The SRB Legal Privacy Statement

SRB Legal Information Policy

SRB Legal endeavours to meet fully, and where possible, exceed, the required standards of personal data privacy protection, in complying with the 13 Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Commonwealth) as amended.

This Policy outlines the obligations which SRB Legal has in managing the personal information it holds about clients, potential clients, contractors and others.

What kinds of personal information does SRB Legal collect?

Personal information is information or an opinion about an identified, or reasonably identifiable, individual. During the provision of its services, SRB Legal may collect personal information about individuals where that information is required to effectively manage our business.

Some of the types of information we may hold about individuals include:

• information provided to us when clients instruct us to act for them, including information about third parties, for use in current or anticipated litigation in which our clients are, or may be, involved;
• information provided when another service is requested from us or provided by us (such as acceptance of an invitation to attend a seminar), including name, title and contact details (phone number, email, street address);
• other information relevant to the type of legal services being provided which may include information about assets and finances, property interests or titles, income, directorships, your employment, health conditions, family relationships and tax file numbers;
• information which you have willingly provided to us in connection with applying for a job.

We will not ask to collect sensitive information (such as details of race, political beliefs, religion or health) also if individuals, including third party individuals, unless it is needed for the purposes of providing legal advice. In most cases, if personal information we request is not provided, we may not be able to supply the relevant advice or service.

Generally it will not be possible to deal with us anonymously, due to the nature of our services. We will however respect confidentiality in all dealings with us.

How does SRB Legal collect personal information?

Generally, SRB Legal collects your personal information directly from you through:

• exchanges and discussions with you, whether in person or via telephone, email, fax or post;
• SRB Legal’s website, including the completion of online forms, registering or subscribing to any of our services, submitting material or information or otherwise requesting further information or services.

There may be other occasions when SRB Legal collects personal information from other sources such as from an information services provider, a publicly maintained record including publicly available information on social media or similar sites, other professional advisors, an insurance company or authority in connection with a claim related to you, or a company for whom you work or other professional advisors. Generally, SRB Legal will only collect your personal information from sources other than you if it is unreasonable or impracticable to collect your personal information from you.

How might SRB Legal use and disclose personal information?

SRB Legal hold personal information for the following purposes:

• to send correspondence and generally to undertake work in relation to services we have been engaged to provide;
• to provide legal advice to our clients;
• for use in current or anticipated litigation in which our clients are or may be involved;
• internal accounting and administration;
• to protect clients, individuals and us from fraud;
• to help us identify, inform and educate clients and individuals about other services that might be beneficial to them, or to inform them about updates or changes to services previously acquired, or about changes to the law. If you would prefer not to receive this information, please let us know and we will respect your request.

SRB Legal may disclose personal information to external service providers but only so that they can provide the services that we have contracted out to them. We do not knowingly store any information outside of Australia, and will only transfer information to an organisation or individual in another country where this is necessary for the performance of our contract to provide legal services to our clients. Such disclosures are on a confidential basis and on the understanding that the recipient will abide by the requirements of the APPs.

How to access and correct your personal information

SRB Legal endeavours to ensure that the personal information we hold is accurate, complete and up-to-date. SRB Legal will grant access to the extent required or authorised by the Privacy Act or other law, and take steps reasonable in the circumstances to correct personal information where necessary and appropriate.

To obtain access to your personal information:

• you will have to provide proof of identity to ensure that personal information is provided only to the correct individuals and that the privacy of others is protected;
• SRB Legal requests that you be reasonably specific about the information you require; and
• SRB Legal may charge you a reasonable administration fee, which reflects the cost of providing access in accordance with your request.

If SRB Legal refuses your request to access or correct your personal information, a written response will be provided with reasons for the refusal and details of complaint mechanisms. SRB Legal will also take steps reasonable in the circumstance to provide you with access in a manner that meets your needs and the needs of SRB Legal.

Privacy Complaints

Please direct all privacy complaints via info@srblaw.com.au. SRB Legal will deal with your complaint promptly and in a confidential manner.

Direct Marketing

SRB Legal may use and disclose your personal information in order to inform/update you of products and/or services that may be of interest to you. If you do not wish to receive such marketing information, you may at any time opt-out by contacting SRB Legal via info@srblaw.com.au.

How does SRB Legal keep your personal information secure?

SRB Legal takes all reasonable steps to ensure the security of all the personal information it holds is protected from misuse, interference and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

SRB Legal’s premises and data storage (in both hard copy and electronic forms) are housed in secure buildings with access restricted to authorised persons. Our IT systems are secured inside firewalls and password protected and we conduct regular audit and data integrity checks. We frequently update our anti-virus software in order to protect our systems (and the data contained in those systems) from computer viruses. We periodically use secure methods of document destruction or de-identification when information is no longer required to be kept by us (such as after expiry of the Statute of Limitations for legal documents), unless otherwise required or authorised by law to retain the information.

SRB Legal personnel are required to respect the confidentiality of personal information and the privacy of individuals.

Like many websites, SRB Legal’s website may use ‘cookies’ on occasion to provide anonymous collected information on how people use our website, for the purpose of helping us to know what they find interesting and useful, in order to allow us to improve content. These cookies are supplied by Google Analytics (_utma, _utmb, _utmc, and _utmz), and there are also some cookies by WordPress (wp-settings-, wp-settings-time-) which help with our website navigation and preferences. SRB Legal do not link this information back to identify the user.

While SRB Legal take great care to protect your personal information on our Website, unfortunately, the internet and/or any data transmission over the Internet is a not secure medium. Accordingly we cannot guarantee the security of any information you send to us or receive from us online. Once we receive your information we make our best effort to ensure its security.

Please note that in some emergency or law enforcement situations government agencies may have the authority to review our web server’s records.

Our Website contains links to other sites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or policies of those sites.

Enquiries

SRB Legal encourage you to contact us via email on info@srblaw.com.au in order to update any personal information we hold about you which you discover is not up to date or correct, or if you would like more information on SRB Legal’s approach to privacy.