Use of A&O Shearman website
A number of facilities on our website invite you to provide us with personal information, such as the vacancy application facility in the “Careers” section of our website and our email queries facilities. The purpose of these facilities is apparent at the point that you provide your personal information, and we only use that information for those purposes.
We use cookies on our website. To learn more about the cookies we use and how to disable them, please view our Cookie policy.
Marketing and other emails
To ensure that we provide content that is of interest, we use technology in our marketing emails and on our websites that logs whether you click on the links in our emails and, if you follow a link to one of our websites, the time and date you access the websites and how long you spend on the website. We may use this information to determine what future marketing is likely to be of interest to you. If you would prefer that we don’t record this information, please don’t click on the links.
We will log your response to our marketing emails and may use this to determine what future marketing is likely to be of interest to you and what future marketing we send you. For example, if you accept an invitation to a seminar, we will record this and may send you marketing emails relevant to that seminar and the topics it covers in the future.
We may also use a relationship management tool, where permitted by applicable local law, to assess the strength of the relationship between individuals in A&O Shearman and our clients or potential clients based on the frequency of email contact between them. We use that information in order to assess, analyze, and improve the services that we provide.
If you receive marketing communications from us and no longer wish to do so, you may unsubscribe at any time by sending an email to epublications@aoshearman.com.
Meetings, events, and seminars
We will collect and process personal information about you in relation to your attendance at our offices or at an event, training, or a seminar organized by A&O Shearman or its business partners. We will only process and use special categories of personal information about your dietary or access requirements in order to cater for your needs and to meet any other legal or regulatory obligations we may have. We may share your personal information with IT and other service providers or business partners involved in organizing or hosting the relevant event.
Legal, technology, and other services
We collect, create, hold, and use personal information in the course of and in connection with the services we provide to our clients. We will process identification and background information as part of our business acceptance, finance, administration, and marketing processes, including anti-money laundering, conflict, reputational, and financial checks.
In the course of our business, we will process personal information using a range of technologies, including cloud-based systems and artificial intelligence. We will also process personal information provided to us by or on behalf of our clients or generated by us for the purposes of the work we do for them. The information may be disclosed to third parties to the extent reasonably necessary in connection with that work. Please also see “Who we share your personal information with” and “Which countries we transfer your personal information to” below.
How long we keep your personal information for
Your personal information will be retained in accordance with our global data retention policy which categorizes all of the information held by A&O Shearman and specifies the appropriate retention period for each category of information. Those periods are based on the requirements of applicable data protection laws and the purpose for which the information is collected and used, taking into account legal and regulatory requirements to retain the information for a minimum period, limitation periods for taking legal action, good practice, and A&O Shearman’s business purposes.
Who we share your personal information with
We are an international business and any information that you provide to us may be shared with and processed by any entity in the worldwide network of A&O Shearman and our associated firms. You can see a list of our offices by clicking here.
We may also share your personal information with certain trusted third parties in accordance with contractual arrangements in place with them, including:
- Our professional advisors and auditors
- Our insurers and insurance brokers
- Suppliers to whom we outsource certain support services such as word processing, translation, photocopying, and document review
- IT and other service providers to A&O Shearman
- Third parties engaged in the course of the services we provide to clients and with their prior consent, such as barristers, local counsel and technology service providers like data room and case management services
- Third parties involved in hosting or organizing events or seminars
Where necessary, or for the reasons set out in this Policy, personal information may also be shared with regulatory authorities, courts, tribunals, government agencies, and law enforcement agencies. While it is unlikely, we may be required to disclose your personal information to comply with legal or regulatory requirements. We will use reasonable endeavors to notify you before we do this, unless we are legally restricted from doing so.
We do not sell or rent personal information or otherwise share it with a third party in return for monetary compensation, except with your prior permission. If in the future we re-organize or transfer all or part of our business, we may need to transfer your personal information to new A&O Shearman entities or to third parties through which the business of A&O Shearman will be carried out.
A&O Shearman may use social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and X (formerly Twitter). If you use these services, you should review their privacy policy for more information on how they deal with your personal information.
How we protect your personal information
We use a variety of technical and organizational measures to help protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, alteration, or destruction consistent with applicable data protection laws.
This includes the use of data loss protection tools in order to protect A&O Shearman, our employees, clients, and suppliers from cyber threats and the loss of sensitive information.
A&O Shearman’s document management and email systems are certified to the internationally recognized ISO/IEC 27001 security standard. This is an independently verified certification that information security is managed in line with international best practice.
When we engage a third-party service provider to collect or otherwise process personal information on our behalf, the third party is selected carefully and will be required to have appropriate security measures in place.
Which countries we transfer your personal information to
In order to provide our services, we may need to transfer your personal information to locations outside the jurisdiction in which you provide it or where you are viewing this website for the purposes set out in this Policy. This may entail a transfer of your personal information from a location within the European Economic Area (the “EEA”) to outside the EEA, or from outside the EEA to a location within the EEA. Please see “Who we share your personal information with” for more detail on how the information may be shared with A&O Shearman offices and third-party service providers.
The level of information protection in countries outside the EEA may be less than that offered within the EEA. Where this is the case, we will implement appropriate measures to ensure that your personal information remains protected and secure in accordance with applicable data protection laws. EU standard contractual clauses are in place between all A&O Shearman entities that share and process personal information. Where our third-party service providers process personal information outside the EEA in the course of providing services to us, our written agreement with them will include appropriate measures, usually standard contractual clauses.
Please contact us using the details at the end of this Policy if you would like to see a copy of the safeguards applied to the export of your personal information.
Your rights regarding your personal information
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and other applicable data protection laws provide certain rights for data subjects.
You are entitled to request a copy of the information we hold about you and information on how we process it. You may also have a right in accordance with applicable data protection law to have it rectified or deleted, to restrict our processing of that information, to stop unauthorized transfers of your personal information to a third party and, in some circumstances, to have personal information relating to you transferred to another organization. You may also have the right to lodge a complaint in relation to A&O Shearman’s processing of your personal information with a local supervisory authority.
If you object to the processing of your personal information, or if you have provided your consent to processing and you later choose to withdraw it, we will respect that choice in accordance with our legal obligations.
Your objection (or withdrawal of any previously given consent) could mean that we are unable to perform the actions necessary to achieve the purposes set out above (see “How, and on what basis, we use your personal information”) or that you may not be able to make use of the services and products offered by us. Please note that even after you have chosen to withdraw your consent we may be able to continue to process your personal information to the extent required or otherwise permitted by law, in particular in connection with exercising and defending our legal rights or meeting our legal and regulatory obligations.
We must ensure that your personal information is accurate and up to date. Therefore, please advise us of any changes to your information by email to epublications@aoshearman.com.
