Privacy policy

Who we are and what this policy covers

518 evictions, PLLC (“we”) is a New York law firm that represents landlords and property owners in eviction cases in courts in Albany, Schenectady, Rensselaer, and Saratoga counties.

This policy covers 518evictions.com and the calls, emails, and letters we exchange with you about a matter. It does not cover other websites we link to. If we accept your matter, your engagement terms may add to this policy.

Our duty of confidentiality comes first

As a law firm, we are bound by the New York Rules of Professional Conduct (22 NYCRR Part 1200). Under those rules:

• Confidential information we learn while representing a client is protected, whatever its source (Rule 1.6(a)).
• That duty continues after a matter ends (Rule 1.9(c)).
• Information from a prospective client is protected even if we never take the case (Rule 1.18(b)). If you’re a landlord or owner asking us to represent you, what you tell us or send us about the matter is protected this way, whether or not we accept it. Our disclaimer explains when we start representing you.
• We must make reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorized access to, or disclosure of, this information (Rule 1.6(c)).

This policy does not reduce those duties. If anything here conflicts with them, the duties control.

What we collect

Information you give us

When you contact us about a case, by email or mail, we collect:

• Your name and contact details.
• What you tell us about the property, the tenants, and the rent or what happened.
• The documents you send us, such as a lease or a rent ledger.
• A record of your acceptance of our engagement terms.
• Records of your payments to us.

Public and government records

To confirm facts and prepare a case, we may check court dockets, property ownership and tax records, New York Department of State business entity records, and the U.S. Department of Defense’s military status database.

Technical information

• Our hosting provider receives standard technical data when it delivers a page, such as your IP address, browser and device type, the pages you request, and the time.

Information about tenants and other people

What you tell us about a case includes information about people who are not our clients, such as the names of tenants and occupants and their contact details if you have them. The documents you send us, such as a lease or ledger, also relate to them. You may also tell us about co-owners, property managers, or subsidy program staff.

Tenants and occupants did not choose to share this information with us. We use it only to evaluate and handle the matter, check for conflicts, and meet court requirements. We keep it with the rest of the matter, under the same safeguards, and we don’t use it for anything else, except the record-keeping and legal purposes this policy describes.

Please share only information you have the right to share.

How we use information

We use information to:

• Evaluate your matter, run our conflict check, and decide whether to accept it. The Rules require us to make reasonable efforts to inquire into and assess the facts and circumstances of each prospective engagement (Rule 1.16(a)).
• Represent you, including notices, filings, court appearances, and communication about your case.
• Process payments and send receipts.
• Send you updates about your matter by email.
• Keep the records the Rules require, including conflict records (Rule 1.10(e)) and financial records (Rule 1.15(d)).
• Protect the site and your file, and look into misuse.
• Meet our legal obligations (Rule 1.6(b)(6)), and defend against accusations of wrongful conduct or establish or collect our fees (Rule 1.6(b)(5)).

How we share information

We share information only as your matter, our practice, or the law requires. For client information, that means only as Rule 1.6 allows: with your consent, when sharing is impliedly authorized to advance your interests in the case, or under one of the rule’s exceptions (Rule 1.6(a) and (b)).

Service providers

These providers process information for us:

• Vercel: website hosting.
• Google Workspace: email hosting for support@518evictions.com.

Each of them is bound by confidentiality or data-processing terms.

We don’t use call tracking, and we don’t record calls.

For conflict checks, our attorney checks the names in each matter against our client and adverse-party records, and against those of Seraj Law, PLLC, a separate law firm where he also practices, because his duties to that firm’s clients carry over to his work here (Rules 1.7, 1.9, and 1.10(a)). He runs these checks himself, and the names aren’t shared with anyone else at Seraj Law, PLLC.

People and offices involved in your case

• Courts. Papers we file name the parties and describe the claim, and they generally become public records (Judiciary Law 255; 22 NYCRR 216.1).
• Process servers, who deliver notices and court papers to tenants and occupants.
• The county sheriff or marshal service that executes warrants where the property is, if a warrant issues and you ask us to coordinate removal.
• Subsidy program administrators, such as a public housing authority for a Section 8 voucher, when a notice must go to them (24 CFR 982.310(e)(2)(ii)) or when you ask us to contact them.
• The Department of Defense’s military status database, which we search using a tenant’s identifying information. Before a court enters a default judgment, the landlord must file an affidavit stating whether the tenant is in military service, or that the landlord could not determine it (50 U.S.C. 3931(b)(1)). Before seeking any default judgment, we run the search ourselves whenever we have the details it requires. For it, we use a tenant’s date of birth if you have it, and we never ask for a Social Security number.
• Tenants, occupants, their lawyers, and court staff, in notices, filings, settlement talks, and hearings, as the case requires.
• People you ask us to share with, such as a co-owner or property manager.

Legal requirements

We may share information when the Rules of Professional Conduct permit or require it, or to comply with a law or court order (Rule 1.6(b)(6)). We may also share it to get legal advice about our own compliance, to establish or collect a fee, or to defend against an accusation of wrongful conduct (Rule 1.6(b)(4) and (5)).

No sale and no advertising use

We don’t sell personal information. We don’t share it with anyone for their own marketing or advertising, and we don’t give tenant information to tenant screening companies.

We don’t use advertising pixels, heatmaps, or session replay tools on this site.

Cookies and analytics

This site doesn’t set analytics or advertising cookies, and it doesn’t run analytics or advertising tags.

How we protect information

This site is served only over an encrypted connection (HTTPS). What you tell us and send us is protected by our duty of confidentiality, described above.

No system is perfectly secure. Regular email can be misdirected or intercepted, so please send only the documents we ask for.

If there is a data breach

If a breach of our systems exposes private information, we will notify the people affected as the law requires, including under New York’s breach notice law (GBL 899-aa), which requires notice without unreasonable delay and within a set deadline. We will also tell any client whose matter is affected.

How long we keep information

• Engagement agreements and bills: at least seven years (Rule 1.15(d)(1)).
• We keep client files for seven years after a matter closes, then delete them securely, unless a legal hold applies.
• Matters we decline, or that you withdraw before we accept them: we keep the names of the people and the property involved so our conflict checks stay accurate (Rule 1.18(c), and the conflict-checking system Rule 1.10(e) requires). We keep any letter declining the matter, and we delete or return other documents 90 days after we decline or you withdraw.
• Our hosting provider shows us its request logs for one day, and we don’t copy them elsewhere. Its own privacy policy covers any records it keeps.

Papers filed in court stay in the court’s record, whatever we delete from our own systems.

Your choices and requests

• Copies. Clients may ask for a copy of their file at any time.
• Corrections. Tell us if something we have is wrong. Corrections to papers already filed go through the court.
• Deletion. Ask us to delete information. We will, unless we must keep it to meet our legal or ethical duties, such as conflict records, required financial records, and client files.
• Email. Emails about an open matter are part of our service.

We may need to confirm your identity before we act on a request.

If you are a tenant, occupant, or anyone else whose information a landlord gave us, you can contact us with questions. Unless you are our client, we represent the landlord or owner, not you, so we can’t give you legal advice. If you have a lawyer in a case we filed, please have your lawyer contact us (Rule 4.2). Our duty of confidentiality to our clients may limit what we can tell you (Rule 1.6).

Children

This site is for adults. We don’t knowingly collect information from children under 18 through the site.

Changes to this policy

We will post any change here with a new effective date. We’ll email clients about a material change at least 14 days before it takes effect. We keep copies of earlier versions.

Contact us

• Mail: 518 evictions, PLLC, 401 New Karner Road, Suite 102, Albany, NY 12205
• Email: support@518evictions.com