Privacy Statement

Privacy Statement

We are bound by the Australian Privacy Principals under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and we are committed to respecting the privacy of your personal information.

Where we refer to “personal information”, this means information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable. In some circumstances, including where it is necessary for the conduct of your matter, we may need to collect sensitive information. Sensitive information is defined in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and includes health information. We require your consent to collect sensitive information.

In the course of dealing with you, we may collect some personal information. This information may be collected when:

  • you visit our website, using cookies or other means of website tracking;
  • you apply for a job with us;
  • we take instructions from you in person, via telephone or electronically;
  • you attend an event we organise;
  • we attend an event you organise; or
  • you supply good or services to us.

The personal information we collect is limited in most cases to names, professional and contact details and information relating to the services we provide you. If we are not provided with personal information that we request, we may not be able to fully provide our services to you.

The personal information we collect may be in hardcopy or electronic form. For information stored electronically, information and backups are stored in Australia on encrypted servers. Website traffic information will be transmitted and stored by Google on its servers. We take reasonable steps to protect your personal information using appropriate security measures for both hardcopy and electronic documents.

In some cases we may collect personal information or sensitive information from you about third parties, such as your customers or employees. Before giving us this information, you must provide any notification and obtain any consents which are required by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) or any other applicable laws or codes to enable us to collect and otherwise handle that third party personal or sensitive information lawfully and without taking any further steps.

We may share personal information with third parties including your professional advisers (e.g. your accountant) and organisations with whom we have co-promotional arrangements (and any third parties used in administering those arrangements). We may also share personal information with other service providers including barristers, experts and law firms in other jurisdictions, and organisations that provide services to us. We may also be obligated to grant access to your information to auditors for compliance purposes. In the conduct of your matter, we may also need to share personal information with courts, tribunals and other regulatory authorities.

In addition to providing our services to you, we may use and disclose personal information to maintain our relationship with you, to keep you informed of our services, events, developments in the law and other matters which we consider may be of interest to you and for purposes related to our research, planning, service development, security and risk management. We may also use and disclose personal information to the extent that we are required or authorised by law to do so.

Individuals wishing to obtain access to the personal information which we hold about them, should contact our practice manager.

We take your privacy and protection of personal information very seriously. If you believe that we have failed to meet our obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) you should contact our practice manager. If you are still unsatisfied following communication with our practice manager, your complaint will be referred to a Director of the firm. If you are still unsatisfied following communication with a Director you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

If you are an individual, you authorise us to collect, use and disclose personal and sensitive information as set out in this clause, including where this may involve a transfer of personal information or of health information outside the State or Territory in which it is held.