|
PRIVACY POLICY
Levitt, Lightman, Dewar & Graham LLP
("LLDG") recognizes the importance of privacy and the
sensitivity of personal information. As lawyers we have
a professional obligation to keep confidential all
information we receive within a lawyer-client
relationship. To ensure accountability, we have
developed this policy, and trained our professionals
about our policies and practices. This document explains
how we use and disclose that information, the choices
you have regarding such use and disclosure, and how you
may correct and have access to that information.
1. WHY DOES LLDG NEED PERSONAL INFORMATION?
LLDG provides legal services and products to a wide
range of clients. In doing so, we also produce direct
marketing materials concerning its services and
developments in the law.
2. WHAT PERSONAL INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?
Personal information is any information that identifies
you, or by which your identity could be deduced. If we
did not collect and use your personal information we
could not provide you with legal services. According to
the Commissioner's Guidelines, the definition
encompasses such information as name, age, weight,
height, medical records, income, purchases, spending
habits, race, ethnic origin, colour, blood type, DNA
code, fingerprints, marital status, religion, education,
home address and telephone number.
3. HOW DO WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?
We collect information only by lawful and fair means and
not in an unreasonably intrusive way. Wherever possible
we collect your personal information directly from you,
at the start of a retainer and in the course of our
representation.
Sometimes we may obtain information about you from other
sources: for example,
- your insurance company;
- your real estate agent in a property transaction;
- from a government agency or registry;
- your employer,
if we are acting for you, at its request;
- your
accountant.
4. WHEN AND HOW DO WE OBTAIN CONSENT?
In most cases, we shall ask you to specifically consent,
if we collect, use, or disclose your personal
information. Normally, we ask for your consent in
writing, but in some circumstances, we may accept your
oral consent.
Sometimes, your consent may be implied through your
conduct with us.
In certain circumstances, as permitted or required by
law, we may collect, use or disclose personal
information without your knowledge or consent.
These circumstances include (where applicable): personal
information which is subject to solicitor-client
privilege; information on individuals which is publicly
available where collection or use is clearly in the
interests of the individual and consent cannot be
obtained in a timely way; to investigate a breach of any
agreement or contravention of a law; to comply with a
subpoena, warrant, court order or as required or
otherwise permitted by law.
When your consent is required, you can withdraw consent
at any time (unless withdrawing the consent would
frustrate the performance of legal obligations), and
upon providing us with a 30-days notice. However, the
withdrawal of your consent may impact on our ability to
serve you and to maintain our relationship.
5. HOW DO WE MAKE USE OF YOUR INFORMATION?
LLDG only collects the personal information necessary to
fulfil the purposes identified to you prior to or at the
time of collection, or any other reasonable and
legitimate purposes or as required by law.
LLDG does not, as a condition of supplying a service to
you, require consent to the collection, use or
disclosure of personal information beyond that
reasonably required for such purposes, or to comply with
its obligations under applicable law.
LLDG usually collects and uses your personal information
for the following
purposes:
- i) collecting, recording and using the information
relevant to the performance of the services rendered to
and for you;
ii) recording and determining your various services in
your relationship with us;
iii) administration, billing, accounting and collection
in relation to your business and relationship with us;
iv) protecting against fraud and error;
v) providing direct marketing materials to you regarding
our services;
vi) communicating with you generally or to ensure your
satisfaction; and
vii) communicating the information to a sub-contractor
(or other agents or
intermediaries) in the course of a contract or mandate
for the performance of any of the purposes listed above.
LLDG does not disclose your personal information to any
third party to enable them to market their products and
services. For example, we do not provide our client
mailing lists to other law firms. We ensure that third
parties which are engaged to perform services on our
behalf and are provided with personal information are
required to observe the intent of this Privacy Policy by
having comparable levels of security protection or, when
required, by ensuring us (through a confidentiality
agreement) that they will not use or disclose the
personal information for any other purpose that for
which the personal information was communicated.
6. HOW DO WE DISCLOSE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?
Under certain circumstances, LLDG will disclose your
personal information:
-
when we are required or authorized by law to do so,
for example if a court issues a subpoena;
-
when you
have consented to the disclosure;
-
when the legal
services we are providing to you requires us give your
information to third parties (for example a lender in a
real estate mortgage transaction) your consent will be implied, unless you
tell us otherwise;
- where it is necessary to establish
or collect fees;
- if we engage a third party to provide
administrative services to us (like computer back-up
services or archival file storage) and the third party
is bound by our privacy policy;
- if we engage expert
witnesses on your behalf;
- if we retain other law firms
in other jurisdictions, on your behalf;
- if the
information is already publicly known.
8. HOW LONG WILL WE UTILIZE, DISCLOSE OR RETAIN YOUR
PERSONAL INFORMATION?
We may keep a record of your personal information,
including correspondence or comments, in the applicable
file specific to you. We will utilize, disclose or
retain your personal information for as long as
necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was
collected and as required or otherwise permitted by law.
We will establish minimum and maximum retention periods
and procedures for maintaining and destroying your
personal information.
9. WHY IS UPDATING YOUR INFORMATION IMPORTANT?
Since we use your personal information to provide legal
services to you, it is important that the information be
accurate and up-to-date. We will not routinely update
your personal information, unless such a process is
necessary. If during the course of the retainer, any of
your information changes, please inform us so that we
can make any necessary changes.
10. HOW DO WE CORRECT ERRORS?
If LLDG holds information about you and you can
establish that it is not accurate, complete and
up-to-date, LLDG will take reasonable steps to correct
it.
11. IS MY PERSONAL INFORMATION SECURE?
LLDG takes all reasonable precautions to ensure that
your personal information is kept safe from loss,
unauthorized access, modification or disclosure. Among
the steps taken to protect your information are:
- premises security;
- restricted file access to personal information;
- deploying technological safeguards like
security software and firewalls to prevent hacking
or unauthorized computer access;
- internal password and
security policies.
12. HOW FAST WILL WE RESPOND TO YOUR WRITTEN REQUEST?
We will make every reasonable effort to respond to each
of your written requests not later than thirty (30) days
after receipt of such requests.
When applicable, we will advise you in writing if we
cannot meet your requests within this time limit. When
applicable, you have the right to make a complaint to
the appropriate Privacy Authority in respect of this
time limit.
13. HOW DO YOU ACCESS TO YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?
Subject to the exceptions provided by the applicable
law, we will make available to you any specific personal
information about you that we have collected, utilized
or disclosed, upon your written request.
Summary information is available on request. More
detailed requests which require archive or other
retrieval costs may be subject to our normal
professional and disbursement fees.
14. CAN I BE DENIED ACCESS TO MY PERSONAL
INFORMATION?
Your rights to access your personal information are not
absolute. We may deny access when: - denial of access is required or authorized by law (for
example, when a record containing personal information
about you is subject to a claim of legal professional
privilege by one of our clients);
- information relates to existing or anticipated legal
proceedings against you;
- when granting you access would have an unreasonable
impact on other people's privacy;
- when to do so would prejudice negotiations with you;
- to protect our firm's rights and property;
- where the request is frivolous or vexatious.
If we deny your request for access to, or refuse a
request to correct information, we shall explain why.
LLDG does not use your Social Insurance Number as a
way of identifying or organizing the information we hold
upon you.
16. CREDIT BUREAUS
To help us make credit decisions about clients, prevent
fraud, check the identity of new clients and prevent
money-laundering, we may on occasion, request
information about you from the files of consumer
reporting agencies.
17. COMMUNICATING WITH US
You should be aware that e-mail is not a 100% secure
medium, and you should be aware of this when contacting
us to send personal or confidential information.
18. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
Since LLDG regularly reviews all of its policies and
procedures, we may change our Privacy Policy from time
to time.
19. REQUESTS FOR ACCESS
If you have any questions, or wish to access your
personal information, please write to our Privacy
Contact at:
Richard Levitt
Levitt, Lightman, Dewar & Graham LLP
Suite One, 16 Four Seasons Place
Toronto, ON
M9B 6E4
416.620.0362 ext.35
If you are not satisfied with our response, the
Privacy
Commissioner of Canada can be reached at:
112 Kent Street
Ottawa Ontario
K1A 1H3
1.800.282.1376.
20. WEBSITE
Our website (www.lldg.ca)
contains links to other sites, which are not governed by
this privacy policy. On our website, like most other
commercial websites, we may monitor traffic patterns,
site usage and related site information in order to
optimise our web service. We may provide aggregated
information to third parties, but these statistics do
not include any identifiable personal information.
Top
|
