Privacy policy
A&O Shearman values your privacy and cares about the way in which your personal information is treated. This policy describes:
- what personal information we collect about you
- how we obtain your personal information
- how we use your personal information
- on what basis we use your personal information
- how long we keep your personal information
- who we share your personal information with
- how we protect your personal information
- which countries we transfer your personal information to
- your rights regarding your personal information
- who the data controllers are
- who to contact with queries or concerns
Where necessary, having regard to local applicable data protection or privacy laws, country-specific privacy information is also provided below.
A&O Shearman refers to Allen Overy Shearman Sterling LLP, its subsidiaries and the other partnerships, corporations, undertakings and entities which are authorized to practice using a name which includes “Allen Overy Shearman Sterling” or “A&O Shearman”, including Consulting by A&O Shearman. See ‘Data controllers’ below for more information on the entities that control and process personal data in A&O Shearman.
What personal information do we collect about you?
We may collect personal information from you in the course of our business, including through your use of our website, when you contact or request information from us, when you engage our legal or other services or as a result of your relationship with one or more of our staff and clients.
The personal information that we process includes:
- Basic information, such as your name (including name prefix or title), the company you work for, your title or position and your relationship to a person
- Contact information, such as your postal address, email address and phone number(s)
- Professional information, including your photograph, from LinkedIn or the website of the organization you work for
- Financial information, such as payment-related information
- Technical information, such as information from your visits to our website or applications or in relation to materials and communications we send to you electronically, collected through cookies and other tracking technologies
- Information you provide to us for the purposes of attending meetings and events, including access and dietary requirements
- Identification, background and financial verification information provided by you or collected as part of our business acceptance and ongoing monitoring processes
- Personal information provided to us by or on behalf of our clients or generated by us in the course of providing services to them, which may include special categories of data
- Any other information relating to you which you may provide to us
How we obtain your personal information
- We collect information directly from you as part of our business acceptance processes and about you and others as necessary in the course of providing legal services
- We collect your personal information while monitoring and analyzing our technology tools and services, including our website, email and other communications sent to and from A&O Shearman
- Your personal information may be provided to us or collected by us in connection with the procurement or provision of technology, goods or services
- We gather information about you when you provide it to us, or interact with us directly, for instance engaging with our staff or registering on one of our digital platforms, applications or training courses
- We may collect or receive information about you from other sources, such as keeping the contact details and professional information we already hold for you accurate and up to date using publicly available sources, including LinkedIn, or collecting information from third party sources as part of our business acceptance or supplier onboarding procedures
How we use your personal information
- A&O Shearman collects and processes personal information about you in a number of ways, including through your use of our website and in the provision or promotion of services by us. We use that information:
- To provide and improve this website, including auditing and monitoring its use, and ensure content is provided in the most effective way for you and the devices you are using
- To provide and improve our services to you and to our clients, including handling the personal information of others on behalf of our clients, and to monitor compliance with our policies and standards
- To manage access to our premises and for security purposes
- To provide information requested by you
- To promote our services, including sending legal and business updates, publications and details of events
- To manage and administer our business and our relationship with you and our clients
- To better understand our clients’ or potential clients’ services and marketing requirements and our own business and to develop our services and offerings
- For professional networking purposes
- To fulfill our legal, regulatory and risk management obligations, including establishing, exercising or defending legal claims, complying with the rules of professional bodies of which we are a member, preventing crime or fraud and protecting the rights of third parties
- For the purposes of recruitment (for more detailed information see our Recruitment Privacy Policies available on our website)
Use of A&O Shearman website
A number of facilities on our website invite you to provide us with personal information, such as the vacancy application facility in the ‘Careers’ section of our website and our email queries facilities. The purpose of these facilities is apparent at the point that you provide your personal information and we only use that information for those purposes.
We use cookies on our website. To learn more about the cookies we use and how to disable them please view our cookie policy.
Marketing and other emails
To ensure that we provide content that is of interest, we use technology in our marketing emails and on our websites that logs whether you click on the links in our emails and, if you follow a link to one of our websites, the time and date you access the websites and how long you spend on the website. We may use this information to determine what future marketing is likely to be of interest to you. If you would prefer that we don't record this information, please don't click on the links.
We will log your response to our marketing emails and may use this to determine what future marketing is likely to be of interest to you and what future marketing we send you. For example, if you accept an invitation to a seminar, we will record this and may send you marketing emails relevant to that seminar and the topics it covers in the future. We may also use a relationship management tool, where permitted by applicable local law, to assess the strength of the relationship between individuals in A&O Shearman and our clients or potential clients based on the frequency of email contact between them. We use that information in order to assess, analyze and improve the services that we provide.
If you receive marketing communications from us and no longer wish to do so, you may unsubscribe at any time by sending an email to epublications@aoshearman.com.
Meetings, events and seminars
We will collect and process personal information about you in relation to your attendance at our offices or at an event, training or seminar organized by A&O Shearman or its business partners. We will only process and use special categories of personal information about your dietary or access requirements in order to cater for your needs and to meet any other legal or regulatory obligations we may have. We may share your information with IT and other service providers or business partners involved in organizing or hosting the relevant event.
Legal and other services
We collect, create, hold and use personal information in the course of and in connection with the services we provide to our clients. We will process identification and background information as part of our business acceptance, finance, administration and marketing processes, including anti-money laundering, conflict, reputational and financial checks. We will also process personal information provided to us by or on behalf of our clients or generated by us for the purposes of the work we do for them. The information may be disclosed to third parties to the extent reasonably necessary in connection with that work. Please also see ‘Who we share your personal information with’ and ‘Which countries we transfer your personal information to’ below.
On what basis we use your personal information
Under EU and UK data protection law, the use of personal data must be justified under one of a number of legal grounds. The principal legal grounds that justify our use of your personal data are:
- To perform a contract, such as engaging with an individual to provide legal or other services
- For the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims or proceedings
- To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
- For legitimate business purposes. Please see ‘How we use your personal information’ for more detail
- Consent, where your consent is required by law
How long we keep your personal information
Your personal information will be retained in accordance with our global data retention policy which categorizes all of the information held by A&O Shearman and specifies the appropriate retention period for each category of data. Those periods are based on the requirements of applicable data protection laws and the purpose for which the information is collected and used, taking into account legal and regulatory requirements to retain the information for a minimum period, limitation periods for taking legal action, good practice and A&O Shearman’s business purposes.
Who we share your personal information with
We are an international business and any information that you provide to us may be shared with and processed by any entity in the worldwide network of A&O Shearman and our associated firms. You can see a list of our offices by clicking here.
We may also share your personal information with certain trusted third parties in accordance with contractual arrangements in place with them, including:
- Our professional advisers and auditors
- Our insurers and insurance brokers
- Suppliers to whom we outsource certain support services such as word processing, translation, photocopying and document review
- IT and other service providers to A&O Shearman
- Third parties engaged in the course of the services we provide to clients and with their prior consent, such as barristers, local counsel and technology service providers like data room and case management services
- Third parties involved in hosting or organizing events or seminars
Where necessary, or for the reasons set out in this policy, personal information may also be shared with regulatory authorities, courts, tribunals, government agencies and law enforcement agencies. While it is unlikely, we may be required to disclose your information to comply with legal or regulatory requirements. We will use reasonable endeavors to notify you before we do this, unless we are legally restricted from doing so.
We do not sell or rent personal information or otherwise share it with a third party in return for monetary compensation, except with your prior permission.
If in the future we re-organize or transfer all or part of our business, we may need to transfer your information to new A&O Shearman entities or to third parties through which the business of A&O Shearman will be carried out.
A&O Shearman may use social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter). If you use these services, you should review their privacy policy for more information on how they deal with your personal information.
How we protect your personal information
We use a variety of technical and organizational measures to help protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, alteration or destruction consistent with applicable data protection laws.
This includes the use of data loss protection tools in order to protect A&O Shearman, our employees, clients and suppliers from cyber threats and the loss of sensitive information.
A&O Shearman’s document management and email systems are certified to the internationally recognized ISO/IEC 27001 security standard. This is an independently verified certification that information security is managed in line with international best practice.
Which countries we transfer your personal information to
In order to provide our services we may need to transfer your personal information to locations outside the jurisdiction in which you provide it or where you are viewing this website for the purposes set out in this privacy policy. This may entail a transfer of your information from a location within the European Economic Area (the “EEA”) to outside the EEA, or from outside the EEA to a location within the EEA. Please see ‘Who we share your personal information with’ for more detail on how the information may be shared with A&O Shearman offices and third-party service providers.
The level of information protection in countries outside the EEA may be less than that offered within the EEA. Where this is the case, we will implement appropriate measures to ensure that your personal information remains protected and secure in accordance with applicable data protection laws. EU standard contractual clauses are in place between all A&O Shearman entities that share and process personal data. Where our third-party service providers process personal data outside the EEA in the course of providing services to us, our written agreement with them will include appropriate measures, usually standard contractual clauses.
Please contact us using the details at the end of this privacy policy if you would like to see a copy of the safeguards applied to the export of your personal data.
Your rights regarding your personal information
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and other applicable data protection laws provide certain rights for data subjects.
You are entitled to request a copy of the information we hold about you and information on how we process it. You may also have a right in accordance with applicable data protection law to have it rectified or deleted, to restrict our processing of that information, to stop unauthorized transfers of your personal information to a third party and, in some circumstances, to have personal information relating to you transferred to another organization. You may also have the right to lodge a complaint in relation to A&O Shearman’s processing of your personal information with a local supervisory authority.
If you object to the processing of your personal information, or if you have provided your consent to processing and you later choose to withdraw it, we will respect that choice in accordance with our legal obligations.
Your objection (or withdrawal of any previously given consent) could mean that we are unable to perform the actions necessary to achieve the purposes set out above (see ‘How we use your personal information’) or that you may not be able to make use of the services and products offered by us. Please note that even after you have chosen to withdraw your consent we may be able to continue to process your personal information to the extent required or otherwise permitted by law, in particular in connection with exercising and defending our legal rights or meeting our legal and regulatory obligations.
We must ensure that your personal information is accurate and up to date. Therefore, please advise us of any changes to your information by email to epublications@aoshearman.com.
Country-specific privacy information
Please click on the headings below for additional country-specific privacy information.
Belgium
You have the right to lodge a complaint in relation to Allen Overy Shearman Sterling (Belgium) LLP’s processing of your personal information with the Belgian Data Protection Authority (https://www.gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit.be).
China
This China-specific privacy information shall additionally apply when A&O Shearman (the “firm”, “we”, “us”, or “our”) process personal information within the scope of China’s Personal Information Protection Law (“PIPL”).
1. For the sections “What personal information do we collect about you” and “How we use your personal information”, the chart below supplements those two sections. The “Personal Information Involved” column describes what personal information we collect from you, and the “Scenario of Collection” and “Purpose of Processing” columns describe how and for what purpose we use your personal information.
Scenarios of Collection
2. For the section “On what basis we use your personal information”, the supplementary content below shall also apply.
We will only process personal information for the purposes described above, with at least one lawful basis to do so under PIPL as described below. In some cases, where required, we will also seek a separate consent to process the personal information.
The legal bases under PIPL on which we use your personal information are as follows:
(a) Where prior consent is obtained from you;
(b) Where it is necessary for the conclusion or performance of a contract to which you are a contracting party, or where it is necessary for carrying out human resources management under an employment policy legally established or a collective contract legally concluded;
(c) Where it is necessary for performing a statutory responsibility or statutory obligation;
(d) Where it is necessary for responding to a public health emergency, or for protecting the life, health or property safety of a natural person in the case of an emergency;
(e) Where the personal information is processed within a reasonable scope to carry out any news reporting, supervision by public opinions or any other activity for public interest purposes;
(f) Where the personal information, which has already been disclosed by you or otherwise legally disclosed, is processed within a reasonable scope and in accordance with PIPL; and
(g) Any other circumstance as provided by law or administrative regulations.
3. For the section “Who we share your personal information with”, the supplementary content below shall also apply.
Personal information may also be shared with foreign judicial or law enforcement bodies in compliance with applicable local laws and regulations.
4. For the section “Which countries we transfer your personal information to”, the supplementary content below shall also apply.
Subject to relevant laws and regulations in China, our offices located globally and third-party providers may obtain information for the purposes set out in this privacy policy. This may entail a transfer of your information from a location within the PRC to outside the PRC. We endeavor to take reasonable measures to ensure that your personal information is protected in accordance with applicable local laws and regulations, and to implement relevant compliance requirements as required by applicable local laws and regulations.
South Africa
The PAIA manual prepared in accordance with the Promotion of Access to Information Act, 2000 and the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 for Allen Overy Shearman Sterling (South Africa) LLP and the unincorporated partnership through which certain regulated activities are conducted by A&O Shearman in South Africa can be found here.
United States
If you are a California resident and would like to exercise your consumer rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you can contact us:
By email: DataPrivacy@aoshearman.com
Toll Free: 833-884-0099
Changes to our Privacy Policy
We will update this privacy policy from time to time to reflect changes to the way in which we use your personal data. Please check our website regularly for any updates.
This privacy policy was last updated in May 2024.
Data controllers
There are a number of entities through which A&O Shearman provides legal and other services. The identity of the relevant data controller will depend on the location where legal or other services are provided. Please click here for details of which A&O Shearman entity will be the data controller in each country.
In certain circumstances, Allen Overy Shearman Sterling LLP, Allen Overy Shearman Sterling US LLP or another A&O Shearman entity may also be a controller of your personal information, for example certain personal information processed using, or accessible via, global systems.
Get in touch
If you need further information or have any questions or complaints about our privacy policy or practices, please contact:
Chief Privacy Officer
A&O Shearman
68 Donegall Quay
Belfast
Northern Ireland
BT1 3NL
Email: DataPrivacy@aoshearman.com