Are you looking for Clearway’s privacy policy? Our company right now does not handle personal information from EU citizens. But this might change in the future.

This privacy policy is for all jurisdictions in which we operate, even though it discusses the GDPR. We chose to write about the GDPR because we heard it is the most strict.

We like the idea of having an internal policy that protects people’s data. Our company puts a lot of effort into cybersecurity and preventing cyber issues.

This article will talk about GDPR and PIPADA compliance and how it works. It will also act as a disclaimer for anyone who is looking into how our company protects data.

We will update this article every six months or so to provide up-to-date information.

For those who are looking for information about changing their lawyer profile, please see the link.

We use photos/memes in this privacy policy to make the page look nicer and to keep people reading. We want people to read the entire notice.

Clearway has also added links to other pages and websites in this article so readers can learn more.

Note: This Privacy Notice was last updated on December 21, 2023

As explained below, Clearway’s collection, use and disclosure of information about regulated legal professionals is reasonable and in accord with PIPEDA.

Clearway Law, a platform designed to improve access to legal services in the public interest, collects and uses information about lawyers from publicly available sources for its database. This letter provides information on Clearway’s compliance with PIPEDA and how it collects data.

Data Collection from Google Images and Google Search

Web Indexing: Clearway uses web indexing technologies to collect data from Google and Bing Search, and Google and Bing Images.

This involves scripts that navigate the web and gather information, targeting keywords like lawyer names or law firms and extracting relevant data from search results and image metadata.

Clearway does not scrape data from any one website, and instead compares data and organizes it from the internet as a whole.

All of Clearway’s information comes from the internet, like this. Clearway’s business model is the same as Bing and Google.

The collected data in Excel format gets parsed into a structured format usable in Clearway’s database.

Clearway does not index any “social media” sites.

Data Collection from Law Society Websites

Targeted web indexing at Law Society and legal association websites is employed, as these sites often contain detailed, reliable and vetted information about licensed lawyers. This is information published by the Law Societies which consider it to be in the public interest to disseminate.

Clearway might collaborate with Law Societies or related organizations for direct data feeds, offering a more efficient and reliable data collection method than scraping. This would enable Clearway to update our database in real time.

There are also other lawyer directories in Canada, including Best Lawyers, lawyers.com, Lexpert, lawyer.com, Lawyer Friday, and many more.

Data Integration and Processing

A sophisticated database management system is used to organize, index, and manage the information.

This process involves removing duplicates, correcting errors, and ensuring data consistency across different sources to the best of Clearway’s abilities.

User Interface and Experience

Search Functionality: Integrating data into a user-friendly search interface, Clearway optimizes image load times and quality to the best of our abilities.

Clearway is constantly looking for improved ways to do things.

Continuous Updating and Maintenance

Automated Updates: Regular database updates are used to reflect changes in the legal field. Clearway also spent $200,000 enabling lawyers to update their information for free.

Error Checking and Correction: Regular checks, both automated, by the lawyers, and manually by the Clearway team are used to maintain data accuracy.

Practices developers used

Respect Robots.txt: Clearway always abides by the guidelines set out in a website’s robots.txt file to determine permitted data retrieval activities.

Avoid Disrupting Website Functionality: Clearway ensures that data extraction activities do not overload or negatively impact the website’s server performance.

Utilize APIs When Available: Clearway prefers the use of official APIs for data extraction, as they offer a controlled and authorized method of access.

User-Agent Identification: Clearway employs a descriptive user-agent string to identify its data collection tools.

Considerate Session Management: Clearway conducts data collection in a manner that does not interfere with the website’s session management or disrupt normal user interactions.

Clearway’s Compliance With PIPEDA

Clearway has designated a privacy officer to ensure compliance with PIPEDA. This shows a commitment to the accountability principle of PIPEDA, which requires organizations to be responsible for the personal information under their control.

Identifying Purposes

Clearway collects personal information for clearly identified purposes: connecting individuals seeking legal advice with lawyers.

Clearway’s data concerns professional information about lawyers, which is generally considered less sensitive compared to other information, like biometric data or facial images.

In fact, “business contact information” is excluded from PIPEDA’s scope (see s. 4.01), and the majority of the information that Clearway collects, uses and discloses is business contact information. You will also note that the definition of “business contact information” is very broad:

Business contact information means any information that is used to communicate or facilitate communication with an individual about their employment, business or profession such as the individual’s name, position name or title, work address, work telephone number, work fax number or work electronic address. (coordonnées d’affaires)

All of the information in the Clearway system is information used to facilitate communication with individuals in their profession.

We also note that there is zero risk of harm to individuals.

While PIPEDA generally requires consent for the collection, use, or disclosure of personal information, exceptions exist for publicly available information. Given that Clearway collects information from public sources, such as professional directories and search engines, this aligns with the consent exceptions under PIPEDA.

Under PIPEDA, knowledge and consent for certain purposes are not required when information meets the definition of “publicly available” under the Act and the relevant Regulation

The relevant PIPEDA Regulation defines “publicly available” information as information appearing in telephone directories, professional or business directories, government registry information, and records of quasi-judicial bodies that are available to the public.

Generally speaking, no consent is required as long as the collection, use and disclosure of such information relates directly to the purposes for which it was made publicly available. (See s. 7(1)(d), 7(2)(c.1) and 7(3)(h.1)) The majority of information collected, used or disclosed by Clearway is excluded from the requirement for consent.

On rare occasions, Clearway manually updates Clearway profiles with information from Linkedin, which is a professional directory where lawyers consent to add information about themselves, including education and previous work experience.

To the extent that this information is not business contact information or “publicly available information as specified by the regulations”, this is information that has been voluntarily, publicly disclosed to inform the world at large about their profession. Clearway, like anybody, would have implied consent to use it for these purposes.

Lawyers are not civilians, but professional individuals. The lawyers consented for their information to be put online, as it’s a requirement of being a lawyer with the Law Societies.

Limiting Collection

Clearway collects information limited to what is necessary for connecting legal professionals with potential clients. It is targeted, reasonable and proportional. This aligns with PIPEDA’s principle of limiting collection to necessary information for identified purposes.

Limiting Use, Disclosure, and Retention

Clearway uses personal information solely for the purposes it was collected, i.e., within the context of legal services. This adheres to PIPEDA’s principle of using information only for its original purposes unless additional consent is obtained.

Clearway does not use data for facial recognition and does not charge for review takedowns.

Accuracy

The platform collects data from accurate sources and allows lawyers to claim and manage their profiles, ensuring that the information is accurate and up-to-date, which is in line with the accuracy requirement of PIPEDA.

Clearway also does re-indexing on a regular period and manually checks information. If Clearway notices a lawyer is not in the Law Society database, or there is a notable news article about the lawyer, Clearway will often manually update the profile for the benefit of the public.

Challenging Compliance

Individuals can challenge Clearway’s compliance with PIPEDA principles. Clearway’s appointment of a privacy officer supports this, ensuring there is a clear point of contact for such challenges.

Clearway receives hundreds of emails per day, and cannot reply to every email. But Clearway always responds to all privacy requests.

Clearway’s practices comply with PIPEDA and the complaint is simply not well-founded.

Our Company Privacy Policy

Clearway Law is a lawyer directory and online community for attorneys. We do not provide legal advice or services. All data that we collect comes from people filling out our contact forms.

We are not regulated by the Law Societies.

You can see our data privacy contact below. If you have any questions about our use of your data, contact our privacy manager (William Hong) at: intakemanager (at) clearwaylaw (dot) com

We will collect the following personal data

Contact information: your name, position, role, company or organization, address, city, telephone as well as email and postal address;

Information about your legal dispute: we retain the information you send us on your legal issue.

Your logon ID and password: this is only for lawyers who sign up for our community or to edit profiles.

Information from public sources: search engines, lawyer directories, social media, and law firm websites.

Subscriptions: when you sign up for our newsletter.

Tech information: when you access this website third-party analytic companies may send us data such as your IP address, which URLs you visited on our website, how long you spent on the website, and what browser you are using.

Privacy Policy – Communicating With Clearway

We are not a law firm, and therefore we do not have ethical or legal duties to keep your submissions confidential. However, we do not sell data or share information with non-law firm third parties.

It is our internal policy to keep the information confidential, but it is not mandated by a regulator.

Privacy Policy – The Ways We Use Information And Data

We may use your data for the following purposes:

Service provision: We will attempt to forward your request to an attorney who is best suited to assist you. If you were looking for a specific attorney, then we will attempt to contact them. If they are not reachable, we may forward your email to another attorney.

Business relationship: Our company keeps the information about who has contracted us. We also use this information to provide updates to our law firm clients.

Communication: We send out legal articles that we think the public will find interesting. We also follow up with people who have contacted us to confirm they have spoken with a lawyer.

Events: We do not run events at this time.

Client surveys and feedback: We will send you a follow-up email to make sure you received legal help from a third-party law firm.

Client legal compliance: We do not do client intake screening. The law firm that we will send your information to will do “know your client” compliance.

Legitimate interest: to pursue the legitimate business interests listed in the “Legitimate Interests” section of this policy below.

Our reasons for using your data

We will process your data for several reasons.

You have given us consent: for example when you send us your information.

Processing is necessary for our legitimate business interests or those of a third party: provided this does not override any interests or rights that you have as an individual. Our legitimate interests are listed in the next section.

Legitimate Interests

We have legitimate business interests in:

Helping the public find an attorney
Managing our business and relationships with the community
Receiving feedback from those who use our website
Improving our website to make it easier for the public to find a law firm
Improving our business model
Receiving information from law firms that we work with
Make sure everyone who uses our website follows our Terms of Use
Improving our cyber security
Make sure law firms pay us money when they owe it
Educating the public about legal issues

Privacy Policy- Special Category Data In The EU

Special category data in Europe means sensitive data. The only sensitive data that we receive is information about legal issues.

We have the public consent to have this data because it is sent to us.

Who do we send data to?

We share your information with others as follows:

Third-party law firms: We send “leads” to law firms so that the law firm can contact the person who has a legal issue. A lead is someone who is looking for an attorney. Let’s say someone contacts us looking for an immigration lawyer in Calgary. We will attempt to forward the data to an immigration law firm in Calgary.

Marketing and IT agencies: We will not send data to these agencies, but they may have our website log-in information. They will be able to see data from people who use our contact forms.

Call centers: We do not currently use call centers or intake customer support centers.

Appropriate parties in the event of emergencies: We may send information to the police if we ever think someone is in danger.

If you share information with us about third parties, please make sure they know about it and have access to this notice. You can send them the website link (URL.)

Privacy Policy – Cyber Security

At ClearWay Law we take cyber security very seriously. We do not want to post about how we protect client data and our methods. If you have questions, please email us.

Where will your information be held?

Your information may be transferred out of your local jurisdiction or region. It will not be sent to China.

Data protection laws vary by country and those applicable in China and elsewhere are not equivalent to those applicable in, for example, Europe or certain other jurisdictions. Clearway will take steps to protect your information in line with locally applicable data protection requirements.

Clearway has implemented Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) approved by the European Commission. If you would like copies of the SCCs, please email us.

How Long Will We Keep Your Data?

We generally keep your information as long as needed. Typical retention periods will range from two to ten years. If you want to request that we delete the data sooner than that, you can contact us.

What Data Rights Do You Have?

If you are in Europe you have data protection rights. You can read about your rights below.

If you want to talk about your rights or make a request, please contact us via the email at the top of this notice. If you are not satisfied with the response, you can contact a privacy regulator in your jurisdiction.

Access: you are allowed to ask us if we have any data about you. You can also ask us to update the information and correct it. You are allowed to ask us to remove data. It’s also possible to ask us to send data to someone else.

Consent: where we are processing personal data with consent, you can withdraw your consent.

Privacy Policy- Being On a Mailing List

You have the right to not receive emails from us. The only mailing list we use is MailChimp. There will be an “unsubscribe button” at the bottom of the email.

The Privacy Policy and Website Cookies

We use cookies that identify your browser. They collect and store information when you visit our website about how you use it through which it is possible to record your use of the website, as well as provide you with a better service and experience when browsing and for analytics.

The personal data we collect through these technologies will also be used to manage your session.

Backlinks To Other Websites

Our website, newsletters, email updates and other communications may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of others. The personal data that you provide through these websites is not subject to this privacy notice and the treatment of your data by such websites is not our responsibility.

We provide backlinks to other websites because we think the information will be helpful to our readers. We do not earn money from those backlinks.

If you follow a link to any other websites, please note that these websites have their privacy notices which will set out how your information is collected and processed when visiting those sites.

People Under The Age of Sixteen

If you are under the age of sixteen years old, do not send us data.

Updating This Privacy Policy

This notice may be changed from time to time.

Privacy Policy – How To Get In Touch

You can contact us with any privacy questions or concerns via our contact form.

Please also learn about our company’s mission.

ClearwayLaw.com complies with the standards for consent as outlined by the UK GDPR for the following reasons…

Lawful Basis for Processing: ClearwayLaw.com primarily collects data from publicly available sources, reducing the reliance on consent as the primary lawful basis for processing data. This aligns with the UK GDPR’s guidance that consent is not always necessary and that other lawful bases can be more appropriate.

Genuine and Unambiguous Consent: For the data where consent is applicable, the lawyers provide the information themselves by claiming their profiles.

Separation from Other Terms and Conditions

The privacy policy and consent requests are presented distinctly, separate from other terms and conditions, which is a key requirement under the UK GDPR.

Transparency and Clarity: The organization clearly states its name, the purposes for data processing, and the types of processing activities in its consent requests, ensuring transparency and clarity as mandated by the UK GDPR.

The organization commits to regularly reviewing and refreshing consents (as much as possible), ensuring that any changes in the relationship, processing, or purposes are accounted for, which is a good practice recommended by UK GDPR.

No Precondition of Service: ClearwayLaw.com does not make consent a precondition for accessing their service, adhering to UK GDPR’s guidelines that consent should not generally be a precondition of signing up for a service.

Consideration for Power Imbalances

As the data collected is mainly from publicly available sources and related to professional information, there is less concern about power imbalances that might affect the freedom of consent.

There is also no power imbalance between lawyers and Clearway. Lawyers are professionals.

This is particularly relevant for organizations in positions of power, as highlighted in the UK GDPR guidelines.

Selection of Lawful Basis: ClearwayLaw.com has reviewed the purposes of its data processing activities and chosen the most appropriate lawful basis for each. This is in line with UK GDPR, which requires a valid lawful basis for processing personal data and recommends selecting the most appropriate basis depending on the purpose and relationship with the individual.

Necessity of Processing: The platform’s data collection from public sources like Google and Bing, other lawyer directories, and Law Society websites, indicates a targeted approach to data collection.

This suggests that ClearwayLaw.com has considered whether the processing is necessary for the relevant purpose and complies with the UK GDPR’s emphasis on processing being necessary for a specific purpose.

Documentation and Transparency: ClearwayLaw.com documents its decisions on which lawful basis applies, fulfilling the UK GDPR requirement to document and demonstrate compliance. This information is also reflected in their privacy notice, meeting the GDPR’s transparency requirements.

Special Category Data: Since ClearwayLaw.com mainly collects professional information about lawyers from public sources, it is less likely that they process special category data.

Lawful bases for ClearwayLaw.com

Legitimate Interests (Article 6(1)(f)): ClearwayLaw.com’s processing activities, like indexing and organizing publicly available data for legal professionals, likely fall under legitimate interests, especially since they do not seem to process data in ways unexpected by the data subjects or with a significant impact on them.

Changing Lawful Basis: There is no indication that ClearwayLaw.com has changed its lawful basis inappropriately. The UK GDPR advises against changing the lawful basis without good reason, and ClearwayLaw.com appears to have a consistent approach to data processing.

New Purposes of Processing: Should ClearwayLaw.com develop new purposes for data processing, the UK GDPR requires considering if a new lawful basis is needed. This is particularly relevant if the new purpose is not compatible with the original purpose for which the data was collected.

Accountability and Documentation: ClearwayLaw.com’s approach to documenting its processing activities and making its privacy policy accessible demonstrates its commitment to the accountability principle of the UK GDPR.

ClearwayLaw.com’s practices in their approach to data collection and processing, demonstrate adherence to the high standards set by the UK GDPR.

Privacy Policy

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