Purpose and Objective
Henry Street Law, (“the firm”, “we”, “us”) is committed to protecting the privacy of personal information obtained in fulfilling our duties to the court and clients. As a trusted legal advisor and legal practice, we take privacy and security of your personal information seriously.
This Privacy Policy (the “Policy”) forms part of the overall privacy management framework of the firm and explains how Henry Street Law handles personal information and complies with the Australian Privacy Principles (“APP”) to which it is bound, as set out within the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (“Privacy Act”).
This Policy covers:
- Collection of personal information
- Use of personal information
- Security of personal information
- Disclosure of personal information
- Web site, Marketing and Applications Privacy
- Access to personal Information)
- Our Privacy team contacts
- Effect of Policy
This Policy applies to the staff of Henry Street Law. All staff are required to comply with this Policy when dealing with personal information and must also complete data privacy training from time to time.
Under the Privacy Act, we must take reasonable steps to ensure the personal information we collect is accurate, up-to-date, and complete. We must also take reasonable steps to ensure the personal information you use and disclose is — having regard to the purpose of the use or disclosure — accurate, up-to-date, complete and relevant.
In addition to the steps under the Privacy Act, reporting entities including this firm may have AML/CTF Act obligations to review and update their customer’s KYC information.
Personal Information
Henry Street Law collects and holds personal information from various sources in the ordinary course of fulfilling our duties to the court and clients. This includes collecting and holding personal information related to:
- clients and potential clients;
- opposing parties;
- suppliers and consultants; and
- applicants for employment.
“Personal Information” is defined in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) as information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable:
(a) whether the information or opinion is true or not; and
(b) whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not.
The main types of personal information we collect may include:
- Names and contact details including phone numbers, postal and/or residential addresses and email addresses;
- Information that can identify you, including date of birth or residence status; drivers licence number, passport details, marital status and photographs; and
- any facts or opinions that are connected to an enquiry that we are conducting on behalf of a client or potential client to effectively provide legal services;
In some cases, you might need to give us personal information about other people – such as when you have an authorised representative. In those situations, we’re relying on you to tell those people that you’re giving us their details, and to let them know about this Policy. In addition, if you provide us with third party personal information then you warrant to us that you have the third party’s consent to do this.
The personal information (including sensitive information) collected or held by Henry Street Law will be referred to in this policy as “personal information”.
Method of collection of Personal Information
In most circumstances, we will collect personal information through completed questionnaires and electronically via text link sent to you, interviews and telephone conversations.
You may also be asked to voluntarily respond to questionnaires, surveys or market research in order to seek your opinion and feedback.
Where you are a client of Henry Street Law receiving legal services from us, we may collect your personal information from external professional sources (i.e. health professionals, financial advisors, accountants, other legal parties and their legal advisors). With the exception of personal information obtained from opposing legal parties, this personal information will, in the usual course, be obtained under your express authority or within the scope of the instruction you have provided us and will be securely stored on your file.
Henry Street Law may collect personal information about you from other people or organisations, such as referral sources, service providers, agents, advisors, current or former employers or your family members.
We may collect personal information when you visit our website. You can find out more about the kind of personal information we store under the Website, Marketing and Applications Privacy section below.
Sometimes we collect personal information about you that is publicly available – for example, from social media or public registers e.g. Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), Australian Business Register (ABR).
If we receive personal information from third parties, we will protect it as set out in this policy.
Use of Personal Information
Henry Street Law will only use your personal information for the purpose for which you have provided it, as permitted by this Privacy Policy, or otherwise consistently with the APP and Privacy Act. We will not disclose your personal information to third parties, unless you have consented to such disclosure or in other circumstances where such disclosure is required or permitted by law.
We collect, hold and use personal information that is reasonably necessary for the purposes of or related to:
- contacting and communicating with you;
- assessing whether we are able to act for an individual or group of individuals (We will not consider acting for any individual who does not properly identify themselves as this could lead to a conflict of interest developing between our clients in the future);
- providing legal services and advice (In some instances, we may also need to collect Information at the initial stage of an enquiry if it is directly relevant to the advice being sought);
- assisting you to apply to a disbursement funder and/or litigation funder for a loan to cover the payment of disbursements incidental to the conduct of your matter;
- conducting the effective management of our business, such as invoicing and account management (including collections), internal record keeping, financial modelling and analysis;
- seeking consent in relation to publications of reviews and testimonials;
- compliance with our legal obligations under state and federal laws and for establishing, exercising or defending legal proceedings; and
- other purposes related to our business.
If you do not provide us with the personal information we request, we may not be able to provide services to you.
If we collect, hold or use personal information in ways other than as stated in this policy, we will ensure we do so pursuant to the requirements of the Privacy Act.
Personal information is stored on our computer systems on encrypted drives secured by multi-factor authentication.
The firm retains personal information for as long as it is necessary to fulfil the purposes outlined above and as otherwise specified in applicable record retention policies and procedures. At the conclusion of legal matters, we are required to keep legal files for a minimum period of 7 years from the closure of a file unless we are instructed to the contrary. In some cases, we may be required to retain documents for a longer period (e.g. documents that inform the making of a Will). We will also retain personal information for the purposes of ongoing legal and regulatory compliance as well as for establishing, exercising or defending legal
Security of Personal Information
We endeavour to keep all personal information safe by taking all reasonable precautions to protect personal information from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
Henry Street Law will not disclose personal information to third parties, other than as set out in this Policy or without your consent, unless it becomes necessary to lessen or prevent a serious and imminent threat to life, health or safety or unless we are otherwise compelled by law.
Disclosure of Personal Information
We may disclose personal information:
- for the purpose of providing information, products, services or marketing to you;
- for the purpose of assisting, you to obtain products or services from third parties in connection with the conduct of your matter, including disbursement funders and litigation funders;
- to financial institutions in connection with receipts, invoicing and payments;
- to organisations involved in debt collecting, including courts, tribunals and regulatory authorities where you fail to pay for goods or services provided by us to you;
We may disclose personal information by law, for example, under court orders or statutory notices to produce documents. We may also share personal information to establish or protect our legal rights, property, or safety, or the rights, property, or safety of others, or to defend against legal claims. Where we disclose your personal information to third parties for any of these purposes, we will request that the third party follow this Policy in relation to their handling of your personal information.
If there is a change of control of our business, transition of service to another provider or a sale, transfer or securitisation of our business assets, we reserve the right to transfer or disclose (as the case requires and to the extent permissible by law) any relevant user databases together with all applicable personal information. This information may be disclosed to a potential purchaser, lender or alternative service provider during the due diligence investigations and on a confidential basis. We would only seek to disclose information in good faith.
Access to Personal Information
Information may be accessed by the staff of Henry Street Law. All staff of Henry Street Law are bound by confidentiality laws that govern the legal profession in Australia and must comply with the Australian Privacy Principles.
In the course of providing legal services, disclosure to third party professionals and service providers may occur (e.g. barristers, document reproduction service providers, disbursement funders and debt recovery agents). Third-party providers may access personal information when we outsource services like mailing, marketing, client research, audits, or IT support. We have contractual arrangements in place with all of our third party professionals and service providers to protect personal information from unauthorised use or disclosure.
If you wish to access your personal information, you should make a request in writing to us.
Website, Marketing and Applications Privacy
This Policy also applies to any personal information we collect through our website at henrystreetlaw.com.au, in addition to personal information you provide directly – such as where you make a request or enter information into a registration form.
For statistical and analytical purposes, we collect information on website activity (such as the number of users who visit our website, the date and time of visits, the number of pages viewed and location). This information provides us with statistics that can be used to analyse and improve our website and services. We also analyse the traffic through our website, which may involve the use of cookies for marketing and market research.
The Henry Street Law website may have links to other websites of interest. We do not have control over those third party websites. We are not responsible for or liable for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such third party websites, and such third party websites are not governed by this policy.
Correction to Personal Information
From time to time, we may verify information by collecting information from publicly available resources, such as telephone directories or electoral rolls to improve the integrity of the information that we hold.
We have a transparent system of allowing individuals to access their information and seek corrections to any inaccuracies. Requests for access and correction to information for pre-clients should be made by contacting us using the contact details at the end of this policy.
In certain circumstances, we are permitted to deny the request for access or limit the access that we provide.
If you believe information we hold about you is incorrect or out of date, or if you have concerns about how we are handling your personal information, please contact us and we will try to resolve those concerns.
If you wish to have your personal information deleted, please let us know and we will take reasonable steps to delete it (unless we need to keep it for legal or internal risk management reasons, or compliance with our professional obligations).
If we become aware of any concerns or problems concerning our privacy practices, we will take these issues seriously and address any concerns. If you have any further queries in relation to this policy, or you have a problem or complaint, please contact our office by email at enquiries@henrystreetlaw.com.au.
If you are not satisfied with our handling of your problem or complaint you may make a complaint to the Australian Information Commissioner.
Generally, Henry Street Law will retain your personal information within Australia and not use or disclose it overseas. However, on some occasions the information may need to be transferred overseas in order to perform one of the Henry Street Law`s functions or activities. In these circumstances, Henry Street Law will either obtain your express or implied consent or will use its best endeavors to ensure that your personal information will receive protection similar to that which it would have if the information were in Australia.