Privacy Policy - JHK Legal Commercial Lawyers

JHK LEGAL AUSTRALIA PTY LTD ABN 38 164 726 407 PRIVACY NOTICE

Protecting personal information and privacy has always been important to us at JHK Legal. Amendments to Australia’s Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (“Privacy Act”) introduced Australian Privacy Principles (APP) to replace the National Privacy Principles in March 2014. These Privacy Principles are to ensure that your personal information is handled in an open and transparent way.

This is a summary of JHK Legal’s policy on the management, integrity, security, collection, disclosure of and access to the personal information of clients. In addition to complying with the Privacy Act, JHK Legal must comply with strict professional obligations with respect to confidentiality. Clients will regularly have the right to legal professional privilege over documents, records and communications held by JHK Legal. We recommend that you take the time to read this policy and retain a copy for future reference.

Personal Information collected and disclosed by JHK Legal

InformationPurpose of collection and disclosure of personal information and how we protect that personal information
-Contact details including name, address, occupation, email, phone number and professional contact-Copies of identification documents-Date of birth-Financial information-Court proceeding information-Publicly available information-Information provided by on or behalf of prospective employeesPersonal information is collected for: Identification; to provide the legal services that you request; to do all things necessary to administer those services; to develop, manage and improve those services; investigate, prevent and deal with breaches of our agreement with you; conduct client surveys and inform you of any improvements that we have made to our services; conduct assessment of legal proceedings; deal with credit reporting bodies (CRBs) as to your information.This information is collected either directly from you, as authorised by you, as is required for our reasonable business purposes, or in accordance with the law. Where it is unreasonable or impractical to collect the information directly from you we may collect that information from other persons that we deal with.When your personal information is provided to us by other people including family, colleagues or clients, and where it is reasonable to assume you would not already know or expect us to have the information, we will take reasonable steps to inform you that we have received your personal information.We may disclose your personal information to third parties including: Employees of JHK Legal; organisations and contractors that may be used to provide you with requested services; your company or organisation if you use our services under a corporate account; banks; credit reporting and fraud checking agencies; debt collection agencies, if you default in payment of monies owed to us; government, regulatory and law enforcement agencies where the disclosure is required or authorised by law.You may choose not to provide some of your personal details however this may limit us providing our services to you.
Unsolicited or sensitive informationWe may sometimes collect sensitive information. Sensitive information is only collected if the information is reasonably necessary for the purpose of performing our functions and activities. When we collect sensitive information we will collect it directly from you or with your consent unless we are otherwise entitled to do so.We will destroy unsolicited information, whether sensitive or otherwise, unless it is necessary for the reasonable purposes of our business.
Anonymity or pseudonymityWe will preserve your anonymity or pseudonymity where practical and in accordance with the law.
Overseas Disclosure of informationWe generally do not disclose personal information overseas.However, if for any reason JHK Legal needs to disclose your personal information, we will comply with the requirements of the Privacy Act that relates to trans-border data flow.
Government related identifiersUnless you otherwise authorise us, we will not collect and/or disclose government related identifiers with the exception of your driver’s licence information which is collected in order to accurately identify you.

Marketing

JHK Legal does not disclose any personal or contact information (including email or postal address) to third parties for the purposes of allowing them to market products to clients.

Where you have consented, or where JHK Legal has a business relationship with you, we may send you legal updates, updates about JHK Legal itself, information about events, or other communications. You may opt out of these communications at any time by contacting the email below. 

Payment default

If you default in the payment of any fees or charges to JHK Legal, we may give information about you to:

• a CRB to list your default in the CRB’s records. That information may then be shared by the CRB with other credit providers for credit assessment and other purposes;

• a debt collection agency to assist us to collect the payment owed to JHK Legal by you.

Website access and use

Where you have used JHK Legal website for account access, to read content, obtain contact details or to provide a testimonial, cookies may be used by JHK Legal to collect information including IP addresses about people from JHK Legal website. There are many aspects of JHK Legal website which can be viewed without providing personal information. Cookies allow JHK Legal to determine who has seen particular pages on its website and how frequently. This can help JHK Legal to identify your preferences and allow JHK Legal to recommend content it believes you would be most interested in.

For each visitor to reach the site, JHK Legal expressly collects the following non-personally identifiable information, including but not limited to: browser type; operating system; pages viewed while browsing the website; page access times; and referring website address. This collected information is used solely internally for the purpose of gauging visitor traffic, trends and delivering personalised content to you while you are at the website.

From time to time, JHK Legal may use client information from new, unanticipated uses not previously disclosed in this privacy notice. If JHK Legal information practices change at some time in the future, JHK Legal will use data collected from the time of the policy change for these new purposes only.

Security and Access of your Private Information

JHK Legal endeavors to make sure the information we collect is accurate, complete and up to date. We shall take reasonable steps to protect personal information from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

Destruction of Information

JHK Legal will destroy personal information upon your request (by telephone and/or by e-mail) or when the personal information is no longer required. The exception to this is if the personal information is required in order to fulfil the purpose of this organisation or is required to be maintained and/or stored in accordance with the law.

Your access

You may request access to your personal information we hold about you at any time.

External access to information

Any authorised representative including accountants and financial planners must have been authorised to receive your personal information, security checked and verified and it be recorded on our database except if it’s required in accordance with the law such as a Federal Act.

The following measures are in place in order to deal with any enquiries that would result in the divulgence of personal information:

Telephone EnquiryAdministration staff will advise the third party of privacy requirements, and seek authorisation in writing from you to divulge personal information before providing said information.
Written EnquiryResponse is provided to the address on the written enquiry but only if it is the same as in JHK Legal records.
Authorised RepresentativesAny authorised representative including accountants, solicitors and spouses must have been authorised by you, security checked and verified and it be recorded on JHK Legal database except if it’s required in accordance with the law such as a Federal Act.
Website EnquiriesUser identification and password requirements for clients that are set and maintained by JHK Legal.

Contact for Further Information or Complaints

If you have any questions about how we handle your personal information or if you believe that we have handled your personal information inappropriately, you can contact JHK Legal via telephone on 07 3859 4500 or e-mail brisbane@jhklegal.com.au. JHK Legal will respond to the complaint within 7 days of receipt and will take all reasonable steps to make a decision as to the complaint within 20 days of the receipt of the complaint.

If you are not satisfied with the way in which we handle your enquiry, you can call the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner on 1300 363 992 or make a complaint to the Information Commissioner on the OAIC website at http://www.oaic.gov.au/.

Consent

You hereby agree and consent to the contents of the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information. In the event that you do not wish to agree or consent to any of the above use, collection and disclosure of your personal information by JHK Legal, JHK Legal warrants that any request by you to withdraw your consent or agreement shall be deemed as confirmation by you to cease any and/or all collection use and disclosure of your personal information. Request (by telephone and/or by e-mail) can be made by you to JHK Legal.

Changes to this Policy

This is our current privacy policy outlining our personal information management practices. It replaces our previously published privacy policy. From time to time we may need to vary this policy. If we do so, an updated version will be posted on our website and shall apply to all the information held by us at the time.