Burke Elphick & Mead™ Lawyers Pty Ltd in an incorporated legal practice. This policy describes the way that Burke Elphick & Mead™ Lawyers collects, holds and discloses information about individuals. Burke Elphick & Mead™ Lawyers is subject to the Privacy Act, including the National Privacy Principles. Protecting confidential information is fundamental to the lawyer/client relationship. All information received in connection with a client matter is subject to strict duties of confidentiality. We will not disclose that information except in accordance with our professional or legal obligations, as authorised by our clients or as contemplated by this policy.
What kinds of information do we hold?
During the course of carrying on our business, we may collect personal information. We usually collect the following kinds of personal information:
- name, address, occupation and contact information
- interests in specific areas of law or events
- information about people’s dealings with us or our clients.
Gathering personal information about our clients is an integral part of servicing our clients needs.
Use and disclosure of your personal information
Under normal circumstances we will not disclose your personal information without your permission. In other circumstances, we may use your personal information for the purposes for which the information was collected and certain related purposes including to:
- provide our services to you, to manage and account for the services, and to improve the services
- manage our relationships with you
- provide you with information about developments in the law, events or other products or services that may interest you
- enable our internal administrative and business operations, including to comply with our legal obligations.
We may disclose personal information for the purposes for which it was collected, and also:
subject to our professional obligations, to any person where necessary or desirable in connection with our provision of legal services, such as to the client, regulatory authorities, or other partners or advisors
- within Burke Elphick & Mead™ Lawyers
- on a confidential basis to external service providers so that they can provide financial, administrative or other services in connection with the operation of our business, for example photocopy and archive services providers and financial institutions
- as required by law subject to our professional obligations, as permitted under the National Privacy Principles
- with your consent.
We may also disclose your personal information if we believe it is to your clear advantage for us to do so (such as to exploit a chance for you to obtain a commercial benefit).
Information security
We take reasonable steps to protect all information which we hold (including your personal information) from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We take reasonable steps to hold information securely in electronic or physical form. We store information in access controlled premises or in electronic databases requiring logins and passwords.
Access and correction
You may request access at any time to personal information we hold about you. In some circumstances, we may charge you a fee for retrieval or access. We may refuse to provide access if the National Privacy Principles allow us to do so.
Variation
This privacy policy may change from time to time.
Disclaimer
Any person using this web-site (including using any information contained in or linked to it) does so on the basis that they have not relied upon this website’s contents in order to make a decision about any issue (legal or otherwise) and Burke Elphick & Mead™ Lawyers Pty Ltd recommend users of this site obtain legal advice specific to their own circumstances. It is not reasonable for any user of this site to rely upon any article, report or information in any other form found on this site as a substitute for obtaining legal advice. Burke Elphick & Mead™ Lawyers Pty Ltd does not accept responsibility or liability for any claim, action, suit, demand, or damages of any type whatsoever however caused in relation to any reliance placed by any user (including any third party) of this site either directly or indirectly in relation to any information contained in or linked to it.
