OUR PRIVACY STATEMENT
1. Our commitment to protecting your privacy
2. How we collect your personal information
3. Use and disclosure of your personal information
4. Others who may have access to your personal information
5. Security of your personal information
6. Our web site
7. Access rights
8. Contact our privacy officer
1. Our commitment to privacy
We are a responsible organization and as such we are dedicated to protecting and respecting each person's right to privacy. We follow comply with the obligations imposed upon us under the Privacy Act 1988 and the National Privacy Principles.
Our commitment to you is in part the work we perform in identifying those corporations that abuse your privacy rights and making sure that they are made aware of their actions that in some cases may harm or even cause undue stress by failing to comply with their statutory obligations.
We know the harm that is caused by not observing the privacy rights of every individual so we are totally committed to securely protecting your privacy.
This Statement sets out the important information about how we deal with personal information. More detailed information is in our Privacy Policy, which is available on request.
In this Statement the expressions Latham Moore', 'we', 'us' and 'our' refers to the Latham Moore corporation its staff joint venture partners and its associated entities.
2. How we collect your personal information
We only collect personal information that is necessary to lawfully and ethically carry on our business, to provide the services our clients require in specific matters, to communicate efficiently with our clients and authorised representatives, to keep our clients and representatives informed of international legal developments, privacy issues, and up-coming events. Occasionally we may contact you to market other services or products that we feel may benefit you.
From time to time, we may be privy to your personal and credit files which have been provided to us either directly by you or by your authority through one of our licensed representatives. When we are in receipt of this type of personal information, we do not and will not disclose this information to any third parties unless we have your consent to do so or it is connected to the primary purpose.
We need particular information to provide the specific services a client requires in a particular matter, the personal information we collect about a person is limited to their name, gender and contact details, their occupation, their employer, and details of their relationship or dealings with us or our clients or authorised representatives.
We collect personal information about a person directly from the person concerned when it's practical to do so. We may do this when a person meets with us, communicates with us by telephone, mail, fax or email, subscribes to our news letter, or completes one of application forms and submits the information via our website. We may be unable to provide the information or services a person requests if we are not given the personal information we ask for.
3. Use and disclosure of your personal information
We may use personal information we hold about people who are clients, employees of clients, or licensed representatives to send them information we think may interest them, or invitations to our events, but we won't if they have told us that they don't want to receive such communications.
Apart from that we will only use the personal information we collect to provide the services that our clients instruct us to provide in specific matters.
We have a professional duty to maintain the confidentiality of our clients' information, and we will not disclose information about a client unless we have our client's instructions, or we are under a legal obligation, to do so.
We will disclose personal information we collect in relation to specific matters when it is necessary to do so to provide our services and the disclosure is in accordance with our client's instructions and is lawful and ethical.
For example, we may need to provide information to a Court, to a Regulatory Authority, to our lawyers barristers, accountants or any other experts we deem fit to engage to complete the work we have been instructed to perform or advise in respect of.
Information shared with our lawyers is subject to legal professional privilege and our lawyers cannot be compelled to disclose the information. We never disclose personal information we hold to any third parties to allow them to market their products and services.
If you do not pay your account on time and you are in default by more than 60 days and we have sent you a default notice setting out your default and you have still failed to pay your account, we may disclose your default to one or more of the credit bureaux. This default may stay on your credit file for 5 years.
4. Others that may have access to your information
Sometimes we use external service providers who may have access to some personal information we collect. For example, we use contractors to keep our closed matter files in secure storage, to distribute some of our publications, and to maintain and develop our computer systems. These contactors are bound by obligations of confidentiality and may only access information to the extent necessary to provide the services we require.
Our solicitors and accountants have trust account auditors, Law Society Trust Account Inspectors, and the government bodies responsible for our lawyers or quality certification may be given access to some of our client's matter files and our client records from time to time, but only for the purpose of ensuring that we are complying with our obligations. They too are bound by obligations of confidentiality.
5. Security of your personal Information
We take appropriate steps to ensure that all information we hold is protected from loss, misuse, or unauthorised access, disclosure or modification. We maintain physical security over our premises and access to our computer systems is limited by user identifiers and passwords. All our staff are subject to strict obligations of confidentiality.
6. Our website
Our website contains various information and downloads which do not require us knowing your identity, however if you wish to submit your personal information to us (e.g. to book for an event, subscribe to a publication, or send us an email or documentation pack) we will treat the information in accordance with this Statement.
Our website does not contain cookies or web bugs, but our Internet Service Provider may record details of visits to our site such as the visitor's server address, domain name and browser type, the date and time of the visit, the information downloaded, and links from other sites followed to get to our site. This information is anonymous and is only used for statistical and website development purposes and to improve our communications.
7. Access rights
People can request access to the personal information we hold about them. There are some limitations upon this right to access, such as where we owe a duty of confidentiality to a client or legal professional privilege applies. We may charge a fee when access is provided. More information about access rights is in our Privacy Policy.
8. Contact our privacy officer
To obtain a copy of our Privacy Policy, enquire about any privacy issue, or make a request for access to information, please contact:
Privacy Officer: Michael Dillon
Level 5, 155 Queen Street
Melbourne, Vic 3000
T: + 1300 733 558
F: +1300 733 590
privacy@lathammoore.com.au