Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Lenz & Staehelin values your privacy. This Privacy Policy demonstrates our commitment to ensuring your privacy and the confidentiality of your personal data ("Personal Data") when you retain us for professional services ("Services"), 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. Should you not agree to any part of this Privacy Policy, you must inform us and discontinue using our Services and/or website or other content. Upon doing so, we will be unable to provide any further Services to you.

Within the meaning of the applicable data protection laws, we act as controller. 

2. Personal Data we Process

We process Personal Data you provide when using our Services or communicating with us. This includes, but is not limited to, your name, email, postal address, phone number, language preference, job title, business affiliations, professional field and content of the communication.

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 whom such Personal Data relates have been properly informed of the processing of their Personal Data and have consented to such processing whenever such consent is required.

In some instances, Personal Data will be supplemented by information received from third parties or retrieved from public sources (e.g. professional information on company websites) to enable us to effectively provide our Services and communicate with you.

3. Purposes for Processing 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 programs 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 Personal Data for the purposes of evaluating your application, conducting the application procedure and if applicable preparing and concluding an employment agreement.

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

4. Retention of 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). In the absence of the 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 newsletters or invitations to events or webinars). Cookies – including those from third-party providers such as Google Analytics – are used to improve our online offering and to analyze user behavior for statistical and marketing purposes. 
In this context, information about the use of our website (e.g., session duration, content popularity, device and browser type, referring pages) as well as interactions with emails (e.g., open and click rates) may be collected. 
To analyse website usage in a privacy-friendly manner, we use the Matomo analytics platform. Nevertheless, 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 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 Personal Data will be governed by their privacy policies.  
You may change your browser settings to delete and block cookies. To deactivate Google Analytics, alternatively download and install the browser add-on from Google.

6. Our basis for Processing your Personal Data

The processing of Personal Data for the purposes described herein is based – where and to the extent required – on one or more of the following legal bases: (a) your consent to this Privacy Policy, (b) our legitimate interests in communicating with you as a business contact, about our operations, our events and/or our performance of any Services or contract; (c) the performance of a contract, or (d) another ground for lawful processing of Personal Data under applicable laws and regulations.

7. Protecting your Personal Data

Personal Data will only be processed by us and our technology suppliers, who are obliged to protect Personal Data to the same extent as we are. We restrict the use and access to Personal Data to those who have an absolute need-to-know in order to provide you with our Services, 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, 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 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 organisational measures to preserve the confidentiality, availability and integrity of 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 Rights

We afford you all rights that you are entitled to under applicable data protection law. Within the limits of the statutory provisions, you have the right to be informed by us on any processing of your Personal Data and to verify its accuracy. If you are affected by incorrect or incomplete your 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. Contact

If you have any questions or   want to exercise your rights with regard to your Personal Data, please feel free to contact us at dataprotection@clutterlenzstaehelin.com or through our contact form set out on our website.