Ascend Legal Group Privacy Policy

As professionals engaged in the provision of legal services to clients nationwide, Ascend Legal Group including its members and affiliated attorneys (collectively, the “Firm”), is committed to protecting the privacy of confidential and “Personal Information” (information that directly or indirectly identifies individuals who may be clients, staff, agents, lawyers, job applicants or others inside or outside the Firm). It is the Firm’s policy to comply with the rules of professional conduct, which impose a duty to preserve and protect confidential client information upon lawyers and their associated personnel, as well as other laws governing the privacy of such Personal Information.

This Privacy Policy is also specifically addressed to parties outside the Firm, including our clients, who provide Personal Information to the Firm, visit or use the Firm’s website and/or our social media sites and correspond with us by email, including messages that we send to you containing a link to this Privacy Policy (collectively, the “Internet Services”). This Privacy Policy also describes how the Firm collects, uses, discloses and secures Personal Information obtained in connection with the provision of legal services and the Internet Services (referred to together as the “Services”).

This Privacy Policy is based on the privacy and data protection principles common to the states in which we operate. We apply it in light of our overarching obligations to comply with law, to preserve client confidentiality and to represent our clients as effectively as possible within the bounds of the law. This Privacy Policy is intended to summarize the Firm’s data protection practices generally, and to advise our clients, job applicants, website visitors, and other third parties about the Firm’s privacy policies that may be applicable to them.

Collection, Use and Disclosure of Personal Information

The Firm collects Personal Information in the course of providing legal services to our clients and prospective clients and as provided by visitors to our website and/or users of the Internet Services. We may also collect Personal Information about you when you interact with us on social media sites and from third parties as described below.

Our Collection of Personal Information

By providing Personal Information to us, you are consenting to and expressly authorizing our collection of Personal Information such as the following, and from certain sources including, but not necessarily limited to, the following:

• Information we receive from and/or about you, such as your name, dba(s), address, telephone number, email and social media addresses, date of birth in the case of individuals, credit card information, Employer Identification Number (“EIN”), Social Security number (“SSN”); and including, without limitation, other information that you provide to us online, via email, over the phone or in documents, applications and otherwise;
• Information we receive from entities such as the Better Business Bureau, Yelp, consumer reporting agencies and other sources, such as your credit bureau reports, collection agency reports or other communications, and other information relating to your payment histories, creditworthiness, annual income, expenses and/or ability to satisfy your obligations. In this regard, you expressly authorize us to access, obtain and use any information contained in all of the foregoing resources and credit reports.
• Information about your financial, loan, debt and other related transactions, including without limitation, your income, expenses, account balances with your creditors, accounts with financial services companies, loan and payment histories, account activity, and other information provided to us by you or that may be contained in your credit card statements or other reports relating to your debts and any and all other financial information concerning you; and

Our Use of Personal Information

By providing Personal Information to us, you are consenting to and expressly authorizing us to use your Personal Information in a variety of ways, including, but not necessarily limited to, the following:

• To perform our Services for you and/or on your behalf;
• To develop and maintain a full picture of your financial status, including your credit-worthiness;
• To offer additional services to you; and
• To sell certain of your Personal Information to non-affiliated third parties for their use in offering you other services that may be of interest to you.

We may use the Personal Information we acquire from you for any or all of the following purposes:

• to contact you and respond to your requests and inquiries;
• to personalize your visit and use of our Services and to assist you while you use those Services;
• to carry out, monitor and analyze our business or website operations;
• to conduct our recruiting and selection process;
• to provide you with legal services, if you are or become a client of the Firm, and otherwise deal with you and administer the matters you instruct us on;
• to contact you regarding legal or law Firm developments that may be of interest to you;
• to enter into or carry out contracts of various kinds; and
• to comply with applicable laws, regulations, guidance or professional obligations that we may be subject to, including anti-money laundering requirements. Where Personal Information is necessary for the Firm to carry out its anti-money laundering checks, failure to provide such information may result in the Firm not being able to provide the representation.

Our Disclosure of Personal Information

By providing Personal Information to us, you hereby consent to and expressly authorize the Firm, as we see fit in our sole discretion to the full extent permitted by law, to disclose, share and/or sell, your Personal Information to certain third-party individuals or entities, including, but not necessarily limited to, the following:

• • Our service providers and related individuals and entities, including, but not limited to, independent contractors, other law firms, providers of legal services, law firm support providers, marketing services providers, and other entities and individuals as necessary to effect, administer and perform our Services;
  • Non-affiliated third parties who may purchase your Personal Information from the Firm for their use in offering you other services that may be of interest to you;
  • Third parties such as law enforcement in connection with detecting and protecting against fraud, or in response to a criminal or civil subpoena, or as otherwise required by applicable Federal, State or local laws and

• • To individuals or entities to which we may decide to sell or otherwise transfer our law practice;
  • Creditors and/or potential creditors to whom you may or may not be indebted.

Notice Regarding Your Right to Opt-Out

It is important for you to understand that you have the right to affirmatively opt-out of your authorization of the Company’s sharing of your Personal Information to non-affiliated third parties for their use in offering you other services that may be of interest to you.

However, you are not permitted to opt-out from our making use of or sharing your Information in the following circumstances:

• Information-sharing with your servicers and other entities and individuals specifically necessary to effect, administer and perform our Services and your transactions with us, including but not limited to creditors and/or potential creditors to whom you may or may not be indebted;
• Information-sharing that is necessary for processing or administering a financial transaction requested or authorized by you;
• Information-sharing with service providers that perform business operations for us, and companies that act on our behalf to market our Services;
• Information disclosures for purposes of preventing fraud, responding to judicial process or a subpoena, or complying with federal, state, or local laws and
• Information-sharing and/or transfer in the event we sell or transfer your matter/account or our business assets to another person or entity.

Please note that your opt-out will not be effective until you affirmatively advise us that you wish to opt-out by contacting us via this form.

Please also note that, unless we receive your opt-out within thirty (30) days of our providing this Policy to you, we will proceed with sharing your Information with non-affiliated third parties as set forth above until we receive an opt-out instruction from you.

Confidentiality, Security, and Retention of Personal Information

Consistent with our professional obligations, it is the Firm’s policy to exercise the utmost discretion regarding the information our clients entrust to us.

We maintain reasonable and appropriate, albeit not infallible, physical, electronic and procedural safeguards intended to maintain the confidentiality of Personal Information, including that provided by visitors to our website and provided while using our Services. We do not guarantee that our safeguards will always work.

We require our consultants, suppliers and vendors to maintain data security protections consistent with reasonable and appropriate obligations of data processors, including, where applicable, data protection laws and regulations.

We may retain information provided by you, including Personal Information, for as long as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, or to achieve the purposes for which the information was originally collected and for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy and in our applicable policies.

Log Files

The Firm follows a standard procedure of using log files on its website. These files log visitors when they visit websites. All hosting companies do this as a part of hosting services’ analytics. The information collected by log files include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date and time stamp, referring/exit pages, and possibly the number of clicks. These are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable. The purpose of the information is for analyzing trends, administering the site, tracking users’ movement on the website, and gathering demographic information.

Children’s Information

The Firm does not knowingly collect any Personal Information from children under the age of 13. If you think that your child provided this kind of information on our website, we strongly encourage you to contact us immediately and we will do our best efforts to promptly remove such information from our records.

Third Party Privacy Policies

Third-party ad servers or ad networks uses technologies like cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons that are used in their respective advertisements and links that appear on the Firm’s website, which are sent directly to the users’ browser. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. These technologies are used to measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns and/or to personalize the advertising content that you see on websites that you visit. Note that the Firm has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You can choose to disable cookies through your individual browser options. To learn more detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers, it can be found at the browsers’ respective websites.

The Firm’s Privacy Policy does not apply to other advertisers or websites. Thus, we are advising you to consult the respective Privacy Policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information. It may include their practices and instructions about how to opt-out of certain options. You may find a complete list of these Privacy Policies and their links here: Privacy Policy Links.

For California Residents

Pursuant to California’s “Shine the Light” Law, if you wish to opt out from having your Personal Information shared with any third parties for direct marketing purposes, you may do so by contacting us via this form and notifying us that you wish to opt-out from such sharing.

Our website does not honor any “Do Not Track” signals that are provided by user’s browsers. However, we do not collect or authorize the collection by any third party of any nonpublic personally identifiable information about an individual consumer’s online activities over time and across different Web sites or online services.

Our Website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics tool provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”) that helps website owners understand how visitors engage with their website. We can view a variety of reports about how visitors interact with our Website so we can improve it. Google Analytics collects information anonymously. Google uses cookies and IP addresses, and it reports website trends without identifying individual visitors. For more information related to Google Analytics, click here: http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html. You can opt-out of Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-On. For information about and to install Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, go to https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en.

For Nevada Residents

We are providing you this notice pursuant to state law. You may be placed on our internal “do not call” list by contacting us via this form. Nevada law requires that we also provide you with the following contact information: Bureau of Consumer Protection, Office of the Nevada Attorney General, 555 E. Washington St. – Suite 3900, Las Vegas, NV 89101; 702‐486‐3132 – BCPINFO@ag.state.nv.us.

For Vermont Residents

In accordance with Vermont law, we will not share information we collect about Vermont residents with companies who are not affiliates, except as permitted by law, such as with your consent or to service your accounts. We will not share information about your creditworthiness with our affiliates without your authorization or consent but we may share information about our transactions or experiences with our affiliates without your consent.

Changes

We reserve the right to change this Privacy Policy at any time with or without advance notice. Should any new policy go into effect for our Services, the Firm will post it on this website.

Contact Us

If you have additional questions or require more information about our Privacy Policy, do not hesitate to contact us via this form.