1
At Macmillan Lawyers and Advisors we seek to provide the best possible legal service to our client's. To achieve this, we may need to collect personal information about yourself and the circumstances surrounding your legal matter.
It is important for us to ensure you are confident that any personal information you provide to us is treated in the appropriate manner and with the appropriate degree of privacy.
The services we provide to you will dictate the types of personal information that may be necessary for us to collect.
2
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
3
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
4
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select "Remember Me", your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
5
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
6
Personal information is any information about you that identifies you or by which your identity may be reasonably determined.
7
The types of information we collect, depending on the type of matter we are conducting for you, however may generally include:
- name;
- contact details (e.g. address, telephone number, email address);
- date of birth;
- insurance information (e.g. insurer, policy number);
- banking information (e.g. bank account number);
- information about your assets;
- identity documents such as drivers licence;
- family information (e.g. names of relatives, their relationship to you).
We may record anonymous information which tells us about visitors to our website but not the identity of those visitors. For example, we may collect information about the date, time and duration of those visits and which pages of our website are being commonly accessed. We may also use “cookies” that are small pieces of information that allow an organisation to track websites browsed by you. You may be able to adjust your browser to disable cookies. However, if you do disable cookies, you may not be able to interact with our website or take advantage of the improved functionality that cookies enable.
8
We will always collect your personal information directly from you where possible. Where we are unable to obtain personal information directly from you we will obtain your consent before information is obtained from another party.
Collection of your personal information may occur in a number of ways including:
- taking instructions from you (in person, by telephone or by electronic communication);
- contact with a financial institution, accountant, financial planner, medical provider, government department or any other person, on your behalf, and at your request, to obtain such information;
- you entering data into our website;
- from another party during the course of legal proceedings or a legal transaction.
9
Macmillan Lawyers and Advisors collects and holds personal information about you in order to provide our services to you. Personal information is used only for the purpose for which it is submitted or for such other secondary purposes that are related to that purpose, unless we disclose other uses in this privacy policy or at the time of collection.
We collect your personal information for purposes including:
- supplying to you the services which you have requested, including as applicable, the giving of legal advice, the conduct of a legal transaction, or the resolution of a dispute;
- conducting conflict of interest searches;
- organising safe custody of your documents;
- sending you statements and invoices and collecting payments from you;
- providing you with legal news updates;
- conducting feedback surveys;
- sending to you marketing communications.
10
We may disclose your personal information to a person outside of Macmillan Lawyers and Advisors:
- where necessary in connection with the purpose for which it was collected; or
- if required by law; or
- if you consent to the disclosure; or
- otherwise as permitted by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).
Some examples of persons outside Macmillan Lawyers and Advisors to whom we may disclose your personal information are:
- government bodies (e.g. courts, ASIC, Centrelink, Medicare, WorkCover Queensland - for the purposes of lodging documents or applications, obtaining records or making claims);
- insurance companies (for the purposes of making or defending a claim);
- financiers (for the purposes of obtaining funds or discharging any registered security interests);
- search providers (to obtain information about a property you are buying or selling);
- barristers (to obtain advice or representation in your matter);
- medical or other experts (to obtain a report in relation to your matter);
- your professional advisers (e.g. accountant - to assist us in giving full and proper advice to you);
- recipients of court documents on which you are named as a party, in the normal course of proceedings;
- contractors (who provide services to us).
11
Macmillan Lawyers and Advisors will take all reasonable precautions to safeguard personal information that is held by us, either on a physical file or on computer, from loss, misuse, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
When Macmillan Lawyers and Advisors no longer requires your personal information and the retainer has been completed we will make an electronic copy of your file for retention and securely destroy the physical file. The information will be deleted from our main computer system after seven years.
12
The effective and proper conduct of your legal matter can only occur when the personal information that we hold is current and up to date. In this regard it is important that, during the course of your relationship with Macmillan Lawyers and Advisors, you notify us of any changes to your personal information which we hold, including our contact details.
13
Macmillan Lawyers and Advisors will correspond with you by email where you consent to that occurring. Where you communicate with us by email, or provide us with your email address, you are taken to have consented to us communicating with you by email (unless you explicitly tell us otherwise). Email may not be a secure way to communicate your personal information to us and as such, we recommend that personal information should be delivered to us through secure means.
14
Macmillan Lawyers and Advisors may from time to time use your personal information, such as your address or contact details, to provide you with information about other services that we offer.
If at any time you do not wish to receive any information about these services please feel free to contact us on (07) 3518 8030 or at [email protected] and we will not send you any further material.
15
We may change this privacy policy from time to time. Changes will be published to our website.
16
Please email us if you have any further questions or concerns about your privacy, and our conduct online.
