Privacy Statement - Applications for Lawyer Positions and Internships

Claeys & Engels BV/SRL (“We” or “Claeys & Engels”) is a specialist law firm offering a full range of legal services in all areas concerning human resources. Claeys & Engels has several establishments in Belgium and is an active member of a global alliance of leading employment, labour and pension law firms, called “Ius Laboris”.

We act as data controller for all personal data processed by our law firm. We collect, store and process any personal data as safely as reasonably possible and in strict compliance with the applicable data protection legislation, among which the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 of 27 April 2016 ("GDPR").

With this Privacy Statement, we want to inform you why and how we process personal data, how we protect them and how long we keep them when you apply for any lawyer position within our law firm or when you register for any Claeys & Engels student event.

This Privacy Statement applies when you apply for any lawyer position or event via our website http://jobs.claeysengels.be/ or in any other way. 

Claeys & Engels BV/SRL (boulevard du Souverain 280, 1160 Brussels; company number: 0473.547.070) acts as data controller with respect to treatment of applications for lawyer positions and student events.

The purpose for processing your personal data is to register your application for a traineeship or an independent collaboration as a lawyer with us and, if this application leads to starting our selection procedure, make a profile of you, meaning that we will process all the necessary data that are required for us to assess your application with a view to a potential cooperation.

The processing of your data is therefore necessary in order to take steps prior to entering into an independent collaboration agreement and is in our legitimate interests, i.e. the interest to assess and evaluate you before deciding on contracting with you, which is, according to us, also in your interests.

If we decide to contract with you, we will also process your personal data to prepare a trainee agreement or an independent collaboration agreement.

If we do not immediately contract with you, we will also retain your personal data for a period of time (see hereafter) for any other lawyer positions that would seem to match your profile. This is also in our legitimate interest.

You can contact us at any time for assistance with your application or regarding the management of your application. Furthermore, you have the right at any time to request:

- access to your personal data; this also includes the right to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
- the rectification of your personal data; this also includes adding personal data if the data we hold about you are incomplete or not accurate;
- the deletion of your personal data as soon as there is no (longer a) lawful ground for us to process them;
-the restriction of the way in which we process your personal data, if you were to contest the processing or the correctness of the personal data, or if you wish to obtain certain personal data with a view to a possible legal claim, while we no longer need the personal data for the purposes mentioned above.

You also have the right to object at any time to the processing activities for which we rely on legitimate interests (see above). In that event, we will immediately cease the processing activities unless there would exist compelling legitimate grounds for further processing. You will for instance be able to object to the processing of your personal data in the event of an unsuccessful application. In that event, we will delete your personal date immediately and cease any further processing.

Furthermore, if you are unhappy with the way we have handled your personal data or any privacy query or request that you have raised with us, you have the right to complain to the Data Protection Authority (“DPA”) in the country where you reside, where you work or where the alleged infringement has been committed.

Personal data is all information relating to you or on the basis of which you may be identified. Anonymous data, which cannot identify you, could thus not be considered as personal data.

For the purposes referred to here above, the processing of personal data will include the following:

• standard data related to your identity (family name, given name(s), address, etc.)
• personal data (date and place of birth, nationality, gender, phone number, email address, hobbies and interests, marriage or other form of living together, etc.)
• data generated by us (e.g. number, results of assessments, etc.)
• your photograph if you provide it to us knowingly and voluntarily;
• data with regard to your professional experience (profile, data on previous law firms you were active in as an intern or a lawyer, special projects, data on employers if you have been working as an employee before, publications (e.g., books, articles, etc.), including reference checks if you have provided us with your consent to do so;
• data with regard to your education (exam results, diplomas (law degree, additional master degrees, etc.), certificates, internships, special trainings, Erasmus Programme, etc…);
• professional skills (e.g.,language, legal and reasoning skills);
• any other personal data that you present us with as part of your application, related to the exercise of the profession of lawyer;
• digital assessment through the internet (social media presence), insofar as this presence is open for us to see;
• any other personal data (than mentioned above) that require processing by virtue of the law.

You are not required to provide us with these data. However, not doing so might adversely affect your chances of cooperating with us.

Our HR and lawyer recruitment department and the lawyers you will be working with will have access to your personal data on a strict ‘need-to-know’ basis for the purposes described above.

We will not pass on your information to any other third party.

Claeys & Engels guarantees the confidentiality of your personal data.

We do not transfer your personal data to recipients located in non-EEA countries whose laws may not provide the same level of data protection.

Automated decisions are defined as decisions about individuals that are based solely on the automated processing of data and that produce legal effects that significantly affect the individuals involved.

As a rule, we will not use your personal data for automated decision-making. Consequently, we do not base any decisions about our potential cooperation solely on automated processing of your personal data.

We will only hold your personal data for as long as is necessary for the purposes described above.  If your application does not result in any cooperation, we will retain your personal data for a maximum period of five years after the end of the application procedure for the purposes described above.

We hope that this Privacy Statement makes clear and gives reassurance about the way we process your data. If you have any further queries about this Privacy Statement, our website http://jobs.claeysengels.be/ or the way we handle applications in general, please contact us: 

• by e-mailing us at privacy@claeysengels.be; or
• by calling us on +32 2 761 46 00 or
• by addressing your query to Olivier Wouters, Managing Partner, Claeys & Engels BV/SRL, boulevard du Souverain 280, 1160 Brussels.

We may modify or amend this Privacy Statement from time to time. Any changes we make to this Privacy Statement in the future will be posted on this page. We will amend the revision date at the top of this page so that it is clear when we make changes to this Privacy Statement. The new modified or amended Privacy Statement will apply from that revision date. Please check back periodically to see changes and additions.