Anderssen Lawyers Pty Ltd recognise that your personal information is very important to you and we are committed to promoting confidence in the manner in which your personal information is handled by us.
PRIVACY POLICY
Anderssen Lawyers Pty Ltd recognise that your personal information is very important to you and we are committed to promoting confidence in the manner in which your personal information is handled by us. We abide by the Australian Privacy Principles for the protection of personal information, which means any information or an opinion about you from which your identity is apparent or can reasonably be ascertained, as set out in the Privacy Act (Cth) 1988. We do not collect personal information about you unless it is necessary for providing legal services or products to you. This privacy policy has been written to ensure that information is handled appropriately and applies to a person for whom we currently hold, or may in the future collect, personal information with the exclusion of employee records of our current and former employees.
WHAT TYPE OF INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?
The type of personal information we receive and store is your transaction information and any specific information you provide to us, such as your name; e-mail address, address (work or home), telephone number, occupation, the company for which you work and any services, financial information, business circumstances, family circumstances, information about assets and investments, employment history, gender, date and place of birth, insurance information, banking information, credit information, credit card details, expertise and interests, tax file numbers and verification of identity documents ie driver’s licence, passport or other photographic information, the products or areas of law that you have shown interest in from time to time. The personal information that we collect is used for undertaking the transaction the subject of any instructions from you; informing you of any coming events in the areas of law that interest you; providing you with articles or information on areas of law that may be of interest to you; and statistical purposes. With the personal information that we collect, we hope to improve the services, products and information that we provide to you. Note that if you do not provide full and complete information we may request, the legal and other services that we may provide to you will be more limited in nature.
HOW DO WE COLLECT PERSONAL INFORMATION?
We collect personal information directly from the individual to whom the personal information relates or through our referral network and/or through other sources such as professional advisors or agents for individuals who we act for, friends, family members and associates of the individual, banks and financial institutions, government bodies, insurance companies, businesses about their employees, contractors, customers or suppliers, barristers and other solicitors, feedback surveys and from paid search providers. We use cookies in a limited manner when you visit our web site. Cookies are not used by us to collect and store your personal information. A cookie is a small data file that is downloaded from our web site and stored on a text file on your hard drive. The information is made up of a string of letters and numbers which uniquely identifies your computer and any user name or password that you may have already registered on our web site. The information collected is used to authenticate or identify whether you are registered on our web site, without requiring you to re-enter details each time you log on to our web site. If at any time you do not wish to accept cookies or wish to delete existing cookies, you may manually configure your browser to refuse cookies or may manually delete existing cookies from your hard drive. However by deleting or refusing to accept cookies you may frustrate or hinder your access to or use of areas of our web site. We will only use your personal information for the purpose for which it was collected and any directly related purpose. We will not disclose your personal information to anyone without your consent, unless required to do so by law or that disclosure is to one our related offices for the purposes collected.
HOW DO WE STORE AND WHO HAS ACCESS TO PERSONAL INFORMATION?
To fulfil the purposes set out above we hold personal information electronically on hardware storage devices on our premises, smart devices, USB, CD, DVDs, third party physical storage providers located in Brisbane, Queensland, private cloud vendors and third party off-site backup storage providers in Australia. From time to time, we may provide access to personal information stored to our IT service providers, mailing house, accountants, industry auditors and insurers.
We take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. Once your personal information is no longer needed, we take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify it. Using e-mail and the Internet may not always be successful or secure. We cannot be held responsible for the security or confidentiality of any information sent to us by e-mail or over the Internet. We do not guarantee that personal information cannot be accessed by an unauthorised person (e.g. a hacker) or that unauthorised disclosures will not occur. Some of the methods we use to store and secure information include:
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using security cards to access areas that contain personal information;
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using secure username and PIN to access printers;
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using unique usernames, passwords and other protections on systems that can access personal information; and
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using an off-site, secure document storage provider for important documents such as Wills and other original documents.
WHY DO WE COLLECT, HOLD, USE OR DISCLOSE PERSONAL INFORMATION?
We take reasonable steps to use and disclose personal information for the primary purpose for which it is collected. The primary purpose for which information is collected varies, depending on the particular service being provided, but is generally to provide legal advice and services to an individual or their business. Personal information may also be used or disclosed by us for secondary purposes that are within the individual’s reasonable expectations and related to the primary purpose of collection. For example, we may use personal information for the following secondary purposes:
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to add an individual’s details to our legal education program list, to inform the individual of updates and changes to the law that may affect them and to invite them to legal events;
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to comply with our professional obligations; or
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to provide a referral.
We may disclose personal information:
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to other service providers or referral partners, in order to provide the legal service to the individual (for example, other solicitors, barristers, experts, accountants, insurers etc. as the context of the legal service requires);
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to government bodies (such as ASIC or the ATO);
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to paid search providers;
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with the consent of the individual to whom the information relates; and
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to third party contractors where it contracts out any financial, administrative, information technology or other services.
Otherwise, we will only disclose personal information to third parties with the relevant individual’s consent or if the disclosure is permitted by the Privacy Act.