General information on the processing of personal data by FSE Law Rechtsanwaltsges. mbH
We take the confidentiality and protection of your personal data very seriously and process your personal data only to the degree allowed by applicable laws, specifically the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and the German Federal Data Protection Act (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz).
The information contained herein is intended for any natural person (in particular, legal representatives, contact persons or employees of clients or other business partners) with whom we have or are about to have an attorney-client relationship or any other type of business relationship or are in communication for other reasons.
I. Responsibilities and contact details
Responsible for processing your personal data (responsible data controller) is:
FSE Law Rechtsanwaltsges. mbH
– Datenschutz –
Havelschanze 87
D-13587 Berlin
Germany
Our data protection officer can be reached by email at: office1(at)fselaw.com or by mail under the above stated address
II. Processing of personal data
We process your contact details as well as other personal data where required for the provision of our services or our communication with you.
We process your personal data to the extent necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests of FSE Law Rechtsanwaltsges. mbH under Art. 6 (1) lit. f GDPR, specifically,
- in order to enter into or execute engagement letters, contracts and other business relationships (including the processing of purchase orders, deliveries or payments) or in order to prepare or reply to quotation requests and to determine the conditions of a contractual relationship, namely with our clients, business partners, service providers or cooperation partners for whom you act as representative or employee;
- for our internal administrative purposes such as controlling and accounting;
- in order to provide you with our client information, such as newsletters informing about current legal topics or events we organize;
- for any other communication purposes;
- in order to ensure our IT security;
- in order to engage service providers who support our business processes;
- in order to ensure general and individual compliance.
Moreover, personal data is processed in order to perform contracts entered into or to fulfil orders placed by individuals (natural persons) with whom we have business relationships (Art. 6 (1) lit. b GDPR).
We are unable to perform under the contractual relationship or expected communication should you choose not to provide us with your personal data.
Further, we process personal data as required by law (Art. 6 (1) lit. c) GDPR). For example, pursuant to the provisions of the German Anti-Money Laundering Act (Geldwäschegesetz, “GWG”), we are required to identify our clients and thus need you to provide us with the necessary information (Sec. 11 (6) sentence 1 GWG). According to Sec. 50 of the German Federal Lawyers’ Act (Bundesrechtsanwaltsordnung), we are expected under professional law (Berufsrecht) to maintain attorneys’ reference files, for which using electronic data processing is permitted.
If you have not provided us with your personal data yourself, we received the data from our clients or business partners or obtained them from publicly available sources, such as company websites or business or other directories.
III. Confidentiality and erasure of your personal data
Our own employees as well as any staff of third-party service providers with access to personal data are obliged to treat such data confidentially.
We will delete your personal data after termination of our attorney-client, contract or service relationship or our contact if the storage is no longer needed for the fulfilment of our (post)contractual obligations or the legitimate interests stated herein and if there are no statutory archiving requirements.
IV. Disclosure of your personal data
We will transmit your personal data only to the extent you have individually agreed to or as is permitted by law.
To the extent required for the purposes stated herein above, your personal data may be disclosed to service providers within and outside the European Union (EU) which perform specific services for us (i.e. processors). We will commit the service providers to secrecy; the service providers will process personal data only in accordance with our instruction.
In the course of our law firm’s usual work processes and for the purposes already specified herein, it is perceivable that we will disclose your data to third parties within and outside the European Union, for example to our business partners or to law firms with we work together on a client matter, to translators, opponents or to other third parties.
In addition, we can – to the extent legally permissible – disclose your data to authorities (such as social security institutions, tax authorities or law enforcement agencies), public register and domestic and foreign courts in order to comply with statutory duties or in order to act in the interests of our law firm. This may include foreign authorities and courts.
Countries located outside the EU may not have data protection laws and regulations comparable to the ones in the EU. To the extent that no statutory level of security comparable to the European data protection laws exists in such countries, we will take appropriate steps to ensure that your personal data will be adequately protected in such countries.
V. Your rights
You have the right to receive information about your personal data, to require rectification or erasure of your personal data or the restriction of the processing and to receive your personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format (data portability). Eligibility is subject to the applicable laws and statutory requirements, which we will verify in each individual case.
You may also object to the processing of your personal data.
To the extent that we apply data in order to inform you about our advisory services and current developments, you can object to such processing and use of your personal data at any time without giving reason. In case of a complaint concerning our processing of your personal data, you are entitled to contact a supervisory authority anytime.