Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Lenz & Staehelin values your privacy. This Privacy Policy demonstrates our commitment to ensure your privacy and the confidentiality of your personal data ("Personal Data") when you retain us for professional services ("Services") or use our website or communicate with us.

When engaging us for Services and/or communicating with us via the contact form on our website, email or other channels and/or accessing our website or other content we may make available, you consent to this Privacy Policy. In case you should not agree to any part of this Privacy Policy, you must inform us and discontinue using our Services and/or website or other content. We shall then not be in a position to provide any further Services to you.

For purposes of data protection legislation, we act as controller. 

2. Personal Data we process

We process the Personal Data you provide to us when using our Services or communicating with us (such as the name, email and postal address, phone number, language preference, job title, business affiliations, and content of the communication).

The Personal Data may relate to you as well as to your employees and agents. You are responsible for ensuring that Personal Data communicated to us is accurate and that the relevant persons to which such Personal Data relates have been properly informed of the processing of their Personal Data by us and have consented to such processing whenever such consent is required.

In some instances, the Personal Data will be supplemented by information received from third parties or retrieved from public sources, such as online media or employer websites, for the purpose of confirming your current professional position or obtaining further information to enable us to effectively provide our Services and communicate with you.

3. Purposes for processing your Personal Data

We use Personal Data for the purposes of providing our Services, managing our relationship with you, security and risk management, complying with applicable laws and regulations, as well as communicating with you, including to send you newsletters and invitations to events, training programmes or lectures, to maintain our list of contacts and/or to provide you with other information you may request from us.

If you apply for a position with us, we process your Personal Data for the purposes of evaluating your application, conducting the application procedure and if successful, preparing and concluding an employment agreement.

We do not subject you to high-risk profiling or automated individual decision-making.

4. Retention of your Personal Data

We generally retain Personal Data for as long as necessary for our processing purposes, any legal retention periods or our legitimate interests, in particular for documentation and evidence purposes, or if retention is technically required (e.g. in the course of backups). Absent foregoing reasons for retention, we generally delete Personal Data in accordance with our ordinary processes.

5. Cookies

Cookies are small text files that are downloaded to your device by visiting the Lenz & Staehelin website or opening our marketing related emails (such as newsflashes or invitations to events or webinars). Cookies (including third party cookies such as tracking technologies provided by Google Analytics) are in particular used to improve the website or for general marketing purposes by providing information on interaction of unique browser-device pairs with the website (such as number of sessions and time spent); statistical information on interaction with the website (including referrals thereto, popularity of certain content, accessing users' categories, markets, regions, languages, demographics, browser and device types and similar information); or statistical information on interaction with our marketing emails (such as if they have been opened or forwarded or links have been clicked on).

Third-party service providers such as Google may track your use of our website, combine this information with information from other websites you have visited (and which they also track) and use such combined information for their own purposes. If you have registered with the respective service providers, they may be able to identify you. In these instances, their processing of your Personal Data will be governed by their privacy policies (to see how Google uses your Personal Data when you use our website, please refer here).

You may change your browser settings to delete and block cookies (or to deactivate Google Analytics alternatively download and install the browser add-on from Google available here).

6. Our basis for processing your Personal Data

When processing Personal Data for the purposes described herein and if and to the extent required, we may rely alternatively or cumulatively on (a) your consent to this Privacy Policy, (b) our legitimate interests in communicating with you, as a business contact, about our operations and our events and/or our performance of any Services or contract or (c) another ground for lawful processing of your Personal Data under applicable laws and regulations.

7. Protecting your Personal Data

Personal Data will only be used by us and our technology suppliers (who are obliged to protect your Personal Data to the same extent as we are). We restrict the use and access to your Personal Data to those who have an absolute need-to-know to provide you with our Services or access to our website and/or communicate with you.

When we process Personal Data as part of a mandate, we will process such Personal Data in accordance with your instructions. In some instances and depending on the nature of our Services and instructions received, your Personal Data may be disclosed to third parties, such as external law firms, experts, (contractual) counterparties, governmental authorities and courts in Switzerland and abroad, including in countries where an adequate level of data protection is not guaranteed.

We do not sell or otherwise transfer your Personal Data to third parties except with your prior consent or as we are required under applicable law or regulation.

We maintain appropriate technical and organizational measures to preserve the confidentiality, availability and integrity of your Personal Data. We regularly review our security policies and procedures to ensure our systems are secure and protected, and we ensure compliance with all applicable data protection and security laws.

8. Your Choices and Rights

We welcome your inquiries and comments. You have the right to be informed by us on any processing of your Personal Data to verify the lawfulness of processing, subject to any limitations to such right under applicable. If you are affected by incorrect or incomplete Personal Data, you may request rectification or completion of any relevant data. To the extent allowed by applicable law, you may request the deletion of your Personal Data or a temporary restriction of processing in certain instances and you may also object to the processing of your Personal Data, in which cases we may however not be in a position to provide any related services.

9. Contacts

If you have any questions or are dissatisfied with any aspect of our processing of your Personal Data, please feel free to contact us at dataprotection@lenzstaehelin.com or through our contact form set out on our website.