MacGillivrays abides by the provisions of the Privacy Act (Commonwealth) 1988 ("the Act") which sets out 10 national privacy principles which regulate the way we handle your personal information.

The principles seek to ensure that personal information about a person is collected, used, stored and disclosed fairly.

This policy explains:

how we collect, use, store and disclose personal information about you; and

how to resolve any privacy issue you have with us.

When and how do we collect information about you?

We collect personal information from you when you:

engage us to act on your behalf in a matter;

seek our legal advice or assistance;

you request information about us or the services we provide;

request that we act as your agent or provide legal services to you;

are involved in a matter and we represent another party to that matter.

When acting for you, in most circumstances we collect personal information directly from you. We also obtain information about you from publically available registers or agencies.

Where we are not acting for you we usually obtain information about you from our client or its service providers, through legal process or through publically available registers or agencies.

The kinds of personal information we collect and store may include:

name
address
date of birth
telephone numbers
email addresses
fax numbers
bank account details
health records
financial records
business details
property details
in family law matters, details of your relationship with your spouse, partner, ex-spouse, ex-partner, children and other family members.

In some circumstances, such as in an action for personal injuries, we may also collect information that is classed by the Act to be ‘sensitive information' such as health information.

We only collect information about you by lawful and fair means and will not collect information about you in an unreasonably intrusive way.

How do we use personal information about you?

Subject to the particular circumstances of the matter, we may use your personal information in one of more of the following ways:

if we are acting for you, to provide the services you requested or require;

if we are not acting for you to provide our client with the services they requested or required;

to provide you with information about the firm and services available to you from us; and/or

to market our services to you.

We agree not to rent, sell or otherwise exchange to third parties any personal or confidential information we collect about you except where you consent, or where you would expect the information to be disclosed. The circumstances where we would exchange information about you include the following:

we may contract some of our activities to third parties, for example, we may provide your name and address to a mailing house to mail our Information or material to you. If this occurs, we state to the third party that they may only use your personal information for the specific purpose it was supplied for, e.g. mailing Information or material to you;

to a court or through a mediation or arbitration process;

to a government department or agencies, for example, to register a dealing with land;

in a litigation matter, to a party involved in that litigation predominantly through a legal process known as discovery involving mutual disclosure of relevant documentation;

to another solicitor, for example, to bring about a negotiated resolution to a dispute or to satisfy legal requirements to bring a transaction to a close; and/or

where we are not acting for you, to our client.

We may also disclose personal or confidential information we collect about you if such disclosure is required to comply with the law, or we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to:

comply with law or legal process served on us;

to protect or defend our personal and property rights or those of our client; and/or

protect the personal safety of any person in an emergency.

Data quality

We take all reasonable steps to ensure personal information disclosed to and used by us is accurate, complete and up-to-date. We need your assistance in keeping our information accurate and ask that you contact us should any of your details change.

How do we secure information about you?

We may store your personal information in hard copy documents or electronically.

Information stored in hard copy is held on secured premises which may include secure archiving off site with third party service providers.

Information stored electronically may only be accessed externally through our IT system firewall and is password protected.

Our staff are subject to confidentiality obligations.

Information gathered is systematically archived and deleted from our records in accordance with our retainer arrangements.

How do you access and correct information?

Under the Act you are able to access the personal information we hold about you, subject to some exceptions allowed by law. In particular, if we hold information about you and you are not our client, it is unlikely we will be able to disclose information
about you to you unless our client consents. This is because of duties we owe to our client as a result of our solicitor-client relationship.

Please let us know if you wish to access information we hold about you. We will then determine whether or not we are able to allow the requested access.

We may supply, on your request, such information that is accessible and which may lawfully be provided without breaching our professional obligations. We may recover from you reasonable costs incurred in supplying you with this information. We require reasonable time from the date of your request to provide you with this information. If we do not disclose the information, we will give you reasons for this.

Likewise, we like to keep the personal information we hold about you accurate at all times. Should any of your details change, please let us know.

General

This privacy policy was last updated on 19 June 2008.

Should you have concerns about how we deal with your personal information or have any inquiries about this Policy, please contact our Privacy Officer, Mr Richard Williams on 3221 4550. Alternatively, you may wish to visit the National Privacy Commissioner's website at www.privacy.gov.au