Privacy policy

1. Who is responsible for your data

The controller of the personal data you provide through this website is Julian Chalas Attorneys at Law, the firm of attorney Luis Julian Chalas ("the Firm"), located at Av. Winston Churchill #43, Plaza Las Américas II, Third Floor, Suite 18-c, Santo Domingo, D.N., Dominican Republic.

For any privacy matter you can write to consulta@julianchalasattorneysatlaw.com.

2. What data we collect and why

"Request an initial consultation" form. When you fill it in, we collect:

• Full name, to identify and address you.
• Email address, to reply to your request.
• Phone number (with country code if abroad), to contact you about your request.
• The website language in which you sent it (Spanish or English), to reply in your language.
• Your express authorization (the form checkbox), as a record that you authorized the use of your data for this purpose.

The only purpose is to contact you about your request and, where appropriate, to arrange a meeting. We do not use this data for advertising, and we do not sell it or give it to third parties for their own purposes.

WhatsApp contact. If you write to us on WhatsApp, the Firm receives your number and your messages and uses them only to handle your inquiry. WhatsApp (Meta) processes them, including outside the Dominican Republic, under its own terms.

Confidential information. Please do not send documents or sensitive information about your matter through the form, email or WhatsApp until the Firm accepts your case or expressly asks you to.

Technical data.

• If you submit the form, the server keeps your IP address (for IPv6, only part of it) together with the time of your submissions, only in its working memory, to apply anti-abuse limits. It is not written to disk or to a database and does not appear in the email we receive. The application deletes it from memory automatically no later than one hour and one minute after your last submission, and sooner if the server restarts.
• To show the home page in your language, the language set in your browser is used or, if it does not indicate one, the country the content delivery network infers from your IP address, without storing it. The resulting language is stored in the lang cookie (see §8); nothing else is stored.
• Our application does not write your data to its technical logs. The hosting provider may keep access logs that include the IP address, for the period set by its own terms.

3. Legal basis

We process your data with your consent, which you give by ticking the form checkbox before submitting it, under Law No. 172-13 on the protection of personal data. When you write to us directly (for example, on WhatsApp or by email), we process it because it is necessary to handle your request prior to a possible professional relationship. You can withdraw your consent at any time (see §7); withdrawing it does not affect processing carried out before.

4. How long we keep it

We keep your data for as long as needed to handle your request and, if you become a client, for the periods required by law and professional practice. If your request does not lead to a relationship with the Firm, we delete it 12 months after our last contact with you, or sooner if you ask us to.

5. Who we share it with

Your data is not sold or shared for commercial purposes. Only the following have access to it, to provide the service:

• Authorized people at the Firm who handle inquiries, bound by professional secrecy.
• The website's technical administrator, who manages the hosting and email on the Firm's behalf and accesses the data only to maintain them, bound by a duty of confidentiality.
• Hostinger, provider of the website hosting, its content delivery network and the Firm's mailbox.
• Authorities, when a law or a court order requires us to disclose it.

Transfers outside the Dominican Republic. Some of these providers process data outside the country: Hostinger operates data centers in the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries, and WhatsApp uses Meta's. By ticking the form checkbox, you authorize that transfer, limited to the purpose described in this policy. We choose providers that state they apply recognized security measures.

6. Security

We apply reasonable technical and organizational measures: encrypted connection (HTTPS), delivery of the notice of your request to the Firm's mailbox over an encrypted channel, anti-abuse limits, and mailbox access limited to the people listed in §5. No system is infallible; if an incident affecting your data occurred, we would act as the law requires.

7. Your rights

Under Law No. 172-13 you may access your data, correct or update it, request its deletion, and object to its processing or withdraw your consent. To exercise these rights, write to consulta@julianchalasattorneysatlaw.com stating your name and the right you wish to exercise. If you write from the email address you used to contact us, that is enough to identify you; otherwise, we will send a code to the phone number you gave us or arrange a short video call to verify your identity. Please do not send us copies of documents by email or WhatsApp. Exercising them is free of charge.

We will answer access requests within 5 business days at most, and correction, update or deletion requests within 10 business days at most. Deletion may not be possible when a law requires us to keep the data. If we do not handle your request, you may bring a habeas data action before the courts.

8. Cookies and similar technologies

This website uses one first-party, technical cookie: lang, which stores the language in which you view the site (the one you chose or, if you did not choose, the one inferred from your browser settings or your country) for up to one year. It does not identify you and is not used for advertising or to measure visits. Because it is needed to show you the site in your language, we do not ask for your authorization for it. In addition, our hosting provider's content delivery network may set a technical security cookie when it checks that a visit is not automated.

We do not use Google Analytics, social media pixels or advertising.

9. Minors

This website is not directed at people under 18 and we do not knowingly collect data from minors. If you are a minor and need legal guidance, ask your mother, father or guardian to contact the Firm.

10. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will publish the new version here with its date. If the change affects how we use your data, we will let you know by email when we have it and, where the law requires, ask for your consent again.

This policy is complemented by the website's legal notice.