Commitment
Benmor Family Law Group recognizes the importance of privacy and the sensitivity of personal information. As a law office, 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
From January 1, 2004, all businesses engaged in commercial activities must comply with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the Canadian Standards Association Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information. These obligations extend to lawyers and law firms, including Benmor Family Law Group. 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 lawyers and support staff about our policies and practices.
Why does Benmor Family Law Group need personal information?
Benmor Family Law Group provides legal services and products to a wide range of clients. In doing so, we produce direct marketing materials concerning our services and developments in the law.
What personal information do we collect?
Personal information is any information that either identifies you or allows for your identity to be deduced. If we did not collect and use your personal information, we could not provide you with legal services.
How do we collect your personal information?
We collect information only by lawful and fair means and not in an unreasonably intrusive way. Wherever possible, we collect your personal information directly from you at the start of a retainer and in the course of our representation.
Sometimes we may obtain information about you from other sources, for example:
- your insurance company;
- your real estate agent in a property transaction;
- from a government agency or registry;
- your employer, if we are acting for you, at its request;
- your accountant.
Consent
In most cases, we shall ask you to specifically consent if we collect, use or disclose your personal information. Normally, we ask for your consent in writing, but in some circumstances, we may accept your oral 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, to administer our client (time and billing) databases and to include you in any direct marketing activities. If you tell us that you no longer wish to receive information about our services or about new developments in the law, we will not send any further material.
Benmor Family Law Group does 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 other law firms.
Disclosure of your personal information
Under certain circumstances, Benmor Family Law Group will disclose your personal information:
- when we are required or authorized by law to do so (e.g. 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 (e.g. a lender in a real estate mortgage transaction), your consent will be implied, unless you tell us otherwise;
- where it is necessary to establish or collect fees;
- if we engage a third party to provide administrative services to us (e.g. computer back-up services or archival file storage) and the third party is bound by our privacy policy;
- if we engage expert witnesses on your behalf;
- if we retain other law firms in other jurisdictions, on your behalf;
- if the information is already publicly known.
Updating your information
Since we use your personal information to provide legal services to you, it is important that the information be accurate and up-to-date. If any of your information changes during the course of the retainer, please inform us so that we can make any necessary changes.
Is my personal information secure?
Benmor Family Law Group 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 (e.g. security software and firewalls to prevent hacking or unauthorized computer access);
- internal password and security policies.
Access to your personal information
You may ask for access to any personal information we hold about you. Summary information is available on request. More detailed requests, which require archive or other retrieval costs, may be subject to our normal professional and disbursement fees.
Correcting errors
If Benmor Family Law Group holds information about you and you can establish that it is not accurate, complete and up-to-date, Benmor Family Law Group will take reasonable steps to correct it.
Can I be denied access to my personal information?
Your rights to access your personal information are not absolute. We may deny access when
- denial of access is required or authorized by law (e.g. when a record containing personal information about you is subject to a claim of legal professional privilege by one of our clients);
- information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings against you;
- when granting you access would have an unreasonable impact on other people’s privacy;
- when to do so would prejudice negotiations with you;
- to protect our firm’s rights and property;
- the request is frivolous or vexatious.
If we deny your request for access to, or refuse a request to correct information, we shall explain why.
Benmor Family Law Group does not use your Social Insurance Number as a way of identifying or organizing the information we hold about you.
Can I request anonymity?
Whenever it is legal and practicable, we may offer the opportunity to deal with general inquiries without providing your name. The Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act requires us to confirm the identity of all new clients. It may also require us disclose information to FINTRAC in relation to certain large cash transactions.
Credit Bureaus
To help us make credit decisions about clients, prevent fraud, check the identity of new clients and prevent money laundering, we may, on occasion, request information about you from the files of consumer reporting agencies.
Communicating with Us
You should be aware that email is not a 100 per cent secure medium and you should be aware of this when contacting us to send personal or confidential information.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
Since Benmor Family Law Group regularly reviews all of its policies and procedures, we may change our Privacy Policy from time to time.
Requests for Access
If you have any questions or wish to access your personal information, please write to our privacy officer. If you are not satisfied with our response, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada can be reached at 112 Kent Street, Ottawa Ontario K1A 1H3, or at (800) 282-1376.
Employment Inquiries
If you apply to Benmor Family Law Group for employment, we need to consider your personal information as part of our review process. We normally retain information from candidates after a decision has been made, unless you ask us not to retain the information. If we offer you employment, which you accept, the information will be retained in accordance with our privacy procedures for employee records.
Web Site
Our website contains links to other sites, which are not governed by this Privacy Policy. On our website, like most other commercial websites, 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.
DISCLAIMER The contents of this website are provided for general information purposes only. They are not meant to be legal advice or create a lawyer-client relationship. Visiting this website or providing us with your information does not create a lawyer-client relationship. If you want information or advice relating to your individual circumstances, you should consult with your own lawyer or retain the legal services of Benmor Family Law Group. The lawyers at Benmor Family Law Group will be pleased to discuss resolutions for specific legal concerns you may have. You do not become our client unless and until Benmor Family Law Group agrees to act for you and that representation is confirmed in a retainer agreement, in accordance with our usual policies. Unless you are an existing client, no information provided in an e-mail will be considered confidential or personal. Please also note that any information sent or received over the internet is generally not secured. Benmor Family Law Group cannot guarantee the security or privacy of any communication sent to us. The website also contains links to third-party websites. These links are provided solely as a convenience to you and not as an endorsement by Benmor Family Law Group of the contents of such third-party websites. You may download and print a copy of the material on this site for non-commercial, personal or educational use. Our copyright notice and this disclaimer must remain on all copies.