Privacy Policy

VIVIEN & ASSOCIES is committed to respecting the privacy of its clients, prospects, partners and users of its website accessible at www.va-fr.com (hereinafter “You”, “your”) in accordance with applicable laws and regulations, in particular Law No. 78-17 of 6 January 1978 on information technology, data files and civil liberties, and Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data.

VIVIEN&ASSOCIES, a partnership of lawyers with individual professional liability, whose registered office is situated at 3 RUE DE MONTTESSUY 75007 PARIS, registered in the INSEE business and establishments register under number 444 783 542 (hereinafter the “Firm”), processes your data as the data controller.

Contact: dpo@va-fr.com.

Categories of personal data processed by the Firm

“Personal data” means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. In the course of your dealings with the Firm, the Firm may process the following categories of data:

• Identification (surname, first name, marital status, etc.) and personal and/or professional contact details
• Professional information (job title, company, CV, information required as part of a recruitment process, etc.)
• Content of correspondence between the Firm and you
• Browsing data on the Website
• Data relating to a case or matter handled by the Firm in the course of its legal advisory work
• Data required to defend the Firm’s interests and rights in the context of any litigation involving it.

Purposes and legal bases

The Firm processes your personal data only for legitimate and specific purposes, and where it has a legal basis for doing so.

Your data is collected and processed in order to:

• Provide the Firm’s legal services (legal basis: contract between you and the Firm; the Firm’s legitimate interest in conducting and developing its activities)
• Manage the Firm’s client relationships: client relationship management, invoicing, debt collection, etc. (legal basis: contract between you and the Firm; the Firm’s legitimate interest in conducting and developing its business; legal obligations regarding accounting and invoicing)
• Respond to your enquiries: contact requests, membership of the alumni network (legal basis: the Firm’s legitimate interest in responding to enquiries)
• Sending you communications relating to the Firm’s services or legal news topics that concern you; inviting you to Firm events (legal basis: the Firm’s legitimate interest in communicating about its services and developing its business)
• Ensuring the proper functioning and security of the website, improving its performance and carrying out anonymised statistical analyses (legal basis: the Firm’s legitimate interest in securing and evaluating activity on its website)
• To receive and process job applications (legal basis: performance of pre-contractual measures; the Firm’s legitimate interest in maintaining a CV database)
• Securing the Firm’s IT systems: access management, securing IT tools, and managing security incidents (legal basis: the Firm’s legitimate interest in ensuring the security of its systems; legal obligations regarding security and incident management)
• Managing litigation involving the Firm; fulfilling its obligations regarding the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing and the fight against corruption, managing conflicts of interest and handling GDPR rights requests (legal basis: legal and ethical obligations to meet these objectives)

Furthermore, where required by applicable regulations, the Firm will rely on your consent to collect and process your personal data.

Certain categories of data (health data, political opinions, religious beliefs, ethnicity and race, trade union membership, details of criminal offences) are sensitive and require heightened vigilance. The Firm processes such data only where required or authorised by law, or where processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims, or where the data subject has given their consent.

In certain cases, the provision of your personal data is mandatory in order to enable the Firm to achieve the purposes listed above. If you refuse to provide your data, the Firm may not be able to provide you with its services, respond to your requests or comply with the legal obligations to which it is subject.

Categories of data recipients

Within the Firm, your data is processed by authorised personnel who are subject to confidentiality obligations.

The Firm may occasionally need to share your personal data with third parties, including:

• Its service providers (IT, communications, marketing, etc.)
• The tax authorities, URSSAF
• Administrative, governmental, judicial or regulatory authorities
• Auditors, insurers and other professional advisers
• Other lawyers

In such cases, the Firm discloses only the data strictly necessary to achieve the intended purpose, or data whose sharing is required by law.

Where the recipients of your data are located outside the European Economic Area or any country benefiting from an adequacy decision by the European Commission, the Firm guarantees that the transfer of data is subject to the necessary safeguards.

Data retention

The Firm retains your data only for the period necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, or for the period required by law.

By way of example, the Firm applies the following retention periods:

• Accounting and invoicing data: 10 years from the end of the relevant financial year, in accordance with statutory accounting requirements.
• Data relating to job applications: 2 years from the last contact with the applicant, unless the applicant consents to a longer retention period.
• Browsing data and statistical cookies: 13 months from the date the cookies were placed on your device.
• Data relating to contact requests: for the time necessary to process your request, then 3 years from the last contact.
• Data relating to the prevention of money laundering, corruption and the management of conflicts of interest: periods imposed by applicable regulations, in particular 5 years from the end of the business relationship.

Your rights

You have the right to access, rectify, erase and transfer your data. You may choose to restrict the use of your data or set out instructions regarding what should happen to your data after your death. You may also object to the processing of your data where applicable.

Where the processing of your data is based on your consent, you may withdraw this consent at any time, without this affecting the lawfulness of any processing carried out prior to such withdrawal.

To exercise your rights, you may write to dpo@va-fr.com

In the event of a complaint regarding your personal data, you may refer the matter to the CNIL (Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés) www.cnil.fr; 3 Place de Fontenoy – TSA 80715 – 75334 PARIS CEDEX 07.

The Firm does not rely on decisions based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you.

Cookies

When you use the Website for the first time, you are informed, via a banner, of how the Firm uses cookies, why it uses them and how you can accept or decline them.

Please note that if you choose not to accept cookies, the Firm cannot guarantee that your experience on the Website will be as good as it might otherwise be.

Cookies are important for the use and functioning of the Website. The Firm also uses cookies to remember your preferences and compile statistics in order to optimise the Website’s features and provide you with quality content.

What types of cookies are used on the Website?

i) Cookies strictly necessary for the functioning of the Website.

These cookies are essential for the Site to function properly and do not require your consent. These cookies cannot be disabled on the Site. You can configure your browser to block these cookies, but certain parts of the Site will then not work.

ii) Statistical cookies

Subject to your consent, the Firm uses statistical cookies to analyse access to the Website, its use and performance in order to offer you a better user experience and to continuously improve the Website.

Any changes to this policy will be published on the website www.va-fr.com.