PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVE
National Criminal Lawyers® (NCL) is committed to protecting the privacy of personal information which it obtains fulfilling its duties to the court, its clients, employees and stakeholders. As a legal practice, trusted advisor and employer, we take the privacy and security of your information very seriously.
This Privacy Policy (Policy) comprises part of our overall privacy management framework and explains how NCL handles personal information and complies with the Australian Privacy Principles (APP) by which it is bound as set out within the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act).
This Policy covers the following matters:
- Collection of personal and sensitive information;
- Use of personal information;
- Security of personal information;
- Storage of Personal Information outside of Australia;
- Disclosure of personal information;
- Web site, Marketing and Applications Privacy;
- Access to Personal Information;
- Our Privacy contact; and
- Effect of Policy.
This Policy applies to all stakeholders, officers and employees of NCL.
Please read this policy carefully and contact us if you have any questions. Our contact details are included below.
PERSONAL INFORMATION
NCL collects and holds personal information which it receives from various sources in the ordinary course of fulfilling its duties to the Court, its clients and employees.
This includes collecting and holding personal information relating to:
- clients and potential clients who contact us;
- employees and employment applicants; and
- consultants and suppliers.
Personal Information is defined in the Privacy Act as information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable whether the information or opinion is true or not and whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not.
The main types of Personal Information which we collect may include:
- names and contact details including but not limited to telephone numbers, postal and residential addresses and email addresses;
- information that can identify you, including but not limited to date of birth or residence status, drivers licence number, passport details, marital status and photographs;
- 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; and
- any other personal information that is provided through a website belonging to NCL or as otherwise requested by us or provided by you.
In some circumstances, you might need to give us Personal Information about other people – for example, when you have an authorised representative. In those situations, you are obliged, and we are relying on you, to tell those people that you are giving us their details, and to let them know about this Policy. Also, if you provide us with third-party Personal Information then you warrant to us that you have the consent of the third party to do this.
Sometimes we may also need to collect Sensitive Information with your permission. Sensitive Information is a subset of Personal Information that is given a higher level of protection under the APP. Sensitive Information includes Personal Information about an individual’s:
- religious beliefs or affiliations;
- philosophical beliefs;
- sexual orientation or practices;
- health (including predictive genetic information);
- racial or ethnic origin;
- political opinions;
- membership of a political association, professional or trade association or trade union;
- criminal record; and
- biometric information and templates.
The Personal Information (including Sensitive Information) collected or held by NCL 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 our communications and engagements with you including but not limited to questionnaires, instructions or other forms that have been provided to us by you, interviews and telephone conversations.
We may also contact you to voluntarily respond to questionnaires, surveys or market research to seek your opinion and feedback.
We often collect your Personal Information from external professional sources when you are a client of NCL. For example, we may collect Personal Information from health professionals, financial advisors, accountants, other legal parties and their legal advisors. NCL may also collect Personal Information about you from other people or organisations including but not limited to service providers, agents, advisors, referral sources, current or former employers or your family members.
Other than Personal Information obtained from opposing legal parties, this Personal Information will, ordinarily, be obtained pursuant to your express authority or within the scope of the instructions which you have provided to us.
NCL might also collect Personal Information when you visit our website or use our apps, including things like your location, IP address and your activity on our websites. 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 which is publicly available. For example, we may collect Personal Information from social media or public registers like the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and Australian Business Register.
If we receive Personal Information from third parties, we will protect it as set out in this Policy.
USE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
NCL will only use your Personal Information for the purpose for which you have provided it, or otherwise consistent with the APP and Privacy Act. We will not disclose your Personal Information to third parties unless you consent 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:
- contacting and communicating with you;
- seeking consent in relation to publications of reviews and testimonials;
- running competitions and offering additional benefits to you;
- sending promotional information about third parties that we think may be of interest to you;
- for market research, business development and marketing, including direct marketing;
- assessing whether we are able to act for an individual or group of individuals;
- providing legal services and advice, including collecting Personal Information at the initial stage of an enquiry if it is directly relevant to the advice being sought;
- assisting you to apply to a litigation and/or disbursement funder 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, internal record keeping and analysis;
- for recruitment purposes;
- for purposes related to the employment of our personnel and providing internal services to our employees; and
- other purposes related to our business.
If you do not provide us with Personal Information which we request, we may not be able to fulfil the applicable purpose of collection, such as to supply products or 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.
NCL retains and safely stores Personal Information that is provided to us, including such information obtained at a pre-client stage, as this enables us to respond more efficiently and to inform such persons of our other legal services or developments that may be of interest to them at a later stage.
Personal Information is stored on our computer systems and within paper-based files as appropriate.
We are required to keep copies of legal files for a minimum period of seven (7) years from the closure of a legal file unless we are instructed to the contrary. In some cases, we may be required to retain documents for a longer period.
We may send out information related to the other legal services that we offer using your Personal Information from time to time. We do, however, respect the wishes of individuals who do not want to receive such material from us in the future and have implemented simple ‘opt-out’ procedures that can be activated within promotional e-mails and other electronic commercial messages that we may send to you from time to time.
The handling of employee records by a private sector employer is not generally subject to the Privacy Act and, therefore, this Policy may not apply to the handling of information pertaining to employees of NCL. For information about our practices relating to employee information, please contact us directly.
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.
It is essential that all Personal Information is kept confidential. We 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.
STORAGE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION OUTSIDE OF AUSTRALIA
We generally do not transfer Personal Information to overseas parties unless required by law or enforcement activity or unless working with international service providers such as funders of particular cases. There may be times when we store Personal Information with vendors who have been contracted to provide customer relationship systems and technological solutions.
For example, NCL uses international cloud computing services for e-mail storage and to store Personal Information that we collect. Countries in which such data may be stored may include the United Kingdom, Japan, Netherlands and the United States amongst others.
Because the security of Personal Information about our clients and potential clients (individuals who have made an enquiry but did not instruct us to act on their behalf) is of paramount concern to us, we seek confirmation that such service providers comply with the APP or are subject to a binding law or scheme that offers substantially similar protection. Although information is encrypted where possible and efforts are made to protect your Personal Information, when you agree to this Policy you acknowledge that we will not be responsible for the overseas third party.
DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
Some of the reasons which we may disclose your Personal Information includes:
- 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;
- for the purpose of providing information, products, services or marketing to you;
- to credit reporting agencies and Courts, tribunals and regulatory authorities where you fail to pay for goods or services provided by us to you; and
- to third parties, including agents or sub-contractors, who assist us in providing information, products, services, or direct mail or digital marketing to you, which may include parties located, or that store data, outside of Australia.
We may also be compelled to disclose Personal Information by law, for example, under court orders or statutory notices to produce documents under laws relating to social security, taxation, bankruptcy, anti-money laundering, counterterrorism and the management of incorporated entities. Where we disclose your Personal Information to third parties for these purposes, we may 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 NCL or a sale or transfer of business assets, we reserve the right to transfer, to the extent permissible by law, our user databases together with any Personal Information and non-Personal Information contained in those databases. This information may be disclosed to a potential purchaser during the due diligence investigations and on a confidential basis. We would seek to only disclose information in good faith.
ACCESS TO PERSONAL INFORMATION
Information may be accessed by personnel within NCL. All NCL personnel are bound by confidentiality laws and standards that govern the legal profession within Australia and to comply with the APP.
In the course of providing legal services and managing our business, disclosure to third party professionals and service providers may occur (for example barristers, document reproduction service providers, disbursement funders and debt recovery agents).
Third-party service providers may also encounter Personal Information when we outsource certain functions, such as bulk mailing, direct mail or digital marketing, client experience research, company audits and information technology 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 the Privacy Officer.
WEBSITE, MARKETING AND APPLICATIONS PRIVACY
This Policy also applies to any Personal Information we collect via our websites, including https://www.nationalcriminallawyers.com.au/ and applications including mobile applications, in addition to Personal Information you provide directly, like where you make a request or complete a registration form.
We collect information on website activity for statistical purposes (such as the number of users who visit our website, the date and time of visits, the number of pages viewed and location). We do not use this information to identify individuals, but it does provide us with statistics that can be used to analyse and improve our website and services. Occasionally we analyse the traffic through our website, which may involve the use of cookies for marketing and market research more generally. We may also use web beacons on NCL’s websites from time to time.
We do not use this technology to access your Personal Information.
If you have registered an account with us, you will be identified by a user name and password when you log into our website or applications. The information we collect about registered users’ use of our websites may be used for measuring use and performance and in assisting to resolve any technical difficulties.
Because we want your user experience to be as informative and helpful as possible, websites belonging to NCL may contain links to other websites of interest. We do not have any 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
We may take steps to verify information by collecting information from publicly available resources, for example, telephone directories or electoral rolls to improve the integrity of the information that we hold.
We provide 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 our Privacy Officer 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 that information that 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 work to address any concerns. If you have any further queries relating to this Policy, or you have a problem or complaint, please contact our Privacy Officer.
If you are not satisfied with our handling of your problem or complaint you may make a complaint to the Australian Information Commissioner (www.oaic.gov.au).
AMENDMENTS
This Policy may be amended, including with changes, additions, and deletions, from time to time at our sole discretion and any such amendments will be notified to you by posting an updated version of the Policy on our websites.
If at any point we decide to use Personal Information in a manner materially different from that stated at the time it was collected we will notify relevant persons by email or via a prominent notice on our website, and where necessary, we will seek the prior consent of the relevant persons.
OUR PRIVACY TEAM CONTACTS
For privacy-related matters please contact our Privacy Officer by email at info@nationalcriminallawyers.com.au or by telephone on +61 1800 274 652 between 8:30am and 5:00pm AEST, Monday to Friday.
EFFECT OF POLICY
We may update this privacy policy at any time by publishing an updated version on this website.
This policy was last updated January 2020.