Privacy Policy

Law Office of G.W. Mears LLC (“we,” “us,” “the firm”) respects your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect when you use gwmearslaw.com or any of our case-specific landing pages, how we use it, who we share it with, and your rights regarding that information.

Information We Collect

Depending on which form you fill out and how you reach us, we may collect the following:

• Contact information: name, email address, mobile phone number, mailing address, state of residence, and any other information you choose to share in a message field.
• Matter information: facts you provide about your legal situation, including documents, photographs, receipts, contracts, communications with third parties, and other materials you upload through our intake forms.
• Communication preferences and consents: your choices about whether we can contact you by email, phone, or text message, along with the date, time, and language of the consent you provided.
• Information about third parties: if your matter involves a co-buyer, co-signer, spouse, employer, or other person, you may provide information about that person. We treat that information as confidential to the extent applicable law and our professional obligations require.
• Conflict-check information: we may collect the names of opposing parties, related parties, prior counsel, and other people or entities necessary to determine whether we have a conflict of interest that prevents us from representing you.
• Marketing source and traffic information: the URL of the page you arrived on, referring URL, the campaign or ad you clicked, certain URL parameters used for advertising attribution (e.g., UTM codes), and the date, time, and IP address of your submission. This information helps us understand which outreach efforts reach people who may have legal claims and tells us nothing about your browsing on other sites.
• Communications: the content of emails, text messages, and call recordings or notes (if any) exchanged with the firm in connection with your matter.

We do not knowingly use third-party advertising cookies, behavioral tracking, or analytics that profile you across other websites.

How We Use This Information

We use the information you submit to:

• Respond to your inquiry and evaluate whether we (alone or with co-counsel) may be able to assist you with your legal matter;
• Conduct conflict-of-interest checks before agreeing to represent you;
• Communicate with you about your matter, including by email, phone, and (with your consent) text message;
• Provide legal services if we agree to represent you, including communicating with co-counsel, experts, opposing parties, courts, claims administrators, and other parties as necessary to advance your matter;
• Send class-member notices and other litigation-related communications that may be required by court order or by applicable law if a class is certified in a matter where you are a class member;
• Improve our intake processes and understand which outreach efforts produce qualified inquiries; and
• Comply with our legal and professional-conduct obligations.

We do not sell or rent your information. We do not use it for unrelated marketing communications.

Text Messages and Phone Calls

If you check the SMS-consent box on an intake form, you agree to the following:

By checking this box, I expressly agree that Law Office of G.W. Mears LLC and its agents may contact me at the phone number I provided using automated technology, including auto-dialed calls and text messages. Consent is not a condition of representation. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP at any time to opt out, or HELP for help. Mobile opt-in information is not shared with or sold to third parties for their marketing purposes.

Texts the firm sends are for transactional and customer-care purposes only — intake follow-up, scheduling, document requests, signing reminders, and case status updates. The firm does not use SMS for marketing or promotional outreach, lead-recruitment campaigns, or class-rep candidate nurture sequences. The firm honors revocation requests made by any reasonable method within ten business days, consistent with 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(a)(10).

Service Providers

The firm uses a small number of trusted third-party services to operate the website, host our email, manage intake, and communicate with clients. Each provider acts as a service provider or processor for the firm and is bound to use information only to provide services to us. The current list:

• Hostinger — web hosting for gwmearslaw.com and case-specific landing pages.
• Formspree — contact-form submission processing on the public website.
• Law Ruler (a ProfitSolv company) — customer relationship management, intake-form processing, automated communications, document storage, and matter management.
• Twilio — SMS messaging carried by Law Ruler.
• Google Workspace — email hosting, calendaring, and document storage for the firm.
• DocuSign or comparable e-signature provider — engagement-letter signing.
• Co-counsel firms — certain matters are handled jointly with co-counsel (currently Levetown Law, PLLC). Information you provide may be shared with co-counsel as necessary to evaluate and advance your matter.

This list may change. The list above reflects the current configuration as of the effective date of this policy.

Confidentiality Limitations

Information you send through this website or through any of our intake forms is not protected by the attorney-client privilege unless and until you sign a written representation agreement with the firm. Please do not include sensitive or confidential information in your initial contact. If such information is needed to evaluate your matter, we will request it through a more secure channel after initial discussion.

Retention

We generally retain inquiry records for up to seven years after the date we close the inquiry or decline representation, after which the information may be deleted or anonymized. Records for matters in which we agree to represent you (or in which you remain a putative class member in a class action we are prosecuting) are retained for the period required by our professional-conduct obligations and applicable record-retention rules, which is typically longer. You may request deletion of your information at any time by emailing inquiries@gwmearslaw.com; we will honor the request to the extent consistent with our legal and professional obligations, and we will tell you if any information must be retained.

Security and Breach Notification

We take reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect information you submit, including encryption in transit and at rest where supported by our service providers. No system is perfectly secure, however. If a breach of personal information occurs, we will notify affected individuals and applicable regulators as required by Maryland’s Personal Information Protection Act, Md. Code Comm. Law § 14-3501 et seq., and any other applicable state or federal breach-notification law.

Your Rights

Depending on the state where you live, you may have the right to request access to the personal information we hold about you, request correction or deletion of that information, opt out of certain uses, and (in some states) appeal a denial of a privacy-rights request. To exercise any of these rights, email inquiries@gwmearslaw.com.

Specific state laws that may give you additional rights include:

• California Consumer Privacy Act (as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act)
• Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act
• Colorado Privacy Act
• Connecticut Data Privacy Act
• Utah Consumer Privacy Act
• Texas Data Privacy and Security Act
• Florida Digital Bill of Rights
• Other state comprehensive privacy laws now in effect or coming into effect (Oregon, Montana, Iowa, Indiana, Tennessee, Delaware, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and others)

We do not sell personal information. We do not engage in “targeted advertising” as those terms are defined under state privacy laws. We do not engage in “profiling” that produces legal or similarly significant effects on you.

Children’s Information

This website is not directed to children under the age of 18, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe we have inadvertently collected information from a child, please contact us so we can delete it.

Users Outside the United States

This website is operated from the United States and is intended for users in the United States. If you submit information from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States, which may have different privacy laws than your country of residence.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The effective date above will reflect the most recent revision. Material changes will be communicated through the website or, where appropriate, by direct notice to people whose information we hold.

Contact

For privacy questions or requests:
Gilbert W. Mears
inquiries@gwmearslaw.com
4328 Farragut Street, #1007
Hyattsville, MD 20781