Privacy Statement : Cunningham Swan [cswan.com]

Privacy Statement

Protecting your Privacy

This privacy statement explains how Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little and Bonham LLP collects, uses and discloses personal information. Generally speaking, “personal information” is information about an identifiable individual.

Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little and Bonham LLP offers and provides legal services and related information to a wide range of clients. We collect, use and disclose personal information as necessary to offer and provide clients and potential clients with legal services and information, to fulfill our professional legal responsibilities and to manage our business. As lawyers, we have a professional obligation to keep confidential all information we obtain within a lawyer-client relationship.

The Information We Collect and How We Use It

The kinds of personal information we collect and use in relation to clients and potential clients will depend upon the information and services requested. The information may include:

name, address, email address, contact details, nature of the client or potential client's legal issue, financial, credit, billing and account information, and other incidental information relating to the services we provide;
information relevant to your legal issue, for example, financial, property ownership, family, employment, disciplinary, benefit or tax information, and any other information you give to us when you ask or instruct us to act for you;
information about other individuals that we collect in the course of acting for clients, including personal information about employees of clients, referrals, adverse parties and parties with parallel interests, other counsel, mediators and arbitrators, witnesses and potential witnesses, expert witnesses and consultants;
information about you contained in communications within Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little and Bonham LLP and between us and you, whether online or offline; and
other information we may collect with your consent or as permitted or required by law.

We use this information:

To assess whether we can act for you, and to avoid conflicts of interest.
To offer and provide legal information and services to you.
To communicate with you regarding the services you request and to respond to your requests and inquiries.
To administer our client time and billing databases, and issue and collect accounts.
To provide you with material about our services and developments in the law, and to invite you to Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little and Bonham LLP seminars and functions.
To develop and use our knowledge management and precedent systems and permit members of Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little and Bonham LLP to consult, for precedent purposes, documents that we have created on your behalf and that contain personal information.
To manage and administer our business and to protect you and us against error and fraud.
To fulfil our legal and professional obligations.
As permitted or required by law or for purposes for which you otherwise provide your consent.

How We Collect Information About You:

We typically collect personal information directly from you or through our interaction with you. However, sometimes we may obtain personal information about you from other sources.
For example, we may collect personal information from:
- A government agency or registry;
- Third parties, such as your real estate agent, your financial institution, your insurance company, or your employer, or other law firms or agents who have acted for you in the past, where these parties have information relevant to the matter in which we are acting for you.

How We Disclose and Share Your Information

We may disclose the personal information we collect about clients or other individuals we deal with to third parties, including:

Where the legal services we are providing to you require us to give your personal information to third parties, such as a lender in a real estate mortgage transaction.
Where we are required or authorized by law to do so, for example, where the rules or court require us to provide personal information to the opposite side and the court in a litigation matter or where a court issues a subpoena or order.
Where we engage an expert or consultant on your behalf in a litigation matter.
Where we retain another law firm or agent to act or assist us in acting on your behalf.
Where it is necessary to collect fees, for instance to a financial institution or collection agent.
To regulatory (including self-regulatory) or governmental authorities, for example, disclosure of personal information reasonably requested or required by governing bodies of the legal profession in the course of its oversight of our practice.
Where you have instructed us to disclose your personal information to a third party for a designated purpose.
Where we reasonably believe a third party requesting your information is your agent.
Where you consent or as permitted or required by law.

Our Web Site

The only personal information which we collect about you when you use our Web site is what you tell us about yourself, for example, by completing an online form when you request receipt of a Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little and Bonham LLP publication, or information you provide to us through the “Contact Us” section or when you send us an email.

Our server does not currently attach cookies to your computer's memory when you visit our Web site.

As most Web sites do, however, we do track usage patterns on our Web site on an anonymous basis. Your identity cannot reasonably be ascertained from this information. Each time you visit our Web site, our server records your Internet Service Provider, the date and time of your visit, the pages you visit and the documents downloaded, the searches you performed, and the referring URLs you came from. We use this non-personal information to optimize our Web site service.

For your convenience, we may offer links from our Web site to other Web Sites. However, Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little and Bonham LLP is not responsible for the personal information collection, use and disclosure practices of other entities to which our Web site may link. You should consult the privacy policies of these other entities before providing any personal information on their Web sites.

Your Consent

We collect, use and disclose your personal information with your consent or as permitted or required by law. Your consent may be express or implied, depending on the circumstances and the sensitivity of the personal information in question. For example, in most cases, a client's consent to the collection, use and disclosure or personal information by Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little and Bonham LLP may be implied by the fact that the client has engaged Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little and Bonham LLP to provide legal services, where the collection, use and disclosure of personal information relates to the performance of those services by Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little and Bonham LLP. If you provide personal information about another person to us, we assume you have the consent of that individual to enable us to collect, use or disclose their information as described in this policy. If you choose to provide personal information to Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little and Bonham LLP, we assume that you consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as outlined in this privacy statement.

Subject to legal and contractual requirements and reasonable notice, you may refuse to consent to our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information or you may withdraw your consent to our further collection, use and disclosure of information about you, by contacting our Privacy Officer at privacyofficer@cswan.com or at 613.544.0211. Note that if you withdraw your consent to certain uses of your personal information, we may no longer be able to provide certain of our services.

There are instances where Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little and Bonham LLP may collect, use or disclose your personal information without your consent, for example to collect a debt you owe to us, to comply with a subpoena or court order, or to comply with the rules of court regarding the production of records.

Security

Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little and Bonham LLP has implemented reasonable physical, organizational and technological security measures to safeguard the personal information in our custody or control. These include safeguards to protect personal information against loss or theft, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use, or modification.

Unsubscribe

If you do not wish to receive further materials about our services and legal developments or if you do not wish to receive further invitations to seminars and functions, you may unsubscribe or ask us not to contact you for these purposes.

Changes to this Statement

Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little and Bonham LLP reserves the right to change this privacy statement at any time and we will take reasonable steps to advise affected individuals of any material changes, if necessary. However, you should review this privacy statement from time to time to ensure that you are aware of and accept any changes made. You may contact us at the address, email address or telephone number above to obtain a current copy.

Privacy

Cunningham Swan · Lawyers [Kingston, Ontario]