1. What is your personal information?

When used in this Privacy Policy, the term “personal information” has the meaning given to it in the Privacy Act.  Personal information means information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether the information or opinion is true or not and whether or not it is recorded in material form.

2. What personal information do we collect and hold?

The personal information we collect and hold may include your name, employer and job title, telephone number, email address, postal address, legal services you are interested in (if you are a client or potential client) and other information about you, including financial details.

If you apply for employment with us, we may also collect and hold details of your employment history, educational qualifications and similar information.

We may need to collect and hold sensitive information about you if the information is reasonably necessary for one or more of our functions or activities.  When used in this Privacy Policy, the term “sensitive information” has the meaning given in the Privacy Act.  Some of the types of sensitive information we may collect and hold about you includes political opinions or health information.  If we do collect and hold any sensitive information about you, we will get your specific consent at the time the sensitive information is collected.

3. How do we collect your personal information?

We collect your personal information directly from you or the entity that you are an employee, director, partner or contractor of.  We may collect your personal information from you in a variety of ways, including in-person during your conversations with our employees or principals, over the phone or by email.

We may also collect personal information from the following third parties:
(a) our clients;
(b) any entity that you engage to interact with us, for example, if you engage another law firm and instruct that firm to contact us;
(c) public registers, such as court records or those maintained by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, or other publicly available sources such as social media;
(d) government agencies, regulators and similar bodies;
(e) your former employer, for example, if you provide your former employer’s details to us when you apply for a job;
(f) our business affiliates;
(g) our related companies; and
(h) recruitment agencies.

If it is otherwise unreasonable or impracticable to collect your personal information directly from you, we may also collect that personal information from other sources.

4. For what purposes do we collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information?

We collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for the purposes of carrying on our business, including:
(a) to provide our services to our clients;
(b) to manage our client and business relationships;
(c) to contract the provision of certain of our services to our clients to third parties such as other law firms and barristers;
(d) to organise functions, including legal seminars or roundtables;
(e) to send communications requested by you or other third parties, such as your employer and to answer enquiries and provide information to you or other third parties, such as your employer;
(f) to maintain and update our records;
(g) to process and respond to any complaint made by you, including by providing this information to our insurers;
(h) to recruit our employees;
(i) to enforce our agreements with you or any other rights we have against you or any other person;
(j) to detect, prevent, or investigate a matter relating to security, fraud or other technical issues;
(k) to comply with any law, rule, regulation, lawful and binding determination, decision or direction of a governmental authority or regulator or to cooperate with any governmental authority or regulator of any other country;
(l) if reasonably necessary to protect our intellectual property or to protect the safety of our employees, clients or the public;
(m) for the purpose of considering any merger with another business or sale of all or the majority of our assets or equity;
(n) where we are otherwise required or permitted by law to disclose your personal information; and
(o) for any other purpose approved by you.

When required for or in connection with any of the purposes listed above, we may disclose your personal information to our clients, our related companies, our contractors and service providers, web hosting providers, IT systems administrators, data storage providers, mailing houses, couriers, banks and payment processors, data entry service providers, electronic network administrators, debt collectors, any person with whom we may enter into any agreement for the merger or sale of all or part of our business, our professional advisors such as accountants, solicitors, business advisors and consultants and any other person or organisation approved by you.

5. Do we disclose your personal information to anyone outside Australia?

We may disclose personal information to our related bodies corporate, clients and third party service providers, suppliers and other contractual counterparties, in any case, located overseas for any of the purposes listed in section 4.

The jurisdictions in which these entities may be located include New Zealand, the United States of America and the United Kingdom.

6. How can I access or change information?

You may request access to any personal information we hold about you at any time by contacting us.  To make a request, please contact our Privacy Officer (see details below).  You may be asked to provide information to allow us to confirm your identity at the time a request is made.

As soon as practicable after your request is received, we will give you access to your personal information that you are entitled to receive.  There may be times when we cannot grant you access to your personal information that we hold.  For example, if access would unreasonably impact on the privacy of others or if it would result in a breach of law, we may not be required to grant you access.  We will let you know if you cannot access any of your personal information, and why that access cannot be provided, when we respond to your request for access to that information.

You may change and update certain personal information we hold about you by contacting our Privacy Officer (see details below).  If you believe that any other personal information we hold about you is incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate, you may request us to amend it by contacting our Privacy Officer (see details below).  We will consider if the information requires amendment.  If we do not agree that there are grounds for amendment then we will take reasonable steps to add a note to the personal information stating that you disagree with it.

We may, in our discretion, impose a charge on you for giving you access to your personal information, however that charge will not be excessive and will not apply simply as a result of you making a request for access to that information.  We will advise you if we intend to impose a charge, and the amount of the charge, before we provide you with access.

We will not charge you for making any corrections to your personal information held by us.

7. Holding your personal information and security

We take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information that we hold is protected from misuse, interference and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

Only our authorised personnel will be provided with access to your personal information that we hold.  These personnel are required to treat this information as confidential and deal with it in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

We cannot guarantee that the information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted over the internet.  Accordingly, any information which you transmit to us online is transmitted at your own risk.

Personal information is destroyed or de-identified when no longer needed by us.

If any personal information we hold is lost or subjected to unauthorised access, use, interference, modification, disclosure or other misuse (Data Breach), we will take all steps in relation to the Data Breach that are required by the Privacy Act.

8. Contact our Privacy Officer

If you have any questions in relation to your personal information or this Privacy Policy or any concerns or a complaint regarding the treatment of your personal information by us, please email our Privacy Officer at [email protected].

We will treat your request or complaint confidentially.  Our Privacy Officer will contact you within a reasonable time after receipt of your request or complaint to discuss your concerns and to outline options regarding how they may be resolved.

If you have a complaint regarding our treatment of your personal information that is not resolved by our Privacy Officer, you may be able to make a complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, see here.

9. Changes to our Privacy Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time and all personal information held by us will be governed by the most recent version of this Privacy Policy.  The most up to date version of this Privacy Policy is available on this website.

10. General Privacy Information

General information about privacy and your privacy rights may be found on the website of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner here.