Privacy Policy

Burggraaf & Hoekstra is committed to protecting the privacy of confidential and “Personal Information” (information that directly or indirectly identifies individuals who may be clients, staff, lawyers or others inside or outside the firm).

This Privacy Statement and Cookie Policy (the “Statement”) is in accordance with applicable data protection legislation and more specifically with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and its relevant national implementing legislation. We apply it to comply with the law, to preserve client confidentiality and to represent our clients as effectively as possible within the bounds of the law. This Statement is intended to summarize the firm’s data protection practices generally, and to advise our clients, website visitors, and other third parties about the firm’s privacy policies that may be applicable to them.

This Statement is also specifically addressed to parties outside the firm who provide Personal Information to the firm or who visit the firm’s website, our social media sites as well as email messages that we send to you that contain a link to this Statement (collectively, the “Internet Services”). This Statement also describes how the firm collects, processes and discloses Personal Information in connection with the provision of legal services and the Internet Services.

Burggraaf & Hoekstra collects Personal Information in the course of providing legal services to clients. We may also collect Personal Information about you when you interact with us on social media sites and from other third parties and may also automatically collect information that may contain Personal Information as described below in the cookie policy.

We may use that Personal Information where in our legitimate interest to do so for the following purposes:

• to contact you and respond to your requests and enquiries
• to personalize your visit and use of our Internet 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 (unless you tell us that you prefer us not to) regarding legal or law firm developments that may be of interest to you. If you do not want to receive publications or details of events or seminars that we consider may be of interest to you, you may do so by clicking on the unsubscribe link in electronic marketing communications
• to enter into or carry out contracts of various kinds
• 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.

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 a visitor to this website and provided while using other Internet Services. We do not guarantee that our safeguards will always work.

We require consultants, suppliers and vendors to maintain data protections consistent with reasonable and appropriate obligations of data processors, including, where applicable, European Union’s 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 the Statement and in our applicable policies. If you wish to obtain more details on our information practices, please refer to the “Contact Us” section below.

We do not disclose any Personal Information to unrelated parties outside of the firm except in limited circumstances. Such circumstances include disclosures to data processors or other contractors acting on our behalf and at our direction, subject to appropriate confidentiality, privacy and information security commitments provided by the receiving party, or where we believe it necessary to provide a service which you have requested, or as permitted or required by law, or as otherwise authorized or directed by you. Consistent with our professional obligations, we may provide Personal Information to regulatory authorities and law enforcement officials in accordance with applicable law or when we otherwise believe in good faith that the provision of such information is required or permitted by law, such as in connection with the investigation or assertion of our legal defenses or for our compliance matters.

Cookies are often used in conjunction with other Internet technologies, such as web beacons, to understand behavior on the Internet. For example, the firm uses cookies in conjunction with web beacons, which are small sections of code that we may place in our Internet Services to understand the number of unique users that have visited a specific page.

The firm’s Internet Services use cookies. The firm uses session cookies in connection with its Internet Services, specifically for cybersecurity purposes, to provide you with customizations of your experience, and track your activities on the Internet Services.

Although the firm uses the services of third parties in connection with these cookies, we do not allow the third-party service provider to use Personal Information about the users of our Internet Services.

None of these cookies are strictly necessary to access our Internet Services. You may reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to allow your browser to alert you when a cookie is set, however, certain parts of the Internet Services may function differently and not as well. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our Internet Services will issue cookies when you logon to the firm’s Internet Services.

Under EU data protection laws (GDPR), individuals may have certain data protection rights which may be subject to limitations and/or restrictions and which includes: (i) the right to request access to and, rectification or erasure of your Personal Information; and (ii) the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your Personal Information. You may also have a right to object to processing of your Personal Information, where carried out for our legitimate interest or direct marketing. To exercise your rights under this Privacy Policy, please send us your request using the “Contact Us” section below.

Individuals may also have a right to lodge a complaint about the processing of their Personal Information with their local data protection authority.

We reserve the right to change this Statement at any time without advance notice. Should any new policy go into effect for our Internet Services, the firm will post it on this website and relevant Internet Services.

If you have any questions relating to our use of your Personal Information, please contact us via +31 85 0045783 or info@burggraafhoekstra.com.