Terms, privacy and site notices

3.1For clients and prospective clients, we usually collect your name, contact details, date of birth, occupation, the identity documents we need to verify who you are, your billing and payment details, and whatever information about your affairs the matter requires. What the matter requires varies enormously: a company restructure and a family provision claim call for very different things.

3.2We also hold personal information about people who are not our clients, because legal work makes that unavoidable. That includes the other parties to a matter and their lawyers, witnesses, deponents, beneficiaries, company officers, experts, and people named in the documents we are given. If you are one of those people, we usually collected your information from our client, from a court file or registry, or from a public record rather than from you.

3.3Some matters require sensitive information, which the Privacy Act protects more strictly. Depending on the matter that can include health information, information about a criminal record, and information about somebody’s racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or membership of a professional or trade association. We collect sensitive information only where it is reasonably necessary for the matter, and only with consent or where the law otherwise allows it.

3.4We collect personal information about people applying to work with us, including from referees and, where relevant, from an academic record.

3.5When you use our website we collect limited technical information automatically, and whatever you type into a form. Our cookie policies explain that side of it.

4.1Wherever we can, we collect personal information from you directly, when you instruct us, complete a form, write to us or speak to us.

4.2We also collect it from other people, because we often have to. That includes our client where you are not our client, the other side and their lawyers, courts, tribunals and registries, ASIC and the land titles offices, barristers and experts, accountants and other advisers, your own agents where you have authorised them, and publicly available sources.

4.3Sometimes we receive personal information we did not ask for. If we could not lawfully have collected it ourselves and it is not in a document we are required to keep, we destroy it or de-identify it once it is lawful and practicable to do so.

4.4If you do not give us information we have asked for, we may not be able to act for you, or to act effectively. Identity verification and conflict checking are not optional, and we cannot open a matter without them.

5.1The main reason is to provide legal services: to advise you, to prepare and negotiate documents, to run or defend proceedings, and to do the things a matter requires.

5.2We also use personal information to check whether we have a conflict of interest before we take a matter on, to verify identity, to open and administer the file, to receive and account for money held in trust, to bill you and to recover unpaid fees, to arrange and maintain our professional indemnity insurance, to respond to a complaint or a claim, and to manage and improve our practice.

5.3We use it to meet obligations the law imposes on us. Those include our obligations as lawyers under the Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW) and the Legal Profession Act 2006 (ACT), our obligations under anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing law, our tax and record-keeping obligations, and any order or requirement of a court, tribunal or regulator.

5.4We use contact details to send you material about our practice and about legal developments, where you have asked for it or where the law otherwise allows it. Clause 9 explains how to stop that.

5.5We do not sell personal information, and we do not disclose it to anyone so that they can market to you.

6.1In the course of a matter we may disclose personal information to courts, tribunals, registries and other government agencies; to the other parties and their lawyers, where the matter requires it or a rule of court does; to barristers, experts, mediators, arbitrators, translators, process servers and search agents; to your accountant or other advisers where you have asked us to deal with them; and to another lawyer where a matter is transferred with your agreement.

6.2We may disclose personal information to our insurers, our auditors, our costs consultants and our own lawyers, and to the Law Society, the Legal Services Commissioner or another regulator where we are required or entitled to.

6.3We use service providers who handle information on our behalf, including document and email systems, practice management and accounting systems, electronic signing and identity verification services, payment processors, and providers of information technology support and backup. They are permitted to use the information only for the purpose we engaged them for.

6.4We otherwise disclose personal information only with your consent or where the law requires or authorises it.

7.1We are likely to disclose personal information outside Australia, and you should assume that we will.

7.2The most direct case is our own practice. We have an office in Frankfurt am Main, and cross-border matters are a substantial part of what we do, so information on those matters moves between Australia and Germany. On a matter with a foreign element we may also deal with lawyers, courts, registries and experts in the country concerned, which on our matters is most often Germany, and otherwise wherever the matter takes us.

7.3Some of the service providers in clause 6.3 store or process information outside Australia, including in the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and Singapore. Where we disclose personal information to an overseas recipient we take reasonable steps to ensure it is handled consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles.