Privacy Policy

1. Who this policy covers

This policy applies to Rich Harris, A Law Corporation (“the firm,” “we,” or “us”) and to the website at calwrongfuldeathlawyer.com. Our mailing address is 8175 Limonite Avenue, Suite A, Riverside, CA 92509. You can reach us at (888) 660-4529 or docs@richharrislaw.com.

This policy covers the website only. Information you provide after the firm agrees in writing to represent you is governed by the far stricter duties of the attorney-client relationship, described in Section 3.

2. Information we collect

In the twelve months preceding the effective date of this policy, we collect or may collect the following categories of personal information, as those categories are defined in California Civil Code section 1798.140:

• Identifiers. Your name, telephone number, email address, and the IP address of the device you use to reach the site. Collected when you submit the consultation form, call us, or email us.
• Customer records information (Civ. Code § 1798.80). Contact details, your relationship to the person who died, the date and cause of death, and any other personal facts regarding a prospective legal case that you choose to include in a form submission. If you become a client, it will include case related facts and personal information regarding you and your legal matter.
• Internet or network activity. Pages viewed, time on page, referring page, approximate region, browser and device type. Collected through Google Analytics, loaded by Google Tag Manager, in aggregated and pseudonymous form.
• Sensitive personal information, but only if you volunteer it. A description of a death may necessarily include health information about a family member, information about a criminal investigation, or similar sensitive details. We ask you not to include more than is necessary for us to decide whether we can help.
• Inferences. We do not build profiles about you, and we do not use your information for automated decision-making or profiling as those terms are used in the CPRA regulations.

Translation. Our staff read English. If you submit a form from a Spanish-language page, the parts you write in your own words are machine-translated into English by Google Cloud Translation, a Google service, so we can read them; we keep your original text with the translation. Chat messages written in a language other than English are translated the same way (Section 7). Machine translation can contain errors.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16. We do not ask for, and you should never submit, a Social Security number, a driver’s license number, a financial account number, or a password through this website.

3. Information you send before we represent you

This section matters more than the rest of this policy, so it is stated plainly.

Sending the consultation form, calling the office, or emailing us does not create an attorney-client relationship and does not make you a client. An attorney-client relationship is created only when the firm and you both sign a written fee agreement.

That said, under California Rule of Professional Conduct 1.18, a person who consults a lawyer about the possibility of forming a relationship is a “prospective client,” and the lawyer owes that person a duty of confidentiality as to information learned in the consultation, even if no representation follows. We treat inquiries accordingly.

There is one practical limit you should understand. If we have already been consulted by, or already represent, someone on the other side of your matter, we may be unable to receive your information at all, and a conflicts check may require us to decline before reading the details. For that reason, please keep your first message brief: who was involved, what happened, and when, and wait for us to confirm before sending documents or detailed facts.

Email and web forms are not secure channels. Do not use them to transmit anything you would be unwilling to have seen by a third party.

4. Why we use your information

• To run a conflicts check and decide whether the firm can consider your matter
• To respond to you, schedule a consultation, and communicate about a potential or existing matter
• To provide legal services once a written fee agreement is in place
• To maintain the security and integrity of the website
• To understand, in aggregate, which pages are useful and which of our advertising brings people here
• To comply with legal, regulatory, tax and State Bar recordkeeping obligations

We do not use your information for any purpose that is materially different from, or incompatible with, the purposes listed above without first telling you. Any email we send will be conducted in accordance with the firm’s internal policies and anti-spam laws.

5. We do not sell or share your personal information

We have not sold personal information, and we have not shared personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, in the preceding twelve months, and we do not do so now. “Sell” and “share” carry the specific meanings given to them in Civil Code section 1798.140. We also do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for purposes beyond those permitted by Civil Code section 1798.121, so no “Limit the Use of My Sensitive Personal Information” link is required.

We disclose personal information for business purposes only, to the following categories of recipients:

• Website hosting, form delivery and email providers that operate the site on our behalf
• Analytics providers, which receive pseudonymous usage data
• Google Cloud Translation, which translates into English the free-text parts of form submissions and chat messages written in another language, and translates our chat replies into the language you wrote in
• Practice-management, document-storage and communication vendors used to run the firm
• Other lawyers, experts, investigators or consultants, where a matter requires it and the engagement permits it. We may contact other lawyers to coordinate legal representation of your interests, and we may receive or share fees with other lawyers in accordance with California law.
• Courts, opposing parties and government agencies, where required by law, subpoena or court order

Each service provider is bound by contract to use the information only to perform services for us, and not to retain, use or disclose it for its own purposes.

6. How long we keep information

We keep information only as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose it was collected, or as long as the law requires:

• Inquiries that do not become matters: generally retained for up to two years, so that a future conflicts check is accurate
• Client files: retained in accordance with California State Bar guidance and our written file-retention policy, which for most matters means at least five years after the file closes
• Trust accounting records: at least five years after final distribution, as required by Rule of Professional Conduct 1.15
• Website analytics: retained in pseudonymous form, typically no more than fourteen months

7. Cookies, analytics and Do Not Track

This site uses a small number of cookies and similar technologies that are necessary for it to function, and it uses Google Tag Manager to load Google Analytics, which sets cookies and collects the pseudonymous usage data described in Section 2 so we can see which pages are read and which of our advertising, including direct mail, brings people here. We do not use session-replay or keystroke-logging tools on this website, and we do not permit third parties to collect personally identifiable information about your activity across different websites over time through this site.

Language and chat settings. If you choose English or Spanish, the site remembers that choice in your browser’s local storage so later pages open in that language; the choice is not sent to us. The chat panel likewise remembers, for the current browser session only, the conversation and the name and contact details you typed, so a reload does not ask for them again.

Live chat. The "Chat with us" button opens a chat panel that the Firm runs on its own Firebase project at chat.richharrislaw.com; no outside chat vendor is involved. When you open it, your browser is given an anonymous identifier, and we record the page you were on, your browser type, the messages you send, and any name, phone number or email address you choose to type. Firm staff are alerted by push notification, by a message in the Firm's Google Chat workspace, and by email, and a transcript is emailed to the Firm when a chat is closed. Chat records are kept on the same schedule as inquiries that do not become matters (Section 6). Chatting with us does not create an attorney-client relationship. If you write in a language other than English, your messages and our replies are translated in real time by Google Cloud Translation, a Google service, and both versions are kept with the chat record. Machine translation can contain errors.

Do Not Track. California Business and Professions Code section 22575(b)(5) requires us to disclose how we respond to Do Not Track signals. This site does not alter its practices in response to a Do Not Track signal. You can decline analytics cookies through your browser settings or a browser extension without affecting your use of the site.

8. Text messages

There are two separate consents on the consultation form and they do different things.

The required one covers contact about your own inquiry: a reply, a question, a scheduling message. Without it we cannot respond to you at all.

The optional one is consent to receive text messages from the firm for all purposes, including marketing and promotional messages, and including messages sent using automated technology. It is unchecked by default. Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act that consent must be given in writing and must not be a condition of obtaining services, so it is deliberately kept separate from the required box. Ticking it is not necessary to contact us, to receive a consultation, or to be represented.

Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply, depending on your carrier and plan. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.

To stop receiving texts, reply STOP to any message from us. Reply HELP for help, or call (888) 660-4529. You may withdraw consent at any time and by any reasonable means, and withdrawing it does not affect representation.

We keep a record of when consent was given, from which IP address, and with which browser, for as long as we rely on it and afterwards as the law requires. We do not sell or share mobile numbers, and consent given here is not transferred to anyone else.

Text is not a secure channel. Please do not send confidential case information by text.

9. Your California privacy rights

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act, gives you the rights listed below. We honor these requests as a matter of policy, whether or not the firm meets the statutory thresholds in Civil Code section 1798.140(d) in a given year.

• Right to know. The categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you, the sources, the purposes, and the categories of recipients.
• Right to delete. Deletion of personal information we collected from you, subject to the exceptions in Civil Code section 1798.105(d).
• Right to correct. Correction of inaccurate personal information.
• Right to opt out of sale or sharing. As stated in Section 5, we do neither.
• Right to limit use of sensitive personal information. As stated in Section 5, we already confine such use to permitted purposes.
• Right to non-discrimination. We will not deny you services, charge you a different price, or provide a different level of service because you exercised a privacy right.

An important limit. Where information is part of a client file or is subject to the attorney-client privilege, the attorney work-product doctrine, or our duty of confidentiality under Business and Professions Code section 6068(e), we may be legally required to retain it and may be unable to delete it. We will tell you if that is the reason for a denial.

How to make a request

Call (888) 660-4529 or email docs@richharrislaw.com with the subject line “California Privacy Request.” Tell us which right you are exercising. We will acknowledge within ten business days and respond within forty-five calendar days, and we will tell you if we need a permitted forty-five-day extension. Requests may also be sent by U.S. mail to the address above.

We must verify your identity before acting, and we will match the information you give us against what we hold. An authorized agent may submit a request on your behalf with your signed permission; we may still contact you directly to confirm. If we deny a request, you may ask us to reconsider by replying to our response.

Shine the Light

California Civil Code section 1798.83 permits California residents to ask a business annually about personal information it disclosed to third parties for those parties’ own direct marketing. We do not make such disclosures. Requests may be sent to the email address above.

10. Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical and physical safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information we hold, including encryption in transit across this website. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. Please re-read Section 3 before sending anything sensitive.

11. Links to other websites

This site links to county coroner offices, funeral and probate providers, state agencies, court websites and similar resources. Those sites are not operated by us and have their own privacy practices. We are not responsible for their content or their handling of your information, and we recommend you review the privacy statement of each external website that collects personal information.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. When we do, we will revise the effective date at the top of this page. If a change materially affects how we handle information already collected from you, we will provide a more prominent notice on this page before the change takes effect. Continued use of the site after the effective date means you accept the revised policy.

13. Contact

Rich Harris, A Law Corporation
8175 Limonite Avenue, Suite A
Riverside, CA 92509
(888) 660-4529
docs@richharrislaw.com

If you use a screen reader or assistive technology and have difficulty accessing any part of this policy, call the office and we will provide it in an alternative format at no charge.