Pre-Hire Recruitment Privacy Policy Notice

This notice sets out Sullivan & Cromwell’s policy on processing the personal data of job applicants or others seeking information about employment opportunities with the Firm.

In this notice, “Sullivan & Cromwell” or the “Firm” refers to Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and its affiliated partnerships from time to time. Sullivan & Cromwell LLP is a limited liability partnership registered under the laws of the State of New York.

The words “we”, “us” and “our” refer to Sullivan & Cromwell, and the words “you” and “your” refer to the job applicant or other person whose data we process.

As part of any recruitment process, we collect and process personal data relating to job applicants, including special categories of data. It is our policy to deal with your personal information responsibly and in accordance with the requirements of applicable data protection laws, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

What personal information we collect

We collect a range of information about you as part of your job application and recruitment process. This may include:

your name, alias, postal address, contact details, including email address, telephone number and a photograph, SSN, driver’s license number, passport number
your signature, physical characteristics or description, state ID card number, bank account number
your date of birth, gender, marital status
details of your education background, qualifications, professional licenses and memberships, skills, experience, employment, and employment history, CV, interview notes, outcome of application
information about your current level of remuneration, including benefit entitlements
whether or not you have a disability for which we need to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process
information about your entitlement to work in the UK
passwords and security questions when you apply via our website
equal opportunities monitoring information, including information relating to characteristics of protected classifications under CA or federal law, including race, color, national origin, gender, disability, age (40 and older), citizenship status, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, military or veteran status, and political activities or affiliations, and
Internet or other electronic network activity information, including, but not limited to, information regarding your interaction with our website.

How we collect personal information

We collect this information as part of our recruitment and hiring processes in a variety of ways, including:

directly from you when you apply for a role or when you submit your personal information to us via our website or an alternative application form
from your passport or other identity documents, or through interviews or other forms of assessment
from third parties, such as recruitment agencies acting on your behalf or references supplied by former employers, information from employment background check providers and information from criminal records checks. We will seek information from third parties only once a job offer to you has been made and will inform you that we are doing so, and
data from partners and employees of the Firm as a result of internal referrals or other information generated as part of our recruitment processes.

Data will be stored in a range of different places, including on your application record, in HR management systems and on other of our IT systems (including email).

How we use personal information

We use the information we collect in a number of ways including:

to identify you and process your application
to manage the recruitment process, assess and confirm your candidacy and decide whether or not to offer you a job
to contact you with communications about employment opportunities with S&C
to fulfil our legal and regulatory obligations, including reporting obligations and in connection with potential or actual legal or regulatory proceedings or investigations
to fulfill our contractual obligations
to communicate with you and provide information requested by you, and (where relevant) to repay approved expenses incurred as part of our recruitment processes
to improve our website, including auditing and monitoring its use, to provide users with a customized experience, and to understand our website audience and demographics and their interests and content preferences
to determine if we need to make reasonable accommodations for candidates who are disabled and have need for such
to fulfil our obligations under diversity and equal opportunities regulations, and to monitor the effectiveness of our diversity efforts
to support and evaluate our personnel
to engage in other activities in connection with the proper operation of our legal practice. For example, in connection with its operations, S&C must share or transfer data to third parties (for example, insurance providers, pension administrators, banks, payroll and other service providers) and among its offices around the world in connection with S&C’s provision of legal services, satisfaction of its professional commitments and support and administration of its personnel
to operate S&C’s alumni site, including personalization services, such as suggested contacts, news, events and interactive communications
to enable users of S&C’s alumni site to search for and locate other users via the directory
in connection with the administration of events
to book travel, and
to obtain business-related information through surveys conducted by us and others.

The grounds on which we process personal information

We process personal information on one or more of the following grounds:

for our legitimate business purposes, as described above
to take steps with a view to entering into a contract of employment with you
for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims or proceedings
to comply with legal and regulatory obligations

Sharing personal information

The Firm has offices around the world (https://www.sullcrom.com/offices).

Your information will be shared with individuals involved in the Firm’s worldwide recruitment efforts. This includes members of the HR and recruitment team, interviewers involved in the recruitment process and partners/managers in the business area(s) relevant to your application. This may result in your information being transferred to one or more of our offices worldwide.

We may also share your personal information with trusted third parties in accordance with contractual arrangements in place with them, including:

IT service providers, such as the external provider that manages our recruitment website
your appointed recruitment agent (if applicable), and
our own professional advisers and auditors.

If your application for employment is successful and we make you an offer of employment, we will then share your data with our employment background check providers to obtain necessary background checks (which will include contacting your former employers to obtain references for you) and the Disclosure and Barring Service to obtain necessary criminal records checks.

In some circumstances, we may also pass information to regulatory authorities, courts, tribunals, government agencies and law enforcement agencies. We may be required to disclose your information to comply with legal or regulatory requirements. Where possible, we will use reasonable efforts to notify you before disclosing your information, but we may be legally restricted from doing so.

This may involve a transfer of your information from a location within the European Economic Area (the “EEA”) to outside the EEA, or from outside the EEA to a location within the EEA. The level of information protection in countries outside the EEA may be less than that offered within the EEA. We will implement appropriate measures to ensure that your personal information nevertheless remains protected and secure in accordance with applicable data protection laws. EU standard contractual clauses are in place between all Sullivan & Cromwell entities that share and process personal data.

Protecting Personal Information

We use a variety of technical and organizational measures to help protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, alteration or destruction consistent with applicable data protection laws. These measures are reviewed periodically by external assessors who confirm and certify our operations.
Accordingly, we hold certificate #IS 585222 and operate an Information Security Management System which complies with the requirements of ISO/IEC 27001:2013.

Keeping Personal Information

Your personal information will be retained in accordance with our Data Privacy Policy.

We retain personal information of different types, or relating to different categories of people, for different periods, taking into account its business purpose. For example, information about individuals who have applied for employment with us will be retained for a shorter period than information about individuals who have actually worked for us.

The periods for which we retain information are based on the requirements of applicable data protection laws and the purpose for which the information is collected and used. We take into account legal and regulatory provisions which require information to be retained for a minimum period. We also consider the limitation periods for taking legal action and good practice in the legal industry.

If your application for employment is successful, personal data gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to your personnel file and retained during your employment.

Your rights

As a data subject, you have a number of rights. You can:/

access and obtain a copy of your data on request,
require us to change incorrect or incomplete data,
require us to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing,
object to the processing of your data where we rely on legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing, and
ask us to stop processing data for a period if data is inaccurate or there is a dispute about whether or not your interests override our legitimate grounds for processing data.

Rights regarding personal information for California residents

Pursuant to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), California residents receive certain rights with respect to their personal information, as described below. These rights are not absolute and are subject to certain exceptions more fully set forth in the CCPA. California residents have the right not to receive discriminatory treatment from us for the exercise of the privacy rights conferred by the CCPA.

Right to know about personal information collected, disclosed, or sold

Each California resident has the right to request, subject to certain exceptions described in the CCPA, that we disclose to that resident:

the categories of personal information we have collected about them,
the categories of sources from which the personal information is collected,
the business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling the personal information,
the categories of third parties with whom we have shared the personal information, and
the specific pieces of personal information we have collected about them (collectively, a “Request to Know”).

To make such a Request to Know, you can either call us at our toll free number (1-888-558-1505), or fill out our request form here.

In the past twelve months we have collected, and in the future we will continue to collect, the categories of personal information cited in the section entitled “What personal information we collect” above. This includes the following categories of personal information set out in the CCPA: identifiers, personal information described in Section 1798.80 of the California Civil Code, characteristics of protected classifications under California or federal law, Internet or other electronic network activity information, geolocation data, professional or employment-related information, education information and sensitive personal information. We collect this information from the sources described in the section entitled “How we collect personal information” above, use this information as described in the section entitled “How we use personal information” above, and share this information with third parties as described in the section entitled “Sharing personal information” above. For S&C’s notice of collection of personal information for applicants with respect to information collected or used outside of the context of such person’s recruitment with S&C, please see S&C’s Privacy Policy available here.

We do not sell your personal information as defined under the CCPA or share your personal information for cross-contextual behavioral advertising purposes and we do not have actual knowledge that we sell or share the personal information of consumers under 16 years of age. We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for purposes other than those permitted purposes specifically identified in the CCPA and its implementing regulations.

Right to request deletion of personal information

Each California resident has the right to request the deletion of their personal information that we collect or maintain (a “Request to Delete”), subject to certain exceptions set forth in the CCPA. To make such a Request to Delete, you can either call us at our toll free number (1-888-558-1505), or fill out our request form here.

Right to correct inaccurate personal information

Each California resident has the right to request the correction of any inaccurate personal information that we maintain (a “Request to Correct”), subject to certain exceptions set forth in the CCPA. To make such a Request to Correct, you can either call us at our toll free number (1-888-558-1505), or fill out our request form here.

Process for verifying requests of California residents

In order to protect your privacy and security, prior to completing any Request to Know, Request to Delete or Request to Correct that you may submit, we must verify your identity. We will verify your identity by asking you to provide certain data that we have already collected from you to confirm that they match our records. In certain instances, additional verification steps may be required.

Authorized agents

California residents have the right to designate an authorized agent to make a request under the CCPA on their behalf. Prior to completing a request made by such an authorized agent, we require that you provide your authorized agent with written permission to submit such a request and require that you or your authorized agent provide us with a copy of such written permission. Additionally, we require that you verify your identity pursuant to the procedure described above.

What if you do not provide personal data?

You are under no statutory or contractual obligation to provide data to us during the recruitment process. However, if you do not provide the information, we may not be able to process your application properly or at all.

Contacting us

If you have any questions on the matters covered in this policy, please contact our Data Protection Officer, Craig Jones at DPO@sullcrom.com.

Changes to Our Pre-Hire Recruitment Privacy Policy

We regularly review this Pre-Hire Recruitment Privacy Policy and may make changes as our services or privacy practices change, or as required by applicable laws or regulations.

This policy was last updated on January 5, 2023.