What this site collects, why, for how long, and how to exercise your rights.
Last updated · 16 September 2026
The controller of contact data is BDG Lawyers/Avocats, whose registered office is at 200-880, rue Roy Est, Montréal (Québec) H2L 1E6, Canada. It is the firm you write to, and the firm that answers for your data.
Simple Avenue Inc., the site’s publisher, provides hosting and maintenance as a processor, on the firm’s behalf and instructions. It neither uses nor stores the content of contact enquiries: that content merely passes through the technical relay described below, for the time it takes to deliver it to the firm.
Person responsible for the protection of personal information under Québec’s Law 25: Frédéric Burot, founding partner and President of the firm — fburot@bdglaw.com · +1 438-522-7060 · 200-880, rue Roy Est, Montréal (Québec) H2L 1E6, Canada.
For any question about your data: info@bdglaw.com.
No analytics tool is installed: no Google Analytics, no equivalent. The firm does not measure traffic to its site, and no advertising tracker is set.
Only one item is kept in your browser: your answer to the consent banner, held in local storage so that you are not asked again on every page. It contains nothing but “accepted” or “declined”, is never sent to the firm, and you can change it at any time through the “Manage cookies” link in the footer.
Typefaces are hosted on the site’s own domain. Apart from the map described below, no resource is loaded from a third-party server, on any page.
The Contact page offers a map for each of the three offices. These maps come from Google Maps, a third-party service: it is the only third-party content on this site, and it is the reason the consent banner exists.
Until you have answered the banner, no data is sent to Google. If you accept, the maps are displayed — on this visit and on later ones — and Google receives your IP address and may set its own trackers, under its own terms and privacy policy, over which the firm has no control.
If you decline, the maps are not loaded and nothing is sent to Google. Each office’s postal address remains readable, and the “Directions” link opens Google Maps in a new tab, entirely at your own initiative.
Two forms let you write to the firm.
Data from the contact form is used solely to handle and answer your enquiry. Legal basis: steps taken at your request prior to entering into a contract, or the firm’s legitimate interest in replying (GDPR articles 6.1.b and 6.1.f). In Québec, this processing is necessary for the purposes for which the information is collected.
The fields requested are those needed to reply to you. Without them, the firm cannot handle the enquiry.
The address given through the sign-up form is used solely to send you the firm’s communications. Legal basis: your consent, which you may withdraw at any time.
Your data serves no other purpose. It is never sold, rented or passed on for commercial purposes, and no automated decision is taken on the basis of it.
Your data is accessible only to those lawyers and staff of the firm who need it, all bound by professional secrecy.
Neither form — the contact form nor the newsletter sign-up — uses a form-collection service. Your submission goes from your browser to a technical relay dedicated to the firm, operated on its behalf by Simple Avenue Inc. on the infrastructure of Render Services, Inc. (United States). That relay retains neither the content of your message nor your address: it hands it to the firm’s mailbox immediately and keeps no record of it.
Delivery is made through Microsoft Graph, using an authorization restricted to the single mailbox formulaire@bdglaw.com, from which the message is addressed to info@bdglaw.com.
Simple Avenue Inc., the publisher and host of the site, acts as a processor for the firm in respect of the site and of that relay, under a written processing agreement meeting the requirements of GDPR article 28 and section 18.3 of Québec’s Law 25. It acts solely on the firm’s instructions, is not a recipient of your data in its own right and makes no use of it.
The firm’s mailbox is hosted on Microsoft 365: Microsoft acts in that respect as a processor for the firm, hosting the messages it receives.
Newsletter sign-up only: your email address, your IP address and the language of the page are additionally passed to Mailchimp, a newsletter delivery service operated by Intuit Inc. (United States), where the firm keeps its mailing list and from which it sends its communications — mailchimp.com/legal/privacy. The contact form sends nothing to that service: its content does not leave the journey described above.
No other recipient.
At the technical relay: no retention. The relay has no database and no file storage, and logs only which form was submitted — never its content, never your address.
In the firm’s mailbox: this is where your message is archived, and it is this retention that rests with the firm and its professional obligations. Message with no follow-up: two years from receipt, then deletion.
Exchange that led to a matter being opened: the data follows the matter, under the retention obligations applicable to the profession.
Address on the mailing list: it is held by Mailchimp, on the firm’s behalf, until you unsubscribe. Every communication carries an unsubscribe link, and you may also write to info@bdglaw.com. After you unsubscribe, your address remains recorded there as “unsubscribed”: that is what ensures no further communication is sent to you.
Technical logs: the host keeps connection logs for the operation and security of the service, under its own policies — render.com/privacy. The firm has no access to them.
The site is served by Render Services, Inc. (United States) through a global content delivery network. Like any web server, it records visitors' IP addresses in its technical logs, solely for operation and security.
The transfers outside the European Union involved are as follows: your IP address to Render’s points of presence; the content of your message to the firm’s technical relay, hosted by Render in the United States, which does not retain it; and then the message to the firm’s mailbox, hosted in Canada. For a newsletter sign-up only, a transfer of your email address and IP address to Mailchimp, in the United States, is added to that list. No form-collection service, no spam-filtering service and no other third party takes part in that journey.
Safeguards for transfers to the United States: Render and Intuit, for Mailchimp, each publish a data processing agreement providing for the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses for transfers not covered by an adequacy decision — render.com/dpa and mailchimp.com/legal/data-processing-addendum.
The firm’s mailbox: it is hosted on Microsoft 365, with its data located in Canada. The message’s final leg therefore ends in Canada, not in the United States.
Transfer to Canada: Canada benefits from a European Commission adequacy decision, limited to organizations subject to the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. For a transfer falling outside the scope of that decision, the standard contractual clauses apply.
Where the GDPR applies to you, you have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability, together with the right to withdraw consent at any time and to give directions on what happens to your data after your death.
Where Québec’s Law 25 applies to you, you have rights of access, rectification, withdrawal of consent, cessation of dissemination, de-indexing, and portability.
These rights are exercised by email to info@bdglaw.com or by post to the registered office. You will receive a reply within thirty days.
If you consider that your rights have not been respected, you may contact the Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL) — Service des plaintes, 3, place de Fontenoy, 75007 Paris — cnil.fr/fr/plaintes.
In Québec, you may contact the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec — 2045, rue Stanley, bureau 900, Montréal (Québec) H3A 2V4, or 525, boulevard René-Lévesque Est, bureau 2.36, Québec (Québec) G1R 5S9 — 1 888 528-7741 — cai.gouv.qc.ca.
This policy may change to reflect developments in the site or in the law. The date of last update appears at the top of the page.