Privacy Policy

PRIVACY POLICY

Last updated: January 1, 2024

Dykema Gossett PLLC and its affiliates (“Dykema”) has created this Privacy Policy (“Policy”) in compliance with applicable law and to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy. This Policy describes how we collect, use, disclose, transfer, store, retain or otherwise process your personal information in the course of performing our legal and advisory services, which includes the administration of the websites described below (these websites collectively referred to as the “Website”, and collectively with our professional legal services, referred to as our “Services”).

 

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When we refer to “you” or “your,” we mean the person about whom we collect personal information or data. If the person accessing the Website or engaging with our Services does so on behalf of, or for the purposes of, another person, including a business or other organization, “you” or “your” also means that other person, including a business organization, if applicable.

Please read this Policy carefully. Our Policy includes:

  1. General Disclosures
  2. What Information We Collect And Disclose And For What Purposes
  3. Personal Information Relating To Children
  4. How Long We Retain Your Information
  5. Marketing And Promotional Communications
  6. Links To Other Sites
  7. Security
  8. Your Data Rights
  9. Data Rights For California Consumers
  10. Changes To This Privacy Policy
  11. Contact Us

This Policy is supplemented by our:

 

1. GENERAL DISCLOSURES

Our data centers and Website are hosted in the United States. If you are visiting this Website from outside of the United States, please note that by providing us your information it is being stored or processed in the United States. If you are outside the United States and do not wish to allow the collection and storage of your personal information within the United States, you should not use this Website and you should opt-out of the collection of cookies by following the guidelines in our section titled How To Restrict Cookies. For more information about how we utilize cookies, view our Cookies Policy.

This Policy applies only to Dykema’s Services, and not to other companies’ or organizations’ websites, mobile applications and services to which we link. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of other businesses or the content of other websites, including any websites that may indicate a special relationship or partnership with us (such as co-branded pages or “in cooperation with” relationships). To ensure protection of your privacy, always review the privacy policies of the companies with whom you engage.

2. WHAT INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND DISCLOSE AND FOR WHAT PURPOSE

What Personal Information Do We Collect?

In the course of performing our Services, we collect a variety of different kinds of personal information from a variety of different individuals. What information we collect and the purposes for which it is collected will depend on the context of our activities or the Service that is being performed. Therefore, just because this Policy lists a particular data collection practice does not mean that we have necessarily collected that data from you. Instead, please review the applicable disclosures below to learn about how we may have collected personal information from you depending on how you have interacted with us.

We may collect and process the following personal information about you:

When you access our Website.  We may collect identifier, geolocation and internet or other electronic network activity information, including information about your computer or mobile device and your visits to the Website, such as your IP address, geographical location, browser type, referral source, length of visit and number of page views. We may use this information in the administration of this Website, to improve the Website’s usability, to provide better service, to send you newsletters, legal updates, marketing communications, and other information that may be of interest to you.

Please review our Cookie Policy for more information about cookies that we place and collect through the Website.

When you attend a Dykema event or engage with the Dykema alumni network.  We may collect identifier and professional-related information, including your name, business contact information and professional information. We may use this information administer Dykema events and to contact you about our Services.

When you engage Dykema for our legal Services.  We may collect identifier and professional-related information, including your age, location, e-mail address, street address, business contact information and professional information. We may use this information to administer our Services in relation to you.

In the course of providing our Services to others.  It is possible that in the course of providing Services to other individuals or entities, we may collect and process your personal information specific to the context of the Services we are providing. However, we are processing this personal information on behalf of others as a processor or service provider, and not for our own purposes.

Deidentified and Aggregated Information.  We may process your personal information into aggregated, anonymized or de-identified form for any purpose. Aggregated, anonymized or de-identified information is information that can no longer reasonably identify a specific individual and is no longer “personal information” as defined by applicable data privacy law. We will only maintain and use this type of information in deidentified form and we will not attempt to reidentify this information, except for the purposes of validating our deidentification process.

To Whom Do We Disclose Your Personal Information?

In the course of our business we may disclose your personal information to others. We will only disclose your information to the following service providers or other external entities under the circumstances described below and solely to the extent that it is necessary to accomplish the goal and purpose of the disclosure. Therefore, we may disclose your personal information:

To our organizational service providers.  We may utilize a variety of service providers to facilitate our performance of the Services. These service providers include our: data analytics providers, Website hosting and administration vendors, payment processors, e-mail messaging vendor, physical mail and delivery providers, translation service providers, online presentation or webinar providers, press release vendors, and our online survey tool providers.

To our database hosting vendors.  Like many organizations, we utilize cloud databases to host our data, including your personal information, so that we can effectively and safely operate the Website and provide our Services.

To our auditors.  We may be subject to audits from a number of entities as well as due to our own internal auditing policies. In order to accomplish an effective audit, we must provide information, which may include your personal information, to external auditors. We always ensure that your information is safely disclosed and stored and that auditors can only use your information for the purposes of completing an audit.

To individuals or entities you authorize.  We may disclose your personal information to individuals or entities at your direction.

In the course of providing our legal Services. As a law firm, we may disclose your personal information as is proper and necessary in the course of providing our legal services to you or to others. This may include disclosures to courts, law firms and other entities or individuals involved in legal matters in which we are involved.

In corporate transactions.  We may disclose all or part of your personal information with other entities in connection with the sale, assignment, merger or other transfer of all or a portion of our organization or assets to such entities (including due to a sale in connection with a bankruptcy). We will require any such purchaser, assignee or other successor organization to honor the terms of this Policy.

For our own legal purposes.  We may disclose all or part of your personal information to courts, litigants, regulators, arbitrators, administrative bodies or law enforcement when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to resolve actual or suspected claims. We may also disclose your personal information in order to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be violating any agreement with us, or may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) our rights or property, other users of the Website, or anyone else that could be harmed by such activities. We may disclose information in response to a subpoena, search warrant, in connection with judicial proceedings, or pursuant to court orders, legal process or other law enforcement measures. We may disclose or access personal information when we believe in good faith that the law requires it, to establish our legal rights or to defend against legal claims.

From Whom Do We Collect Your Personal Information?

When possible, we collect personal information directly from you. However, in the course of providing our Services or administering our Website, we may collect personal information about you from another source. For example, we may collect personal information about you from government sources, our investigative service providers or from others to whom we provide our Services. If you access our Website through an external platform or click on external links, we may receive some information about you from that referring website. We also may collect information from social media platforms that may disclose information about how you interact with our social media content. The collection, use, and disclosure of your information and your use of those sites will also be subject to the privacy policies and other terms of such external parties and platforms. We have no control over the information collection and processing practices of such external parties and you should review such privacy policies or terms of the websites or parties to which you give your information.

On What Basis Do We Process Your Personal Information?

We rely on the following legal grounds to process your personal information:

Performance of a contract.  We may need to collect and use your personal information to enter into a contract or to perform a contract that you or your company has with us, including delivery of legal services.

Consent.  Where required by applicable law, we will rely on your consent for collecting your personal information.

Legitimate interests.  We may use your personal information for our legitimate interests in the administration and performance of our Services to our clients. For example, consistent with our legitimate interests we may use your personal information for the proper administration of our business, direct marketing purposes or to review and improve our Services.

3. PERSONAL INFORMATION RELATING TO CHILDREN

The Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA) regulates online collection of information from persons under the age of 13. It is our policy to refrain from knowingly collecting or maintaining personal information relating to any person under the age of 18 through our Website. If you are under the age of 18, please do not supply any personal information through the Website. If you are under the age of 18 and have already provided personal information through the Website, please have your parent or guardian contact us immediately using the information provided under Contact Us so that we can remove such information from our files. Please delete all Dykema related cookies and restrict further collection of cookies using the methods outlined in the section How to Restrict Cookies in our Cookies Policy.

4. HOW LONG WE RETAIN YOUR INFORMATION

We may retain your personal information for a period of time that is consistent for us to perform our Services, as well as to comply with applicable law, applicable statute of limitations and our data retention practices. We may also retain your personal information as we believe is reasonably necessary to comply with legal process or governmental requests, to detect or prevent fraud, to collect fees owed, to resolve disputes, to address problems, to assist with investigations, to enforce other applicable agreements or policies or to take any other actions consistent with applicable law.

5. MARKETING AND PROMOTIONAL COMMUNICATIONS

You may opt-out of receiving marketing and promotional messages from us, if those messages are powered by us, by following the instructions in those messages. If you decide to opt-out, you will still receive non-promotional communications that are necessary in the performance of our Services.

6. LINKS TO OTHER SITES

This Website has links to other websites. Once you link to another site, you are subject to the privacy policy of the new site and its operator. We encourage you to carefully review the privacy policy of each entity to which you provide information.

7. SECURITY

We take reasonable measures, including administrative, technical, and physical safeguards, to protect your information from loss, theft, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. We hold information about you at our own premises and with the assistance of service providers. Further public disclosure here of our security measures could aid those who might attempt to circumvent those security measures. If you have additional questions regarding security, please contact us directly using the information provided under Contact Us.

8. YOUR DATA RIGHTS

There are a number of U.S. states that provide specific consumer rights to residents of those jurisdictions regarding personal information. This section of this Policy describes the rights available to those individuals who are entitled to them.

What Data Rights Do You Have?

This section of this Policy describes the rights available to those individuals who are entitled to them. Please note that if you a resident of California, you have access to special data rights and disclosures that are described in this Policy under a separate section titled Data Rights For California Consumers.

If you are a consumer living in Colorado, Connecticut, Nevada, Utah or Virginia, you have the following rights with regards to your personal information. These rights are explained in further detail below.

 

  Colorado Connecticut Nevada Utah Virginia
Confirmation of Personal Information Processing X X   X X
Access to Personal Information X X   X X
Correction of Personal Information X X     X
Portability of Personal Information X X   X X
Deletion of Personal Information X X   X X
Opt-Out of Targeted Advertising using Personal Information X X   X X
Opt-Out of Sale of Personal Information X X X X X
Opt-Out of Certain Profiling Using Personal Information X X     X
  • Right to Confirmation and Access. You have the right to confirm whether or not Dykema is processing your personal information and to access such personal information. The general categories of personal information that we collect, process and disclose are listed in the general Policy under the section: What Information We Collect And Disclose And For What Purposes. If you wish to access the specific pieces of personal information that we process about you, please submit a request as directed in the section titled How To Submit A Data Rights Request.
  • Right to Correct. You have the right to request that Dykema correct inaccurate personal information that we maintain about you, taking into account the nature of the personal information and the purposes of the processing of the personal information.
  • Right to Delete. You have the right to request that Dykema delete the personal information that Dykema maintains about you.
  • Right to Portability. You have the right to request to receive your personal information in a portable and readily usable format, to the extent technically feasible.
  • Right to Opt-Out of Targeted Advertising. You have the right to request to opt out of Dykema’s processing of your personal information for purposes of targeted advertising. “Targeted advertising” generally means displaying advertisements where the advertisement is selected based on personal information obtained from your activities over time and across non-Dykema websites or online applications to predict your preferences or interests. Dykema’s collection and use of your identifier, geolocation and internet or other electronic network activity information about you when visit our Website may be considered use of personal information for targeted advertising under state law. Please visit the follow the instructions under the Section title How to Restrict Cookies in our Cookie Policy to opt-out of this use of your personal information. Even if you opt-out, you may still see Dykema ads because we may advertise through other methods that are not based upon your online behavior.
  • Right to Opt-Out of Sale. You have the right to request to opt out of Dykema’s sale of your personal information. The disclosure of your online, web-browsing information when you visit our Website to our online marketing and analytics providers may constitute a “sale” under state law. However, we do not “sell” other types of data. Please visit the follow the instructions under the Section title  How to Restrict Cookies in our Cookie Policy to opt-out of this use of your personal information. Except as described in this paragraph, we do not “sell” personal information.
  • Right to Opt-Out of Profiling. You have the right to request to opt out of Dykema automated profiling of you that produce legal or similarly significant effects concerning you. Applicable state laws allow you to opt out of the application of automated profiling when it relates to substantive decision making, such as denial of financial or lending services, housing, insurance, education enrollment or opportunity, criminal justice, employment opportunities, health-care services, or access to essential goods or services. However, we do not profile individuals in a manner that produces legal or similarly significant effects on those individuals. Therefore, we do not offer a way to opt-out of profiling and neither do we look for or process any online browser preference or opt-out signals that purport to opt-out of profiling.

How To Submit A Request

You can submit your request to exercise your data rights through the below:

How We Process Data Rights Requests

Once we receive your request to exercise a right, we will confirm receipt and begin to evaluate, and if appropriate, process the request. Please note that:

  • We may require that you provide additional information to confirm your identity, including providing us with at least two or more pieces of personal information to match against personal information that we currently maintain about you. We reserve the right to reject your request if we are unable to verify your identity to a sufficiently high level of certainty. The information you provide to verify your identity will only be used for verification purposes, and a record of your request, including certain information contained within it, will be maintained by Dykema for our files.
  • To authenticate any request to correct personal information, you may be required to provide authentication information.
  • Certain laws or other legal requirements might prevent some personal information from being disclosed or deleted.

If you fail or refuse to provide the necessary information, we may not be able to process your request.

If we reject a request for any reason, we will inform you of the basis of the rejection. Not all individuals about whom we possess information will have access to these rights and we may not be able to provide these rights to everyone due to legal and jurisdictional limitations. We may not be able to comply with your request for a number of reasons, including:

  • you do not live in a state that grants you the specific right that you have requested;
  • the information that you’ve requested is not subject to the regulation that grants you the right to make a request in relation to your personal information;
  • we are prevented or exempted by law, regulation or rule from complying with your request;
  • we do not maintain your personal information in a manner that is connected to your identity;
  • we are not able to comply with your request without incurring disproportionate burden or expense; or
  • if complying with your request conflicts with the integrity of our Services, the ability to administer our Website, to administer our business and related relationships or to establish, defend or administer legal claims.

If any of the above reasons apply, we will let you know in our response to your request.

Submitting A Request Through An Authorized Agent

You may designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf. An authorized agent should make a request through the same mechanisms that are available to individuals as described in this policy. The request should clearly identify that the request is being made by an authorized agent and must include evidence of authorization. If we receive a request from an individual or an entity purporting to making the request on behalf of another individual, we can only comply with the request if we are able to sufficiently authenticate both the identity of the individual as well as the authorized agent’s authority to act on that individual’s behalf.

California has special rules regarding submitting requests through agents, so please review the appropriate disclosure in the section titled Data Rights For California Consumers.

Appeals And Complaints

If you disagree with our decision to reject your request or with any portion of our response, you have the right to appeal within a reasonable period of time. If you wish to appeal, please clearly and plainly describe your basis of disagreement with our decision by responding through the same means by which we communicated our refusal or by submitting your appeal through the information provided under Contact Us. We will review your appeal and either change our decision or reject your appeal, and in either case, we will provide a written explanation of the reason for the decision. This decision will be final.

However, if you still disagree with our decision, you have the right to submit a complaint to your attorney general of your state of residence. Your attorney general may have an online portal with details regarding how to submit complaints:

9. DATA RIGHTS FOR CALIFORNIA CONSUMERS

The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) provides the residents of California with the ability to request the data rights as described in this section. For more information, or if you have questions, you can contact us using the information provided under Contact Us.

  • Right to Know. California residents have the right to know what personal information Dykema has collected about them, including the categories of personal information, the categories of sources from which the personal information is collected in the past 12 months, the business or commercial purpose for collecting, selling, or sharing personal information, the categories of third parties to whom Dykema discloses personal information, and the specific pieces of personal information Dykema has collected about them.

    The categories of personal information, the categories of sources from which the personal information is collected, the business or commercial purpose for which we collect personal information and the categories of third parties to whom we disclose personal information are found in the general Policy under the section titled What Information We Collect And Disclose And For What Purposes.

    California residents have a right to know if we are “selling” or “sharing” (which is a term used under California law to address the sharing of information for targeted advertising purposes) their personal information, what categories of personal information are “sold” or “shared,” and to whom. The disclosure of your online, web-browsing information when you visit our Website to our online marketing and analytics providers may constitute a “sale” and “sharing” under California law. However, we do not “sell” or “share” any other types of data and we do no t knowingly “sell” or “share” the information of individuals under the age of sixteen years old.
  • Right to Delete. California residents have the right to request the deletion of their personal information maintained by Dykema.
  • Right to Correct. California residents have the right to request that Dykema correct inaccurate personal information that Dykema maintains about them. However, we reserve the right to delete your inaccurate personal information instead of correcting it, if permitted by the CCPA.
  • Right to Non-Discrimination. California residents have the right to not be discriminated against due to the exercise of their CCPA privacy rights. However, note that the exercise of certain privacy rights may make it so that we are no longer able to provide you with certain services or communications. For example, if we delete all of your personal information, we cannot send you e-mails or other communications.
  • Right to Opt-Out of “Sale” and “Sharing”. California residents have a right to know if we are “selling” or “sharing” (which is a term used under California law to address the sharing of information for targeted advertising purposes) their personal information, what categories of personal information are “sold” or “shared,” and to whom. The disclosure of your online, web-browsing information when you visit our Website to our online marketing and analytics providers may constitute a “sale” and “sharing” under California law. However, we do not “sell” or “share” any other types of data and we do not knowingly “sell” or “share” the information of individuals under the age of sixteen years old. Please visit the follow the instructions under the Section title  How to Restrict Cookies in our Cookie Policy to opt-out of this use of your personal information.
  • Right to Limit Use and Disclosure of Sensitive Personal Information. California residents have the right to direct a business to limit its use and disclosure of their “sensitive” personal information. California residents can request that a business limit its use or disclosure of their “sensitive” personal information to that use or disclosure which is necessary to perform the services or provide the goods reasonably expected by an average consumer, or to those uses or disclosures otherwise authorized by California law. However, we do not use or disclose your “sensitive” personal information for any purpose other than for the specific purposes described under the CCPA regulation § 7027(m) and always in a manner reasonably necessary and proportionate for these permitted purposes.
  • Right to Make Requests Through an Authorized Agent. California residents can designate an authorized agent to make a request under the CCPA on their Only you as a California resident, or a person you have designated in writing as your authorized agent, may make a consumer request related to your personal information.

If you wish to have an authorized agent make a verifiable consumer request on your behalf, they will need to provide us with sufficient written proof that you have designated them as your authorized agent, such as a power of attorney pursuant to California Probate Code sections 4000 to 4465. We will still require you to provide sufficient information to allow us to reasonably verify that you are the person about whom we have collected personal information. We can deny any request made by a purported authorized agent who does not submit proof that they have been authorized by the California resident to act on the California resident’s behalf.

  • Do Not Track (“DNT”). DNT is an optional browser setting that allows you to express your preferences regarding tracking across websites. Most modern web browsers give you the option to send a Do Not Track signal to the websites you visit, indicating that you do not wish to be tracked. However, there is no accepted standard. Instead, in addition to publicly available third-party tools, we offer you the choices described in this Policy to manage the collection and use of information about you when you visit our Website.

10. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We may amend this Policy at any time by posting revisions on our Website. If we make any material changes in the way we collect or process your personal information, we will notify you by prominently posting notice of the changes on our Website.

11. CONTACT US

To submit questions or to inquire about or submit a request relating to data rights, you can contact us by:

 

COOKIES POLICY

What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small text file that is placed on your hard drive by a web page server. Cookies contain information that can later be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.  There are several types of cookies:

  • Session cookies provide information about how a website is used during a single browser session while a user is visiting a website and usually expire after the browser is closed.
  • Persistent cookies remain on your device between different browser sessions for a set amount of time in order to enable the website to remember user preferences, settings, or actions across other sites. A persistent cookie will remain on a user’s device for a set period of time specified in the cookie.
  • First-party cookies are cookies set by the operator of the website you are visiting.
  • Third-party cookies are cookies set by third parties that are different from the operator website you are visiting.
  • Web beacons, tags and scripts may be used in the Website or in our emails to help us to deliver cookies, count visits, understand usage and campaign effectiveness and determine whether an email has been opened and acted upon.

Our collection of cookies

We, our marketing partners, affiliates, and analytics or service providers use cookies and other similar technologies. We group the cookies that we collect into the following categories based upon their function (note that all types of cookies, as described above, will be found in each category):

 

Category Description
Essential Cookies Essential cookies are sometimes called “strictly necessary” as without them we cannot operate and administer the Website. For example, essential cookies help remember your preferences as you move around the Website.
Analytics Cookies These cookies track information about visits to the Websites so that we can make improvements and report our performance. For example: analyze visitor and user behavior so as to provide more relevant content or suggest certain activities. They collect information about how visitors use the Websites, which site the user came from, the number of each user’s visits and how long a user stays on the Websites. We might also use analytics cookies to test new ads, pages, or features to see how users react to them.
Functionality or Preference Cookies During your visit to the Websites, cookies are used to remember information you have entered or choices you make (such as your username, language or your region) on the Websites. They also store your preferences when personalizing the Websites to optimize your use of the Website, for example, your preferred language. These preferences are remembered, through the use of the persistent cookies, and the next time you visit the Websites you will not have to set them again.
Targeting or Advertising Cookies These Third Party Cookies are placed by third party advertising platforms or networks in order to, deliver ads and track ad performance, enable advertising networks to deliver ads that may be relevant to you based upon your activities (this is sometimes called “behavioral” “tracking” or “targeted” advertising) on the Websites. They may subsequently use information about your visit to target you with advertising that you may be interested in, on the Websites and other websites. For example, these cookies remember which browsers have visited the Websites.

You can find more information about each cookie that we use by viewing our current Cookie Table, which is updated periodically.

How to Restrict Cookies

You can adjust the settings in your browser in order to restrict or block cookies that are set by the Website (or any other website on the Internet). Your browser may include information on how to adjust your settings. Alternatively, you may visit the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s website www.consumer.ftc.gov to obtain comprehensive general information about cookies and how to adjust the cookie settings on various browsers.

You can control and delete these cookies through your browser settings through the following:

Or you can also use the following cookie management and disposal tool from Google Analytics by downloading and installing the browser plug-in from the following link: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Please be aware that restricting cookies may impact the functionality of the Website. Additional general information about cookies, including how to be notified about the placement of new cookies and how to disable cookies, can be found at www.allaboutcookies.org.

COOKIE TABLE

 

Cookie Name Cookie Vendor Cookie Purpose Category
Cache-sprite-plyr RubensteinTech This cookie is necessary for the cache function. A cache is used by the website to optimize the response time between the visitor and the website. The cache is usually stored on the visitor’s browser Essential
__hssc HubSpot Identifies if the cookie data needs to be updated in the visitor's browser Analytics
__hssrc HubSpot Used to recognize the visitor’s browser upon reentry on the website Functionality or Preference
__hstc HubSpot Sets a unique ID for the session. This allows the website to obtain data on visitor behavior for statistical purposes Analytics
hubspotutk HubSpot Sets a unique ID for the session. This allows the website to obtain data on visitor behavior for statistical purposes Analytics
_ga Google Registers a unique ID that is used to generate statistical data on how the visitor uses the website Analytics
_ga_# Google Used by Google Analytics to collect data on the number of times a user has visited the website as well as dates for the first and most recent visit. Analytics
_gat Google Used by Google Analytics to throttle request rate Analytics
_gid Google Registers a unique ID that is used to generate statistical data on how the visitor uses the website Analytics