Community Rules & Etiquette and Privacy Guidelines
Thank you for being part of our community. To ensure the best possible experience for all members, we have established some basic guidelines for participation.
By joining and using this community, you agree that you have read and will follow these rules and guidelines. You also agree to reserve discussions and shared files and content to that best suited to the medium. This is a great medium with which to solicit the advice of your peers, benefit from their experience, and participate in an ongoing conversation. Questions should be directed to our member services department via the Contact Us link on this site.
Please take a moment to acquaint yourself with these important guidelines. If you have questions, or are unsure whether your post is appropriate, please contact the NSBA Executive Director for guidance. In order to preserve an environment that encourages both civil and fruitful dialogue, we reserve the right to suspend or terminate membership in this community for anyone who violates these rules and delete any posts deemed in violation of the guidelines.
The Rules
- Respect others. Focus on the content of posts and not on the people making them. Please extend the benefit of the doubt to newer guests and members; there’s no such thing as a stupid question.
- All defamatory, abusive, profane, threatening, offensive, or illegal materials are strictly prohibited. Any expression that constitutes a true threat, incitement to imminent lawless action, discriminatory harassment or defamation will not be tolerated.
- Respect Client Confidentiality: Consistent with the American Bar Association’s Formal Ethics Opinion 511, under Rule 1.6 lawyers are prohibited from posting questions or comments relating to a representation to a online community, even in hypothetical or abstract form, without the client’s informed consent if there is a reasonable likelihood that the lawyer’s questions or comments will disclose information relating to the representation that would allow a reader then or later to infer the identity of the lawyer’s client or the situation involved. A lawyer may, however, participate in online communities discussions such as those related to legal news, recent decisions, or changes in the law, without a client’s informed consent if the lawyer’s contributions will not disclose, or be reasonably likely to lead to the disclosure of, information relating to a client representation. Indeed, careful lawyers will often be able to use online communities to ask fellow practitioners for cases and articles on topics, for forms and checklists, and for information on how various jurisdictions address a court-connected concern without enabling other lawyers to identify the lawyer’s client or the situation involved.
- Respect the purpose of the community. Use the community to share successes, challenges, constructive feedback, questions, and goals instead of products or services that you provide. If you’ve found a product or service helpful, please share your experience with the group in a respectful way.
- Use caution when discussing products. Information posted on the discussion groups and in the libraries is available for all to see, and comments are subject to libel, slander, and antitrust laws.
- Respect intellectual property. Post content that you have personally created or have permission to use and have properly attributed to the content creator.
- When posting items in our collaborative environment, please indicate if the item is not available for reuse. It’s also advisable to contact the owner of any material if you would like to reuse it.
- Post your message or documents only to the most appropriate communities. This helps ensure all messages receive the best response by eliminating "noise."
- Include a signature tag on all messages. Include your name, affiliation, location, and e-mail address.
Discussion Group Etiquette
- State concisely and clearly the topic of your comments in the subject line. This allows members to respond more appropriately to your posting and makes it easier for members to search the archives by subject.
- Send messages such as "thanks for the information" or "me, too" to individuals, not to the entire list. Do this by using the "Reply to Sender" link in every message.
- Do not send administrative messages, such as “remove me from the list,” to the group. Instead, use the web interface to change your settings or to remove yourself from a list. If you are changing email addresses, you do not need to remove yourself from the list and rejoin under your new email address. Simply change your settings.
The Legal Stuff
This site is provided as a service for the members of Nebraska State Bar Association. Nebraska State Bar Association is not responsible for the opinions and information posted on this site by others. We disclaim all warranties with regard to information posted on this site, whether posted by Nebraska State Bar Association or any third party; this disclaimer includes all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness. In no event shall Nebraska State Bar Association be liable for any special, indirect, or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data, or profits, arising out of or in connection with the use or performance of any information posted on this site.
Do not post any defamatory, abusive, profane, threatening, offensive, or illegal materials. Do not post any information or other material protected by copyright without the permission of the copyright owner. By posting material, the posting party warrants and represents that he or she owns the copyright with respect to such material or has received permission from the copyright owner. In addition, the posting party grants Nebraska State Bar Association and users of this site the nonexclusive right and license to display, copy, publish, distribute, transmit, print, and use such information or other material.
Messages should not be posted if they encourage or facilitate members to arrive at any agreement that either expressly or impliedly leads to price fixing, a boycott of another's business, or other conduct intended to illegally restrict free trade. Messages that encourage or facilitate an agreement about the following subjects are inappropriate: prices, discounts, or terms or conditions of sale; salaries; profits, profit margins, or cost data; market shares, sales territories, or markets; allocation of customers or territories; or selection, rejection, or termination of customers or suppliers.
Nebraska State Bar Association does not actively monitor the site for inappropriate postings and does not on its own undertake editorial control of postings. However, in the event that any inappropriate posting is brought to the attention of Nebraska State Bar Association we will take all appropriate action.
Nebraska State Bar Association reserves the right to terminate access to any user who does not abide by these guidelines.
Last Updated July, 2024.
Privacy Policy
NEBRASKA STATE BAR ASSOCIATION
Privacy Policy
I. INTRODUCTION
This Privacy Policy explains how the Nebraska State Bar Association (“NSBA”, “we,” or “our”) collects, uses, shares, and safeguards Personal Information and Non-Personal Information on all sites owned or operated by NSBA, including but not limited to www.nebar.com (the “Sites”), as well as by phone, in hard copy, or in any other form. This Privacy Policy applies to all NSBA members and all other users of the Sites.
II. CONSENT AND CHANGES TO THE PRIVACY POLICY
By submitting Personal Information or Non-Personal Information to NSBA, each user or member consents to our collection and use of information as specified in this Privacy Policy. NSBA may amend the Privacy Policy at any time, for any reason. The Privacy Policy’s effective date is listed at the bottom of this page. If we change this Privacy Policy, we will post a revised version on this web page. Each user or member will be deemed to accept those revisions each time he or she
provides information to us following our publication of the revised Privacy Policy. We may use comments, information, or feedback that our users or members submit in any manner that we may choose without notice or compensation to them.
III. TYPES OF INFORMATION WE COLLECT
A. Personal Information
We collect some information that could be used to personally identify individual people (“Personal Information”). NSBA Sites collect this information for a variety of business reasons, including but not limited to processing member applications, administering events or programs, and selling products or services. The types of Personal Information we collect include, but are not limited to:
- Contact Information (e.g., names, dates of birth, home and business addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers)
- Professional Information (e.g., bar number, bar exam passage date, law firm name)
- Government-issued identification numbers (e.g., social security numbers, national identification numbers, or tax identification numbers)
- Photographic Information (e.g., portraits of our members)
- Financial Information (e.g., credit and debit card numbers, credit reports, passwords, and PIN numbers)
- Sensitive Personal Information (e.g., racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, or disability)
NSBA also receives Personal Information from third parties for NSBA’s use in marketing to potential new members or administering its current roster, such as the Nebraska State Bar Commission or the Nebraska Supreme Court.
B. Non-Personal Information
We collect other information that does not directly identify our members or users as they interact with our Sites (“Non-Personal Information”). The types of Non-Personal Information we collect include, but are not limited to the following topics:
- Site usage (e.g., browsing history, search terms, number of clicks, referring/exit pages, date/time stamp, time on Site)
- Products or services viewed, including advertisements for such products or services
- Computer type, operating system and platform type
- Internet service provider
- Industry and business information (e.g., company size and location, job functions, or seniority levels)
IV. HOW WE USE PERSONAL AND NON-PERSONAL INFORMATION
We use Personal Information and Non-Personal Information in order to, among other things:
- Identify our users when they visit our Sites
- Provide service communications such as bill reminders, order confirmations, program registrations and customer service messages
- Provide information about products or services that our users request or in which we think they may be interested
- Respond to users’ emails or online requests for products, services, or information
- Deliver and process surveys
- Personalize and improve the usability of the Sites
- Fulfill or deliver NSBA products and services
- Tailor content, advertising and marketing to our users
- Publish membership directories, membership lists and registration lists to allow our users to find our members; such directories and lists will not include credit card information or personal identification numbers such as Social Security Numbers, as set forth in the Contact Information section below
- Improve the usability of our Sites
- Provide advertisements and targeted advertisements to our members or users based upon
Non-Personal Information
V. HOW WE SHARE PERSONAL INFORMATION
We share Personal Information, sometimes combined with Non-Personal Information, in a variety of ways including, but not limited to those below:
- We may share information with third parties to fulfill service requests and to perform business functions, such as information hosting services; packaging, mailing and delivering services; customer support and consulting services; and event registration services.
- We may share information with third parties as required by law or to protect NSBA if we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary in order to conform to legal requirements or comply with legal process served on NSBA; protect and defend NSBA’s rights or property; or protect the personal safety of NSBA personnel or members of the public in appropriate circumstances.
- We may share information with third parties in order to offer products and services that may be of interest to our users or members professionally or personally (e.g., business software solutions or member product discounts) in accordance with our Mailing List Policy. Users may request that their information be removed from such lists by contacting us as provided below.
- We may share information with third parties under other unanticipated situations, but only with a member’s or user’s consent.
VI. HOW MEMBERS CAN MANAGE THE PROCESSING OF THEIR INFORMATION
Members can manage all profile and email preferences through our online membership portal at www.nebar.com/members. We process data based upon our members’ or users’ consent, contract performance (e.g., purchase of products or membership sign-up/renewal), legitimate business interest (e.g., direct marketing of goods and services), or compliance with law. Members or users that have consented to the processing of Personal Information have a right to withdraw their consent at any time. To exercise these or other rights, members or users may contact us as provided in the Contact Information section below.
VII. CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS
In addition to the rights as explained in this Privacy Policy, under California’s “Shine the Light” law, California residents who provide personal information (as defined in the statute) to obtain products or services for personal, family, or household use are entitled to request and obtain from us, once a calendar year, information about the personal information we shared, if any, with other businesses for marketing uses. Where applicable, this information includes the categories of Personal Information and the names and addresses of those businesses with which we shared such personal information for the immediately prior calendar year (e.g., requests made in the current year will receive information about the prior year). To obtain this information, members or users may contact us as provided in the Contact Information section below and include a full name, preferred contact information (mailing address or email address), and State Bar Number, if applicable.
VIII. CHILDREN
We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from or market to children under the age of 13. If we learn that we have inadvertently obtained the Personal Information of a person under the age of 13, we will delete it.
IX. HOW WE PROTECT PERSONAL INFORMATION
NSBA implements commercially reasonable security measures to help protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure, or destruction of information. Except for membership directories, membership lists and registration lists, and the sharing of information as set forth in this Privacy Policy or the Mailing List Policy, we restrict access to Personal Information to certain companies who need the information to operate, develop, or improve our services. These individuals or partner organizations are bound by confidentiality obligations and may be subject to discipline, including termination and criminal prosecution, if they fail to meet these obligations.
Unfortunately, no information transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is perfectly secure. Accordingly, and despite our reasonable efforts to protect all Personal Information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure, NSBA cannot guarantee or warrant the security of the Personal Information transmitted to us, or to or from our online Sites. Members or users with questions about this Privacy Policy may contact us as provided in the Contact Information section below.
X. USER ID AND PASSWORD
Certain areas of the Sites require the use of a user ID and password as an additional security measure that helps protect our members’ Personal Information. To help our members protect their privacy, the Sites have tools to help our members log in and out. These functions may not work properly in web browsers that do not accept cookies or use certain other settings.
XI. LINKING TO OTHER INTERNET SITES
Other Internet sites linked from the Sites or from an NSBA email message may contain privacy provisions that differ from the provisions of this Privacy Policy. We recommend that all users review the privacy statements of these other linked sites, applications, or other digital platforms.
XII. SOCIAL FEATURES
Social Features. Certain functionality on the Sites is specifically designed to permit interactions that members or users initiate between the Sites and third party websites or services, including third party social networks (“Social Features”). Examples of Social Features include enabling members or users to transmit content to the Sites from their account on a third party website or service, or to “like,” “share,” other otherwise interact with content on the Sites using other websites
or services. If they choose to use Social Features, information they post or provide access to may be publicly displayed on the Sites or by the provider of the Social Feature that they use. Similarly, if they post information on a third party platform that references NSBA (e.g., by using a hashtag associated with NSBA in a tweet or status update), their post may be published on the Sites in accordance with the terms of the third party website or service. In addition, both NSBA and the third party may have access to certain information about them and their use of the Sites and the third party site or service. In addition, we may receive information about them if other users of a third party website give us access to their profiles and they are one of those third-party users’ “connections,” or information about them is otherwise accessible through those third-party users’ “connections” web pages, profile pages, or similar pages on a social networking or other third party website or interactive service. The information we collect in connection with Social Features is subject to this Privacy Notice. The information collected and stored by the third parties remains subject to those third parties’ privacy practices, including whether the third parties continue to share information with us, the types of information shared, and their choices with regard to what is visible to others on those third party websites or services.
XIII. ACCESS, MODIFICATION, AND REMOVAL
Members can review, update and correct their through our online membership portal at www.nebar.com/members. We retain Personal Information for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law. This may include retaining some Personal Information indefinitely, even after our members have terminated their active membership, in order to provide them with future marketing opportunities and other purposes, or to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, or enforce any of our agreements. Any member or user may request that we delete all of his or her Personal Information, at any time, by contacting us as provided in the Contact Information section below, but the decision whether to delete such data remains in our sole discretion. We may decide to delete Personal Information if we believe that the information is incomplete, inaccurate, or that our continued use and storage of that Personal Information is contrary to our obligations to other members, individuals, or third parties. When we delete Personal Information, it will be removed from our active information databases or anonymized so that the information is no longer identified with a particular member or user, but the information may remain in our archives if NSBA determines that it is not practical or possible to delete it.
XIV. COOKIES AND OTHER WEB DEVICES
Our website sends cookies to our members’ or users’ web browsers (if the browser’s preferences allow it) to collect information when they browse our Sites. A cookie is a small piece of data that a browser stores in order to collect information, such as which portion of the Sites a member or user has visited in the past, in order to enhance that member’s or user’s next visit to the Web Properties. Most Internet browsers can be set to automatically reject some or all cookies. Members or users that view our website with a browser configured to accept any of our cookies consents to receive those cookies from our Sites. Some features and functionality of our Sites may not operate as expected if certain cookies are not allowed by the members’ or users’ browser. To find our more about cookies, visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org/. In addition to cookies, we place technological tools such as tags and beacons (e.g., code scripts that are primarily used to track members’ and users’ activities on our Sites by web analytics software), or other tools, to collect Non-Personal Information for the purposes listed in this Privacy Policy.
Most web browsers can automatically transmit a “Do Not Track” signal to websites and online services that members or users visit. There is no consensus among industry participants as to what “Do Not Track” means in this context. Like many websites and online services, the Sites currently do not alter their operations when they receive a “Do Not Track” signal from a visitor’s browser. To find out more about “Do Not Track,” members or users may wish to visit (www.allaboutdnt.com).
We may also enable third-party advertising networks, advertisers and ad servers to promote third party products or services by placing advertisements on the Sites. These advertisers and ad servers may use their own cookies or other web devices in order to monitor information related to those advertisements and our members and users’ use of the Sites. Clicking on any of those advertisements may direct members or users to the website of a third-party and the advertiser. This Privacy Policy does not cover the privacy practices of any advertisers or ad servers. For more information about third-party advertising, and to exercise choices regarding advertising customization by third-party ad networks, our members and users may wish to visit the Network Advertising Initiative website. (http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp).
XV. TRANSMISSION OF INFORMATION TO OTHER COUNTRIES
We only process Personal Information in the United States, whose privacy laws may be less stringent than the laws in other countries and whose government, courts, or law enforcement may be able to access our members’ or users’ information obtained pursuant to this Privacy Policy. By submitting Personal Information to us, our members and users agree to the transfer, storage and processing of Personal Information in and to the United States.
XVI. RIGHT TO COMPLAIN TO SUPERVISORY AUTHORITY
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679, “GDPR”) gives certain rights to European data subjects in relation to their personal data. NSBA does not intend, by publishing the Sites or otherwise, to offer its services to persons located in Europe. The Sites are hosted in the United States and are governed by United States law. NSBA does not represent that it is subject to or complies with the laws of any government or regulatory regime outside the United States of America. Personal Information or Browsing Information that is submitted when members or users use the Sites from outside the United States is transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States. Where GDPR applies both to members’ or users’ use of the Sites and to NSBA, we will only process personal data (as that term is defined under GDPR) when we have a legal basis to do so. Those bases may include our members’ or users’ consent, but we also may process those data in situations where our processing is necessary: for the performance services requested by our members or users; to comply with our legal obligations; to pursue our legitimate interests; or to establish or defend a legal claim. Where GDPR applies both to members’ or users’ use of the Sites and to NSBA, those members or users may have the following rights under some circumstances:
- The right request information about what personal information we have about them.
- The right to request rectification, deletion, and limitation of the processing (blocking) of their personal information as long as this is legally permissible and possible within the framework of an existing contractual relationship.
- The right to request a transfer of the personal information that they have provided us on the basis of a consent or a contract (data portability).
- If they have given us consent for personal information processing, the right to revoke it at any time in the same way that they granted it. Revocation of that consent will not affect the legality of the processing done before they revoked their consent.
To exercise these rights, members or users may contact us by one of the methods set forth in the Contact Information section below. We will respond to any such requests within thirty days. We may not be able to accommodate every request in every situation, but if that is the case, we will still notify the requester. We may charge an administrative fee for subsequent requests.
XVII. BREACH NOTIFICATION
In the event that Personal Information is inadvertently or maliciously disclosed in a manner contrary to this Privacy Policy, we will notify our members and users by email, US mail, telephone, or other means as required by law.
XVIII.CONTACT INFORMATION
Members and users may contact us as indicated below with questions, comments, or complaints concerning our privacy practices, or to change, access, or remove their Personal Information.
Nebraska State Bar Association
635 S. 14th Street, Ste 200
Lincoln, NE 68508
Lneeley@nebar.com
402-475-7091
Adopted October 18, 2018 by the NSBA House of Delegates