Privacy Policy

Last Updated: March 11, 2024

As professionals engaged in the provision of legal services to clients, the Law Office of Robert George Lipman, LLC including its members and affiliated attorneys (collectively, the “Firm”, “we” or “us”), 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 based on the privacy and data protection principles of the State of Maryland, in which we operate. 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.

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”).

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 only collect information you voluntarily disclose to us in writing on the “Contact Us” section of our webpage or by voluntarily emailing, text messaging (SMS), or physically delivering (individually and collectively, “voluntarily disclosing” or “providing”) to us. THE FIRM WILL NEVER SELL, DISCLOSE OR OTHERWISE DISSEMINATE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION TO ANY NON-INTERESTED AND NON-AFFILIATED THIRD PARTY WITHOUT YOUR EXPRESS CONSENT. A ‘non-interested third party’ is any party without a cognizable interest in the matter for which you retained the Firm’s services. Examples of ‘interested parties’ may include: outside co-counsel working with the Firm, Firm staff members, opposing counsel, court employees, government agents, and, in some cases, witnesses are typically interested third parties. A ‘non-affiliated third party’ is any party without any agency relationship or affiliation with the Firm adequate to justify disclosure of such information under the law. Examples of ‘affiliated third parties’ include Firm staff and service providers as well as co-counsel and their staff.

Our Collection of Personal Information

By voluntarily disclosing Personal Information to us, you are consenting to and expressly authorize our collection of Personal Information we receive directly from you or to Information which the Firm is lawfully entitled access, whether through the discovery process or as a matter of public disclosure . Such information may include, but is not necessarily limited to, the following:

  • your name, date of birth (DBA), address, telephone number, email and social media addresses, date of birth in the case of individuals, credit/debit card information, Employer Identification Number (“EIN”), Social Security number (“SSN”);

  • Information about your financial, loan, debt and other related transactions, including regarding income, expenses, account balances with your creditors, accounts with financial services companies, loan and payment histories, account activity, and other information as may be provided to us by you, received in discovery, or discovered by a search of public records of relating to your debts and any relevant financial information; and

  • Information maintained by 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.

Our Use of Personal Information

By providing Personal Information to us, you are consenting to and expressly authorizing us to use your Personal Information for the following limited purposes:

  • to perform our Services for you and/or on your behalf; and

  • to offer additional services offered by the Firm to you.

We may use the Personal Information we acquire from you for the following purposes, according to the purpose for which it was obtained:

  • 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 such 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.

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 your Personal Information to certain interested or affiliated third-party individuals or entities, including:

  • 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;

  • legal professionals, courts, law enforcement and other government agencies 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;

  • individuals or entities to which we may decide to sell or otherwise transfer our law practice; and

  • legal clients and/or potential clients to whom you may or may not be indebted.

Opt-Out by Default

Personal Information you disclose to us will never be shared with non-interested and non-affiliated third parties without your prior consent.

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

  • 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-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 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 is by default. No action is required of you to prevent the dissemination of your Personal Information to non-interested and non-affiliated third parties.

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 the 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 strictly for internal marketing purposes: 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 use 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.

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.

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.

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 at contact@lorgl.com and notifying us that you wish to opt-out from such sharing.

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.

 We will not share information about your creditworthiness with our affiliates without your authorization or consent.

Changes

We reserve the right to change this Privacy Policy to conform to changes in pertinent law. Should any new policy go into effect for our Services, the Firm will post it on this website.

Contact

If you have an inquiry or complaint about this privacy policy or our privacy practices, please feel free to contact us:

Law Office of Robert George Lipman, LLC

201 North Charles Street, Suite 2302

Baltimore, MD 21201

Email: contact@lorgl.com