Donna C. Babbs Family Law Professional Corporation (also referred to in this privacy policy as “our firm” and “we”) recognizes the importance of privacy and the sensitivity of personal information. We have a professional obligation to keep confidential all information we receive within a lawyer-client relationship. We are committed to protecting any personal information we hold. This privacy policy outlines how we manage your personal information and safeguard your privacy.
Your Privacy Rights
We are required to comply the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (the “Act“) and the Canadian Standards Association Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information, which it incorporates. The Act gives you rights concerning the privacy of your personal information.
We are responsible for the personal information we collect and hold. To ensure this accountability, we have developed this policy and trained our staff about our policies and practices.
Why Does Our Firm Need Personal Information?
We collect personal information so that we can provide legal services to our clients.
What Personal Information Do We Collect?
Personal information is any information that identifies you, or by which your identity could be deduced.
How Do We Collect Your Personal Information?
We collect information by lawful, reasonable and fair means. Wherever possible we collect your personal information directly from you, both at the start of a retainer and the course of our representation. If we require your personal information from third parties, for example, your accountant, we would first seek your consent before gathering this information.
Consent
When you retain our firm, you are consenting to allow us to collect, use and disclose your personal information. Normally, we ask for your consent in writing before we disclose your personal information, but in some circumstances we may accept your verbal consent. Sometimes, your consent may be implied through your conduct with us.
Use of Your Information
We use your personal information to provide legal advice and services to you and to administer our financial accounting programs. We are obliged for legal purposes to retain our client files after the end of the retainer for a period of time.
We do not disclose your personal information to any third party to enable them to market their products and services. For example, we do not provide our client mailing lists to anyone.
Disclosure of Your Personal Information
Under certain circumstances, we will disclose your personal information:
- When we are required or authorized by law to do so, for
example if a court issues a subpoena; - When you have consented to the disclosure;
- When the legal services we are providing to you require us to give your information to third parties (for example, to a real estate lawyer who is handling the sale of your home) your consent will be implied, unless you tell us otherwise;
- When it is necessary to establish or collect fees;
- If we engage a third party to provide administrative services to us (i.e. computer services) and the third party is bound by our privacy policy;
- If the information is publicly available personal information as defined in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
Is My Personal Information Secure?
Our firm takes all reasonable precautions to ensure that your personal information is kept safe from loss, unauthorized access, modification or disclosure. Among the steps taken to protect your information are:
- Premises security;
- Restricted file access to personal information;
- Deploying technological safeguards like security software and firewalls to prevent hacking or unauthorized computer access;
- Internal password and security policies.
Access to Your Personal Information
You may ask us for access to any personal information we hold about you. Summary information is also available on request. More detailed requests which require archive or other retrieval costs may be subject to our usual policies regarding professional fees and disbursements.
Can I Request Anonymity?
Whenever it is legal and practicable, we may offer the opportunity to deal with general inquiries without providing your name (for example, by accessing general information on our website).
The Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act requires us to confirm the identify of all new clients. It may also require us to disclose information to FINTRAC in relation to certain large cash transactions.
Communicating With Us
You should be aware that e-mail is not a 100% secure medium and you should be aware of this when contacting us to send personal or confidential information.
Requests For Access
If you have any questions or wish to access your personal information, please write to our privacy contact at Donna C. Babbs Family Law Professional Corporation, 128 Byron Street North Whitby ON L1N 4M9 attention Donna C. Babbs.
Website
Our website www.babbsfamilylaw.com contains links to other sites which are not governed by this privacy policy.
On our website we may monitor traffic patterns, site usage and related site information in order to optimize our web service. We may provide aggregated information to third parties, but these statistics do not include any identifiable personal information.
CLIO Practice Management Software
We use Clio, which is an industry-leading cloud-based law firm practice management tool. Clio may collect aggregated information from its customers, but this information does not include identifiable personal information relating to our clients.