications you use when you access our website, including, for example, IP addresses, other device identifiers, browser types, operating systems, access dates and times, referring and exiting URLs, etc.

 

We may ask you to provide personal information. This may include providing your personal information in order to provide legal services to you, to register for events, or to inquire about or apply for a job with us.

 

In some circumstances, we may receive personal information about you from third parties, such as our service providers, regulatory or law enforcement agencies, your bank or other financial institutions or advisors, and agencies conducting background checks. We may also obtain personal information about you from publicly accessible sources of information, such as public databases, industry associations, social media, and online professional networks.

 

The categories of personal information we may collect will depend on the nature of our relationship with you or the services we provide, and the purpose for which information is collected. Such personal data may include the following: names, residential addresses or other contact details, signatures, nationality, date and place of birth, social security, national insurance or other tax identification numbers, photographs, copies of identification documents, bank account details, credit history, criminal and administrative offences, educational information, such as transcripts and travel-related information.

 

Additionally, if you are a visitor to our offices, we may collect additional personal information in connection with COVID-19, such as whether you have: (a) been in close or proximate contact in the prior 14 days with anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19 or who has or had symptoms of COVID-19; (b) tested positive for COVID-19 in the prior 14 days; and/or (c) experienced any symptoms of COVID-19 in the prior 14 days. You may also have your temperature collected.

 

 

Our Use of Personal Information

We may use your personal information where applicable law permits us to do so, including for any of the following purposes:

  • To contact you and establish and administer the relationship between us;
  • To provide services to you, your employer, your consultants or advisors or other persons or entities associated with or engaged by you, and administer the matters on which we are instructed by our clients;
  • To contact you about legal updates, seminars or events, or developments and announcements that we believe may be of interest to you;
  • To monitor and analyze our activities;
  • To comply with applicable legal or regulatory requirements, including rules of professional conduct, anti-money laundering and sanctions regimes, and any COVID-19-related notifications; and
  • other purposes incidental to the above.

Moreover, information collected by A&S New York in connection with its recruiting of lawyers and staff will only be used for such recruiting purposes and will not be used for any other purpose.

 

We will use one of the permitted grounds under applicable law to process your personal information. Such grounds include instances where you have given your consent or where your consent is not required under applicable law, such as where we are required to comply with a legal obligation, or where we, or a third party acting on our behalf, determines that it is necessary for our legitimate interests to collect and use your information.

 

The legitimate interests to collect your personal information may include any of the purposes identified above and any other purpose where we, or a third party acting on our behalf, has determined that you have a reasonable expectation for us or a third party, on our behalf, to collect or use your personal information for such purpose.

 

 

What Are the Consequences of Failing to Provide Your Personal Information?

Depending on the purpose for which your personal information is required, a refusal to provide personal information may have various consequences, such as our being unable to communicate with you, to provide our services to you, or to permit you to access our offices or other facilities. If your personal information is necessary for us to carry out our anti-money laundering checks, failure to provide such information may result in the firm not being able to provide the representation.

 

 

Sharing of Personal Information

We will only disclose your personal information outside A&S New York in limited circumstances. Such circumstances include disclosures to Atsumi & Sakai Legal Professional Corporation in Japan (Atsumi & Sakai), Atsumi & Sakai Europe Limited in the UK (A&S London) or Atsumi & Sakai Europa GmbH - Rechtsanwälte und Steuerberater (A&S Frankfurt) in connection with services that we provide to you (such sharing with our affiliates are “joint use” of personal information for the purpose of Japan’s Act on Protection of Personal Information, which may apply if you are located in Japan and A&S New York collects your personal information, where the joint use may be for the purposes of use as set out in this policy and Atsumi & Sakai is the entity, among the sharing entities, in charge of managing your personal information for the Japanese law purpose), to agents or service providers acting on our behalf and at our direction (“processors”), where we believe disclosure is necessary to provide a service that you have requested, or as otherwise authorized or directed by you. Where we transfer, or give access to, your personal information to our processors, we ensure that such processors have committed themselves to appropriate confidentiality and information security obligations.  You may view the privacy policy of Atsumi & Sakai and A&S London here.

 

Subject to compliance with applicable law and our professional obligations, we may share your personal information with the following:

  • Our affiliates;
  • Any person to whom we have a right or obligation to disclose your personal information under applicable law, or any person where we determine that disclosure is necessary to protect or defend our rights or property, including with regulators, courts of law, governmental, regulatory, or law enforcement agencies;
  • Our internet, IT, telecommunications and other relevant service providers, or law firm ranking agencies;
  • Any person or entity, as directed by you; or
  • Any person to whom we transfer any of our rights or obligations under any agreement, or in connection with a sale, merger or consolidation of our business or other transfer of our assets, whether voluntarily or by operation of law, or who is otherwise deemed to be our successor or transferee.

 

Security of Personal Information and Retention Periods

We maintain appropriate technical and organizational security procedures in order to keep your personal information confidential and protect it against loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, or alteration, in accordance with applicable data protection and privacy laws.

 

 

Additional Information for Residents of the EEA

A&S group’s privacy policy for data subjects in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom applies to A&S New York’s collection and use of personal information of such data subjects.

 

 

How to Contact us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, comments or enquiries regarding the collection, processing, and storage of your personal information by us, or to exercise your rights under Japan’s Act on Protection of Personal Information or GDPR, please contact us via email at A&S New York at info_ny@aplaw.jp.

 

We will handle all such requests in accordance with applicable data protection and privacy laws.

 

You have the right to object to the use of your personal information for direct marketing purposes. If you do not wish to receive our publications or details of events that we consider may be of interest to you, we ask that you notify us by clicking on the unsubscribe link in any electronic marketing communications that you receive, or by email at info_ny@aplaw.jp.

 

 

Use of Cookies

We may send text files (e.g., “cookies” or other cached files) or images to your web browser to store information on your computer. We may use these files and images for technical convenience to store information on your computer. We may use information stored in such text files and images to customize and monitor your experience and use of this website.  You can disable cookies from your computer system by following the instructions on your browser or at http://www.allaboutcookies.org/.

 

 

Links to Other Websites

This website may contain hyperlinks to the websites of third parties. If you decide to follow such links, be aware that we do not take any responsibility for the third-party content or compliance of the third-party website with data privacy laws. This Privacy Policy does not apply to such third-party content or sites.

 

 

Privacy Notice for California Consumers

This Privacy Notice for California Consumers contains disclosures required by the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), and is only relevant to residents of California, and applies only to the collection or other use of personal information that is subject to the CCPA. “Personal information,” as used in this Privacy Notice for California Consumers, is defined as provided in the CCPA, and includes any information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household. Consumers with disabilities may access a printable copy of this notice in pdf format using the link provided above.

 

 

Use of Personal Information.

We may use the personal information we collect for one or more of the following purposes:

  • To contact you and establish and administer the relationship between us;
  • To provide services to you, your employer, your consultants or advisors or another person or entity associated with or engaged by you, and administer the matters on which you or your representatives instruct us;
  • To contact you about legal updates, seminars or events, or announcements that we believe may be of interest to you;
  • To address one or more of the following business purposes:
    • Account servicing and processing payments;
    • Auditing related to our interactions with you (e.g., your interactions with emails and other communications we send to you);
    • Legal compliance;
    • Detection of and protection against security incidents, fraud, and illegal activity; and
    • Internal operations.

 

Sharing Personal Information.

We may disclose personal information in one or more of the categories identified above to:

  • Service providers, including but not limited to, third parties that provide website hosting, off-business hour user support, security monitoring and response, professional services, including information technology services and related infrastructure, document review, auditing, benefits administration, and other similar services;
  • Affiliates;
  • Business partners;
  • Law firm ranking agencies;
  • Legal or government regulatory authorities as required by applicable law; and
  • Other parties in connection with a potential business transfer.

In the past 12 months, we have not sold any personal information we collect to third parties, and we have shared the categories of personal information we collect only as set forth above.

 

 

Rights of California Consumers.

The CCPA provides a California consumer the following rights, subject to certain exceptions and limitations:

  • The right to request (a) the categories and specific pieces of personal information we collect, use, disclose, and sell about you, (b) the categories of sources from which we collected your personal information, (c) the purposes for which we collect or sell your personal information, (d) the categories of your personal information (if any) that we have either sold or disclosed for a business purpose, and (e) the categories of third parties with which we have shared personal information;
  • For certain categories of personal information, the right to request a list of what personal information (if any) we disclosed to third parties for their own direct marketing purposes in the past 12 months and the names and addresses of those third parties;
  • The right to request that we delete the personal information we have collected from you or maintain about you;
  • The right to opt out of our sale(s) (if any) of your personal information; and
  • The right not to receive discriminatory treatment for the exercise of the privacy rights conferred by the CCPA.

You may submit requests relating to your exercise of rights under the CCPA to us by email at info_ny@aplaw.jp.

 

We may need to request additional information from you to verify your identity or understand the scope of your request. In verifying requests, we will require you to provide, at a minimum your telephone number and mailing address. If we are unable to verify your identity, we will need to deny your request.

 

You may designate an authorized agent to make a CCPA request on your behalf by mailing two forms of identification showing your first name, last name, and current address, and a signed authorization allowing an agent to request information on your behalf.