Privacy Notice for California Residents in Connection with Professional Services

The California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA" or “Act”) grants residents of the State of California (hereinafter “you” or “consumer”) certain privacy rights in their personal information. The CCPA requires that a business that collects a consumer’s personal information disclose, at or before the point of collection, the categories of personal information to be collected and the purposes to which that information is to be used. This Privacy Notice for California Residents (“Privacy Notice”) is intended to meet that requirement when we are providing professional services that may involve your information. This Privacy Notice only applies to residents of the State of California.

Personal Information

The CCPA defines personal information as information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household.

Personal information under the CCPA, however, does not include:

• Deidentified or aggregated consumer information.
• Publicly available information from federal, state or local government records.
• Information excluded from the scope of the CCPA:
  
  (i) Medical or health information covered by the Health Insurance and Portability and Accountability Act of 1966 (“HIPAA”) and the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (“CMIA”) or clinical trial data.
  
  (ii) Personal information covered by certain sector-specific privacy laws such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (“GLBA”), or California Financial Information Privacy Act (“FIPA”) and the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994.

This chart identifies categories or examples of personal information covered by the CCPA:

Categories of Personal Information We Collect

The categories of personal information we collect when we are retained to provide legal advice or services will vary depending on the nature of the engagement and the services we are requested to provide but can include any of the categories of personal information listed.

Purposes For Which Your Information Will Be Used

First of all you should know that:

We do not and will not sell your personal information.

We will not share your personal information with third parties for marketing purposes.

We will not use your personal information to make any automated decisions affecting you.

We will use and process any personal information we receive to provide legal advice or services that our law firm is retained to provide, to establish, exercise or defend of any type of legal claim or dispute, to comply with any legal obligation imposed upon us by law, or in connection with pursuing our Firm's legitimate interests. Those legitimate interests include not only the provision of legal advice and services, but also our internal administrative or operational processes.

Accordingly, we will use personal information to:

• Provide legal advice or services;
• Defend or prosecute a lawsuit, administrative proceeding, or any type of legal, regulatory or administrative claim, challenge or dispute which may include responding to discovery requests involving your information;
• Negotiate, document, settle or close a deal, transaction, contract or legal dispute;
• Manage or administer your, your employer’s or a related third party's business and affairs, business activities or business relationship with our Firm, including processing payments, accounting, auditing, billing, collection and support services;
• Communicate with you, your employer or a related third party about the status, developments or the outcome of an engagement.
• Comply with any legal demands or orders issued in an administrative proceeding, by a tribunal or court of law, or to comply with a regulatory obligation imposed by a governmental or regulatory agency or official, which could include meeting various compliance, screening, or recordkeeping requirements, anti-money laundering, financial and credit checks, fraud and crime prevention requirements, and which may require manual or automated checks of your personal information against various databases and lists;
• For internal administrative purposes such as to open a new matter as part of our new business intake, file opening and conflict resolution process as well as for processing payments, accounting, auditing, billing and collections and related support services;
• For any other purpose necessary for the legitimate interests of our Firm;
• To fulfill or meet the reasons you provided us the information, including to process your requests, transactions or payments and to prevent transaction fraud.
• To respond to your inquires, process your requests concerning your personal information in our possession, to investigate and address your concerns and to monitor and improve our responses;
• To help maintain the safety, security, and integrity of our website, products, services, databases, networks, and other technical assets and business;
• To deliver any other type of requested product or service, or to provide support for any such product or service;
• Improve, develop, modify or support our products and services, to update and maintain client contact or email lists and for other internal purposes;
• Respond to requests for information, or to provide information about legal services that you request;
• Respond to lawful requests for information through court orders, subpoenas, warrants and other legal process, obligations or governmental regulations;
• Protect the operations of our law firm, or the safety, security and privacy of our Firm, our lawyers and staff, our clients or third parties. This potentially includes sharing information with others for purposes of fraud protection, information security, and related matters;
• For any purpose related to any of the foregoing;

Categories of Third Parties With Whom We May Share Your Personal Data

We will share personal data received as part of an engagement when necessary to provide our legal advice or services. This may require that we share your information with others parties or their lawyers involved in a transaction, deal or litigation, or with related parties and their attorneys, or when necessary with other third parties such as lay and expert witnesses, or with vendors we retain to assist us in providing our legal services, and when necessary with judges, courts, tribunals, and mediators involved in the resolution of a dispute.  

We may also share your personal information with courts of law, law enforcement authorities, governmental officials or regulators, attorneys or other parties when it is reasonably necessary for the establishment, exercise or defense of a legal or equitable claim, or for purposes of an alternative dispute resolution process; to comply with a subpoena or court order, legal process, or other legal requirement or when we believe in good faith that such disclosure is necessary to comply with the law, to prevent imminent physical harm or material financial loss, to investigate, prevent or take action concerning illegal activities, suspected fraud, threats to our Firm, any of its lawyers or our property; or as necessary in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement, piracy or other unlawful activity.

Your CCPA Privacy Rights

The CCPA also provides you with the right to request that our Firm:

• Inform you about the categories of personal information we collect or disclose about you; the categories of sources of such information; the business or commercial purpose for collecting your personal information; and the categories of third parties with whom we share/disclose your personal information.
• Provide access to and/or a copy of certain personal information we hold about you.
• Delete certain personal information we have about you, subject to certain exceptions.
• Provide you with information about the financial incentives that we offer to you, if any.

The CCPA further provides you with the right to not be discriminated against (as provided for in applicable law) for exercising your rights thereunder.

Please note that certain information may be exempt from such requests under California law. For example, the CCPA provides that we are not required to comply with a request to delete personal information if the information is necessary for our Firm to:

• Comply with a legal obligation.
• Complete the transaction for which the information was collected, provide a good or service you requested, perform a contract with you, to fulfill the terms of a written warranty or product recall conducted in accordance with federal law, or take actions reasonably anticipated in the context of our ongoing business relationship with you.
• Detect security incidents, protect against deceptive, malicious, fraudulent or illegal activity, or to prosecute those responsible for that activity.
• Debug products, services or applications to identify and repair errors that impair existing functionality.
• Exercise free speech, to ensure the rights of others to exercise their free speech rights, or to exercise another right provided by law.
• Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code §1546 et. seq.).
• Enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based upon your relationship with our Firm.
• Make other internal and lawful uses of the information that are compatible with the context in which you provided the information.
• Furthermore, we are not obligated under the CCPA to respond to any request where compliance or disclosure would violate an evidentiary privilege under California law, or conflict with federal or state law.

The CCPA, does not require that we provide personal information to a consumer more than twice in a twelve month period.  Any disclosures we make will only cover the twelve (12) month period preceding the request.

Regulations proposed by the California Attorney General prohibit us from disclosing specific pieces of personal information if the disclosure creates a substantial, articulable and unreasonable risk to the security of that information or the security of our systems or networks. These proposed regulations further prohibit us from disclosing in response to a consumer’s request a Social Security number, driver’s license number, other government issued identification number, financial account number, any health insurance or medical identification number, an account password or security questions and answers.

Before we respond to any request involving personal information, the CCPA requires that we confirm the identity of the person making the request, and if the request is made on behalf of another person, his or her authority to make the request on the other person’s behalf.  We are not obligated to provide or to delete any information pursuant to your request if we are unable to adequately verify your identity or the identity of the person making the request on your behalf.  Accordingly, we will take reasonable steps to verify your identity before responding to a request, which may include, at a minimum, depending on the sensitivity of the information you are requesting and the type of request you are making, verifying your name, email address, and other account information. If we cannot verify your identity, we will not be able to respond to or take action upon such request.

You are also permitted to designate an authorized agent to submit certain requests on your behalf. In order for an authorized agent to be verified, you must provide the authorized agent with signed, written permission to make such requests or a power of attorney. We may also follow up with you to verify your identity before processing the authorized agent’s request.

If there is a discrepancy between any of the other provisions of this Privacy Notice and the requirements of the CCPA involving an individual who is a California resident, the CCPA shall govern our obligations and responses.

How To Exercise Your Privacy Rights

You can exercise any of the rights in this Privacy Notice by contacting our Privacy Officer as explained at the end of this Privacy Notice.

We will review all requests we receive and will respond in a timely manner. For security reasons, we will request specific information from you to help us verify your identity before taking action on any request, and to ensure your rights of access and deletion do not adversely affect the rights of others.

We reserve the right to refuse to act on a request, or to charge a reasonable administrative fee when a request is either manifestly unfounded or excessive because of its repetitive character.

Notice to Minors

Our firm’s website is not directed at and is not intended to be visited by minors. No visitor to our website who is a minor or under the age of 18 should provide any personal information to our firm. If you are a minor, do not visit our website (including our blogs and social media sites) and do not send any type of personal information about yourself to our firm or website.

Privacy Notice Updates

This Privacy Notice was last updated in January 2020. We occasionally will update our Privacy Notice and the terms of our website’s disclaimer. Please periodically check our Privacy Notice and our website’s disclaimer to learn of any changes to our Privacy Notice and disclaimer. This Privacy Notice supersedes all prior versions governing our website.

No Legal Advice or Attorney-Client Relationship Intended

Nothing contained in this Privacy Notice, or in our website or its disclaimer, is intended to provide legal advice, or to create a contractual or attorney-client relationship. You agree that visiting our website or providing information to our website does not create a contractual or attorney-client relationship.

How to Contact Us

We welcome your views about our website and our Privacy Notice. If you have any questions about our Privacy Notice, would like to exercise any of your rights, or would like to share any comments with us, please contact our Privacy Officer via email at privacy@manatt.com; you can also send a letter to Privacy Officer, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, 2049 Century Park East, Suite 1700, Los Angeles, CA 90067 or call us toll free at 1-844-930-2110. You may also submit an online request for information form here or an online request for deletion form here.