We are committed to the protection of your privacy. Our aim is to provide an online environment that will ensure that the information that you provide to us will be handled in a secure, efficient and confidential manner as possible.

This statement has been prepared in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles as outlined in the Privacy Act 1988. A copy of the principles may be viewed at the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at http://www.oaic.gov.au/

This document sets out our privacy policy commitment in respect of the personal information that our firm holds about you, and what we do with that information.

Any personal information that we collect about you, whether through our website or through your dealings with us, will only be used for the purposes for which we have collected it, or as allowed by law.

PERSONAL INFORMATION

When we refer to personal information we mean information or opinion from which an individual’s identity is identified or reasonably identifiable. This information may include your name, your date of birth and your contact details. This information may also include the details about your dealings with our firm.

SENSITIVE INFORMATION

Sensitive information is any information about a person’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinion, membership of a political association, religious beliefs or affiliations, philosophical beliefs, membership in trade or professional associations or trade unions, sexual preferences or practices, criminal records or health information.

We will not ask you to disclose sensitive information unless it is necessary for providing our services to you. However, if, throughout our dealings with you, you provide unsolicited sensitive information, it may be captured and stored.

WHY WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We collect personal information for the purposes of providing the services that you have requested of us, and in managing our ongoing relationship with you. This will generally occur when you seek legal advice from us, sign up to receive information from us, apply for a position with us or provide services to us.

Where possible, we collect your personal information directly from you during the course of our relationship with you. Where it is not practicable, or reasonable for us to collect your information directly from you, we may collect it from other sources.

We will only collect personal information which is reasonably necessary for, or directly related to our dealings, functions and activities.

SECURITY OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We will take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is protected by storing it in a secure environment. We may store your personal information on paper and electronic form. We will also take reasonable steps to protect any personal information from misuse, loss and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

USE AND DISCLOSURE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We may disclose personal information to:

1. Other entities as part of providing services to our clients, including barristers, experts and/or valuers who have been engaged by our firm in the course of legal proceedings. Personal information may also be disclosed to other parties involved in the dispute resolution process;
2. Third party service providers;
3. Our professional advisors and insurers; and
4. Other parties where you have consented for us to do so.

We do not routinely disclose personal information overseas. Should we disclose information overseas it will only be when it is specifically appropriate to providing our legal services to a particular client.

ACCESS OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

If you have provided personal information to us, you are entitled to access the information which is subsequently handled by us within our organisation which relates to you. There are exceptional circumstance where access to your personal information may be refused by us, such as where the access would be unlawful. We will advise you of such circumstances if they arise.

If you would like to access your personal information, please submit your request in writing outlining the documents you require access to or the information that you require. We will endeavour to respond to your query within 72 hours of your request. Please contact our Practice Manager, Julia Jamieson at julia.jamieson@kennateasdale.com.au

We may recover our reasonable costs for giving access to your personal information. Please be aware that due to our professional obligations, we may not be able to confirm that we act for a particular client or whether we hold any information about a person at a particular time or at all.

COMPLAINT PROCESS

Any complaint made in relation to our privacy policy will be investigated and the outcome of any investigation will be communicated to you in writing. Please allow for at least 30 days for us to respond to any complaint made.

If you are not satisfied with the outcome of any investigation, you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at enquiries@oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992.

CORRECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

It is important to us that the personal information that we hold about you is both accurate and up to date.

We encourage you to contact us to update any of your details or to correct any inaccuracies which may have inadvertently been recorded by us.

USE OF COOKIES

A cookie is a small message given to your web browser by our web server. The browser stores the message in a text file, and the message is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.

We make limited use of cookies on this website. The information that may be retained when visiting our website includes: information such as the time the site was visited, country of origin, browser information, and number of pages viewed while on the site.

Most internet servers are set up to accept cookies. If you do not wish to receive cookies, you may be able to change the settings of your browser to refuse all cookies or to notify you each time that a cookie is sent to your computer, which will then give you the choice of whether or not to accept the cookie.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Please let us know if you have any queries in relation to any aspect of the above statement at ktlaw@kennateasdale.com.au or julia.jamieson@kennateasdale.com.au.

This policy may change over time in light of changes in privacy laws, technology available and changes in our business practices.

Updated October 2015