Information on data processing in the notary's office
Dr. Andreas Jürgens
with official seat in Frankfurt am Main

The protection of your personal data is very important to me. The following information on data processing describes how we, as notaries, process your personal data if you are formally or materially involved in a notarial procedure supervised by me. For information on data processing, as provided on Reed Smith's website reedsmith.com or as part of the legal advice provided by Reed Smith, please read our Privacy Policy.

1. Who is responsible, and whom can you contact? 

 I, the notary Dr. Andreas Jürgens of Reed Smith LLP, with my office address at Bockenheimer Landstraße 2-4, Frankfurt am Main, 60306, Germany, tel.: +49 (0)69 22228 9815, fax: +49 (0)69 22228 9899, email: ajuergens@reedsmith.com, am a responsible person within the meaning of article 4(7) of the General Data Protection Regulation (Datenschutz-Grundverordnung, GDPR).

If you have any questions about the data protection carried out by my notary’s office, please contact my data protection officer (dataprivacy@reedsmith.com).

2. What data do we process and where does the data come from?

 If you instruct us, we will process the following of your personal data you:

• Personal details, e.g., first name and surname, date and place of birth, nationality, and marital status;
• contact details, e.g., postal address, telephone and fax numbers, and email address;
• in certain property matters, your tax identification number;
• all information that a notary or their respective representative may require in order to fulfill your instructions; in certain cases this may include data relating to your family circumstances and your assets as well as information on your health or other sensitive data, e.g., because this serves to document your legal capacity;
• in certain cases, data relating to your legal relationships with third parties, e.g., file numbers or loan or account numbers with credit institutions; and
• data held by public registers, e.g., the land registry, company register and register of associations.

3. For what purposes and on what legal basis is the data processed?

 The notary is the holder of a public office. Certain tasks and activities are assigned to this public office. Your personal data will be processed in order to carry out the notarial work requested by you and any other persons involved in the relevant transaction, in accordance with our official duties (e.g., to draw up drafts of documents, to certify and execute documentary transactions or to carry out advisory services).

This personal data is processed in order to:

• identify you as a client;
• correspond with you;
• be able to fulfill your instructions within the framework of our professional and procedural obligations, in particular in accordance with the German Notarial Code (Bundesnotarordnung, BNotO) and the German Notarization Act (Beurkundungsgesetz, BeurkG);
• comply with our statutory notification and reporting obligations;
• represent you adequately before courts and public authorities;
• invoice you; and
• be able to process any claims you may assert.

We process your personal data in accordance with the applicable provisions of professional and procedural law, which largely arise from our obligations under the BNotO and BeurkG (to fulfill our legal obligations (point 1(c) of article 6(1) GDPR) and safeguard the public interest (point 1(e) of article 6(1) GDPR)). 

Insofar as we process special categories of personal data, this is done exclusively so that you can assert your legal rights on the basis, in particular, of the notarial deed to be drawn up and prevent any infringement of these legal rights (points (f) and (g) of article 9(2) GDPR).

4. To whom do we forward your data?

 As a principle, we do not pass on your personal data to third parties. Notaries are subject to a legal obligation of confidentiality. This duty of confidentiality also applies to all employees of the notary and any other person appointed by them.

If we are legally obliged to do so or if you have instructed us, we will pass your personal data on to certain third parties, in particular:

• public registers (the land registry, company register, and register of associations), the Central Register of Wills, the Central Health Care Proxy Register, tax authorities, the Chamber of Notaries, the service supervisory authorities, and local authorities;
• state authorities and tax authorities; and
• (if necessary) other parties to the proceedings or their legal representatives, other notaries involved and other third parties, in each case whose involvement is necessary to achieve the desired legal outcome, e.g., the administrators of a condominium building, banks or credit institutions.

For information on how these public authorities and other bodies process your data, please refer to their data protection policies.

5. Is data transferred to third countries?

 Your personal data will be transferred to third countries at your specific request or if and to the extent that a party to a notarial deed is resident in a third country.
As our notaries are also partners of the international law firm Reed Smith LLP, your data is also stored and processed by systems provided by Reed Smith LLP. Your data may be processed and stored in Germany or elsewhere in the European Union (or European Economic Area). If we process your personal data on systems in a country outside the EU (e.g., the United States), we have taken measures to ensure that the recipient safeguards the data and ensures an adequate level of data protection and privacy, e.g., by concluding standard contractual clauses.

6. How long will your data be kept?

We process and store your personal data as long as it is needed to fulfill our duties. We then delete the data or store it in accordance with the following storage obligations:

• Personal data that we require in order to maintain our duty to act impartially during the processing of your instructions and thereafter, will be stored for the entire duration of our official notarial activities (section 28 BNotO and section 15 of the Official Regulations for Notaries (Dienstordnung für Notarinnen und Notare, DONot)).

Under section 5, paragraph 4 DONot, the following periods apply to the storage of notarial documents:

• Lists of deeds, lists of wills, lists of names attached to deeds and collection of deeds, including separately lodged contracts of inheritance (section 18, paragraph 4 DONot): 100 years;
• Deposit ledger, mass books, list of names entered in the mass books, lists of escrow accounts, and general files: 30 years;
• Secondary files: seven years. The notary can specify in writing a longer retention period, at the latest during the last processing of the contents, e.g., in the case of dispositions by will or where these is a risk of other legal recourse; the period can also be extended for specific types of legal transaction, e.g. for dispositions by will; and
• Collective volumes for bill and cheque protests: five years.

After the storage periods have expired, your data will be deleted and hard copies destroyed, unless there are further obligations to store and record the data (pursuant to the Commercial Code, the Criminal Code, the Money Laundering Act or the Tax Code) or you have consented to storage going beyond the expiry date (point 1(a) of article 6(1) GDPR). Furthermore, we must store personal data in order to be able to check any prior involvement concerning the same matter by acting as lawyer.

7. What rights do you have?

You have the right to:

• Request information about whether we process personal data about you, and if so: for what purposes we process the data and what categories of personal data we process, to whom the data may be forwarded, how long the data may be stored, and what rights you have. We have the right to refuse to provide details of data that must be kept confidential by us.
• Request the correction of any inaccuracies in your personal data stored by us. You also have the right to request that we supplement any incomplete data record stored by us.
• Request the deletion of your personal data (article 17 GDPR). Deletion is not possible if the processing of your data is necessary to fulfill any legal obligation or for reasons of public interest within the meaning of the GDPR or if legal retention periods or our professional obligations as notaries preclude deletion.
• Require that we limit the processing of your personal data (e.g., to assert legal claims or for reasons of public interest) while, for example, we are examining your claim for correction or deletion of your data, or if we are unable to comply with a request for deletion (article 18 GDPR).
• Object to the processing where your personal data is processed on the basis of legitimate interests (point 1(f) of article 6(1) GDPR), provided that there are reasonable grounds for the objection arising from your particular circumstances.
• Withdraw your consent at any time. The consequence of this is that data processing based on your consent may no longer be continued in the future unless this conflicts with our statutory requirements relating to retention periods or notarial professional obligations.
• Obtain a copy of your personal data in a structured, easily understood and machine-readable format.

You may address any concerns about your rights to the individuals named in section 1. In addition, you may lodge a data protection complaint with the relevant supervisory authorities.

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February 2019