Certainty in law. Time for you.

Processing personal data is necessary on our part, in particular so that we can:

• provide legal services to our clients and practise the legal profession;
• comply with various statutory, professional and contractual obligations; and
• protect the legitimate interests of ourselves, our clients and other persons.

We disclose the personal data of our clients and other natural persons only to the extent necessary and always on condition that the recipient maintains confidentiality, for example to our employees, to persons whom we entrust with carrying out individual acts of legal services, to substitute or cooperating attorneys, to our accounting advisers, to our professional advisers (e.g. auditors), to the Slovak Bar Association (e.g. in the case of disciplinary proceedings) or to providers of software or support for our office, including the employees of these persons.

For the operation of this website and the processing of newsletter sign-ups, we use Netlify, Inc., 101 2nd Street, San Francisco, CA 94105, USA, as our processor (hosting and form processing). Netlify uses the Akismet service to filter unsolicited messages submitted through forms.

Although our duty of confidentiality limits our obligation to provide your personal data to public authorities, we are obliged to prevent the commission of a criminal offence, and we also have a duty to report information in the field of preventing money laundering and terrorist financing.

When providing legal services, we do not intend any cross-border transfer of your personal data to third countries outside the European Economic Area (the EU, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein).

The exception is the operation of this website: our hosting provider, Netlify, Inc., may also process technical data about visits and form data in the USA. The transfer takes place on the basis of Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2023/1795 on the adequate level of protection of personal data under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, which Netlify, Inc. has joined, and additionally on the basis of standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission.

We retain personal data for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which they are processed. When retaining personal data, we follow the recommended retention periods set out in Resolution No. 29/11/2011 of the Presidium of the Slovak Bar Association, for example:

• the attorney keeps the incoming mail register and the outgoing mail register, once full, for ten years from the date of receipt or dispatch of the last item entered in the register;
• the attorney archives the inventory list for ten years from the date on which it was drawn up;
• if the attorney keeps the client index and the client file register electronically, at the end of each calendar year the attorney produces a printed version for that calendar year and keeps it at the office without time limit;
• the retention period for a client file is 10 years and runs from the day on which all the conditions for archiving the file are met.

Attorneys are subject to professional regulations interpreting their obligations under the Legal Profession Act, according to which certain circumstances extend our retention periods for personal data or, for understandable reasons, prevent us from destroying certain documents. For example:

• a client file containing original documents handed over to the attorney by the client may not be destroyed;
• client file registers and the index of client files may not be destroyed;
• a client file, or any part of it, that the attorney is obliged to hand over to the state archives may not be destroyed;
• a client file may not be destroyed while any proceedings are pending before a court, a state administration authority, law enforcement authorities or the Slovak Bar Association that relate in substance to the content of the client file or whose subject matter is an act or omission of the attorney in providing legal assistance to the client in the matter.

We retain an email address subscribed to the newsletter until consent is withdrawn. We retain data on the granting and withdrawal of consent only for as long as necessary to demonstrate compliance with the law. Technical records of website visits are retained by the hosting provider only for as long as strictly necessary.

If you are our client, we most often obtain your personal data directly from you. In that case, providing your personal data is voluntary. Depending on the specific case, a client’s failure to provide personal data may affect our ability to provide high-quality legal advice or, in exceptional cases, may even mean that we are obliged to refuse to provide legal advice. We may also obtain personal data about our clients from publicly available sources, from public authorities or from other persons.

If you are not our client, we most often obtain your personal data from our clients or from other public or lawful sources, e.g. by requesting them from public authorities, by obtaining extracts from public registers, by gathering evidence in the client’s favour, and so on. In that case, we may obtain personal data about you without informing you, and even against your will, on the basis of our statutory right and obligation to practise law in accordance with the Legal Profession Act.

If we process personal data about you on the basis of your consent to the processing of personal data, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. The withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal. Irrespective of this, you have the right to object at any time to the processing of personal data on the basis of legitimate or public interest, as well as to processing for direct marketing purposes, including profiling.

Under the conditions laid down in the GDPR, you have the right of access to personal data, the right to rectification, erasure and restriction of processing, the right to data portability and the right to object (Arts 15 to 22 GDPR). We deal with requests without undue delay, as a rule within one month of receipt.

As a client, you have the right to request access to your personal data as well as their rectification. Where we process personal data in providing legal services, you have no right, either as a client or as any other natural person (e.g. the opposing party), to object to such processing under Art. 21 GDPR. Where personal data relate to a client (regardless of whether the client is a legal or a natural person), other persons have neither the right of access to the data nor the right to data portability, owing to our statutory duty of confidentiality, with reference to Art. 15(4) GDPR, Art. 20(4) GDPR and Section 18(8) of the Legal Profession Act:

“An attorney is not obliged to provide information on the processing of personal data, or to enable access to or the portability of personal data under a special regulation, if doing so could lead to a breach of the attorney’s duty of confidentiality under this Act.” (unofficial translation)

You also have the right to lodge a complaint at any time with the Office for Personal Data Protection of the Slovak Republic (Hraničná 12, 820 07 Bratislava 27, dataprotection.gov.sk) or with the Slovak Bar Association (Kolárska 4, 813 42 Bratislava, sak.sk).

This website does not use cookies or any third-party analytics, advertising or tracking tools. Fonts and the other page components are hosted directly on our website, so they are not loaded from other providers when you visit.

When the website is displayed, the hosting provider processes technical data, such as the IP address, the time of access or the browser type, to the extent necessary to deliver and secure the website (legitimate interest under Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

If you subscribe to the newsletter, we process your email address and a record of your consent on the basis of your consent under Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, solely for sending information about legal news and the activities of our office. You can withdraw your consent at any time by email to skybova@akskybova.sk or via the unsubscribe link in every newsletter.

If you contact us by email or phone, we process the data you provide to us in order to deal with your enquiry and, where applicable, to conclude a contract for the provision of legal services (Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR). We recommend sending us details of your matter only after our initial contact.

For us, the protection of personal data is not a one-off matter. The information we are obliged to provide to you regarding our processing of personal data may change or cease to be up to date. For this reason, we reserve the right to modify and amend this Privacy Policy at any time and to any extent. If we change this Privacy Policy in a material way, we will bring the change to your attention, e.g. by a general notice on this website or by a separate notice sent by email.