This Website Privacy, Communications, Information Storage, and Retention Policy explains how the Law Office of Robert Aufseeser LLC collects, uses, stores, protects, shares, retains, and deletes information. It also explains important limits on website submissions, email communications, electronic storage, artificial intelligence tools, third-party technology providers, and requests to delete information.
The information on this website is provided for general informational purposes only. It is not legal advice. The information may be outdated, incomplete, or not applicable to your situation. You should consult an attorney for advice regarding your individual circumstances.
Contacting the firm, submitting a website form, sending an email, leaving a voicemail, uploading a document, scheduling a consultation, or communicating with the firm does not by itself create an attorney-client relationship. An attorney-client relationship is formed only when the firm agrees in writing to represent you.
Do not rely on a website submission, email, voicemail, or other unsolicited communication to protect your rights, preserve a claim, stop a deadline, satisfy a court requirement, complete a transaction, or obtain emergency legal assistance.
This policy applies to information the firm collects, receives, creates, stores, processes, transmits, or maintains through:
This policy applies to website visitors, prospective clients, current clients, former clients, business contacts, vendors, and other persons who communicate with or provide information to the firm.
The firm may collect the following categories of information, depending on how you interact with us:
You may provide information when you contact us, submit a website form, request a consultation, send an email, leave a voicemail, use a portal, provide documents, make a payment, sign an engagement agreement, or work with the firm on a legal matter. This information may include:
When you visit the website, the website host, analytics providers, advertising providers, security providers, or other technology providers may collect information such as:
This information may be used to operate the website, understand website traffic, improve the user experience, protect the website and firm systems, measure marketing effectiveness, and maintain security.
If you communicate with us by email or other electronic means, we may collect and store the contents of the communication, attachments, metadata, sender and recipient information, timestamps, and related correspondence history.
Please do not submit confidential, proprietary, urgent, time-sensitive, or highly sensitive information through a general website form or unsolicited email unless the firm specifically requests it or directs you to a secure method of transmission.
Examples of sensitive information include:
If you submit sensitive information without being asked to do so, you do so at your own risk. The firm is not responsible for consequences caused by your decision to send sensitive information through an insecure, unsolicited, or inappropriate method.
The firm may use information to:
If you contact the firm about possible representation, the firm may use and retain information you provide to evaluate your inquiry, respond to you, perform conflict checks, document the communication, and comply with legal and professional obligations.
Submitting information to the firm does not mean the firm has agreed to represent you. Unless and until the firm agrees in writing to represent you, you remain responsible for protecting your own rights and deadlines.
The firm may decline a matter for any reason, including conflicts, workload, subject matter, jurisdiction, deadlines, fee arrangements, or professional judgment. If the firm declines or does not accept a matter, the firm may still retain limited information needed for conflict-checking, confidentiality, risk-management, and recordkeeping purposes.
The website may use cookies and similar technologies to operate the website, remember preferences, understand how visitors use the website, improve performance, support security, and measure advertising or marketing effectiveness.
Most browsers allow you to disable or manage cookies. Some website features may not work properly if cookies are disabled.
Third-party analytics, advertising, or security services may collect information from your browser or device as part of providing services to the firm. These providers may use cookies, pixels, tags, web beacons, or similar technologies according to their own terms and privacy practices.
The firm does not sell, rent, or lease mailing lists or client lists.
The firm uses commercially available products and services to operate its law practice. These may include website hosting, email, cloud storage, practice management, document management, client portals, billing and payment systems, accounting systems, e-signature tools, legal research tools, cybersecurity tools, spam filtering, attachment scanning, analytics tools, artificial intelligence tools, and other technology providers.
Information you provide may be stored, transmitted, scanned, filtered, processed, backed up, or analyzed using these providers. The firm uses reasonable efforts to select technology and service providers that are appropriate for a law practice and compatible with confidentiality, security, and professional obligations.
No electronic system, cloud service, email service, website, or security measure can be guaranteed to be completely secure.
The firm may use artificial intelligence, data analytics, legal technology, drafting tools, research tools, document review tools, transcription tools, summarization tools, automation tools, and other technologies that assist or supplement legal and administrative work.
The firm’s intended configuration for AI tools used with client information is to prevent client information from being used to train public AI models. The firm does not knowingly submit client confidential information to public AI tools in a manner that permits the information to be used to train public models.
Technology tools may assist the firm, but the firm remains responsible for professional judgment. If you have special requirements about how your information may be stored, transmitted, processed, or used with technology providers, you should notify the firm in writing as early as possible.
The firm uses reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards appropriate to the nature of the information and the size and structure of the firm. These safeguards may include:
The firm cannot guarantee that unauthorized persons will never defeat security measures, intercept communications, access information, or misuse technology systems.
The firm may allow access to information by:
The firm may disclose information when it believes in good faith that disclosure is necessary or appropriate to comply with law, protect rights or property, prevent fraud or misuse, protect client interests, respond to legal process, address security concerns, or defend against claims.
Email is the firm’s preferred method of communication for many matters, but email is not always the fastest, safest, or most appropriate method for every situation. Please review our separate Email Communication Policy.
The firm may communicate by telephone, voicemail, text message, secure portal, videoconference, mail, courier, or other methods when appropriate. Some methods are more secure than others. The firm may require a more secure method for sensitive documents or communications.
Do not assume that a text message, voicemail, website form submission, or portal upload has been reviewed unless the firm confirms receipt or responds.
The firm retains information for as long as reasonably necessary to provide legal services, evaluate prospective engagements, operate the firm, comply with law and professional obligations, maintain conflict records, preserve client property, maintain trust-account and billing records, protect legal rights, address security concerns, and satisfy tax, accounting, insurance, audit, or regulatory needs.
Retention periods vary by category of information and by matter. The firm may retain information longer than a general retention period when required or appropriate.
Examples of records the firm may retain include:
As a general internal practice, the firm may retain closed client matter files for at least seven years after conclusion of the representation, unless a longer or shorter period is required or appropriate based on the nature of the matter, client property, legal hold, professional obligations, insurance requirements, tax or accounting needs, foreseeable client need, or other circumstances.
Trust-account, billing, retainer, accounting, and financial records may be retained for at least seven years or longer when required or appropriate.
Conflict-checking records may be retained indefinitely or for the life of the firm.
Original documents and client property are handled separately and may need to be returned, transferred, preserved, or retained rather than destroyed.
Some materials are not merely records; they may be client property or original documents. Examples may include original wills, trusts, deeds, contracts, corporate records, settlement documents, escrow materials, financial instruments, evidence, and other inherently valuable or original documents.
The firm will not destroy client property or original documents merely because a general retention period has expired. Client property and original documents may be returned, transferred, retained, destroyed with appropriate written authority, or handled as otherwise permitted or required by law and professional obligations.
You may contact the firm to request access to, correction of, deletion of, or restrictions on personal information the firm maintains about you. You may also opt out of future marketing or nonessential communications.
The firm will review such requests in light of applicable legal, ethical, professional, accounting, conflict-checking, security, and record-retention obligations.
A deletion request does not automatically require deletion of all information. The firm may be required or permitted to retain information, including:
If the firm retains information after a deletion request, the firm will continue to protect the retained information in accordance with confidentiality, security, and professional obligations.
If a privacy law gives you specific rights and applies to the firm and to the information at issue, the firm will respond as required by that law. The firm may need to verify your identity and authority before acting on a request.
You may opt out of marketing, newsletters, updates, or other nonessential communications at any time by contacting the firm or using any available unsubscribe method.
Opting out of marketing does not require deletion of client matter records, billing records, trust-account records, conflict records, legal records, or communications needed for an active matter or legal/professional obligation.
The firm may retain a limited suppression record to make sure you are not added back to a marketing list.
The firm and its technology providers may maintain backups and archives for disaster recovery, business continuity, cybersecurity, compliance, and preservation purposes. Information deleted from active systems may remain in backups until those backups expire or are overwritten in the ordinary course.
Backups are not generally searched, modified, or deleted on an individual-record basis unless restored or otherwise accessed. If backup data is restored, the firm will take reasonable steps to reapply applicable deletion, suppression, opt-out, or restriction decisions.
The firm may suspend ordinary deletion or destruction when information may be relevant to pending, threatened, or reasonably anticipated litigation, investigation, subpoena, audit, grievance, fee dispute, malpractice claim, ethics inquiry, tax issue, disciplinary matter, cybersecurity incident, or other legal obligation.
While a legal hold is in effect, affected information may be retained even if it would otherwise be eligible for deletion.
When information is eligible for destruction, the firm uses reasonable methods designed to protect confidentiality and prevent unauthorized access. Paper records may be shredded or destroyed through a secure destruction process. Electronic records may be deleted, wiped, deactivated, access-restricted, overwritten, or destroyed according to the system involved.
The firm’s website is intended for adults seeking legal information or legal services. The firm does not knowingly solicit personal information from children through the website. If a parent or guardian believes a child submitted information through the website, the parent or guardian may contact the firm.
The website may contain links to third-party websites, platforms, maps, social media pages, payment processors, portals, or other external services. The firm is not responsible for the privacy, security, content, or practices of third-party websites or services.
The firm may revise this policy at any time. Changes will be posted on this website. The date at the bottom of the policy will show when the policy was last updated.
To ask questions about this policy, request access, correction, deletion, or opt out of nonessential communications, contact the firm using the phone number, contact form, email address, or mailing address listed on this website.
This policy describes general firm practices. It does not create an attorney-client relationship, engagement agreement, fiduciary relationship, contractual right, or legal right beyond any right that exists under applicable law or a written agreement with the firm.
The firm may depart from this policy when required or permitted by law, court order, ethics obligation, client instruction, legal hold, security need, professional judgment, or the facts of a particular matter.
Last Updated: April 27, 2026