Privacy Policy
RND Law Office (“RND Law Office”, “we”, “us” and “our”) operate the https://www.rndlaw.ca website (hereinafter referred to as the “Service”).
We understand the importance of keeping your personal information confidential. We respect and protect the privacy of our clients and website users who use our Service. As lawyers, we are governed by strict ethical guidelines pursuant to the Law Society of Ontario Rules of Professional Conduct and Law Society of Saskatchewan Code of Professional Conduct. We are also committed to protecting your personal information in accordance with the terms of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”).
We have created this privacy policy in order to explain our practices concerning the collection, use, retention, disclosure and destruction of personal information. This privacy policy applies to all personal information under the control of RND Law Office. This privacy policy applies to RND Law Office only, it does not apply to other websites to which we link. By requesting our service and by continuing to browse through our Service you are agreeing to comply with and be bound by our privacy policy and terms of use.
We only collect personal information from our potential clients and clients in order to provide legal services. We are committed to handling all such personal information provided in accordance with the obligations pursuant to PIPEDA and in accordance with website use requirements as set out below.
If there are any matters that have not been expressly addressed in this Privacy Policy, or if (i) an individual requires clarification as to how to implement or interpret this Policy, or (ii) would like to request access to his or her personal information or to amend such information, such concerns should be brought to our attention immediately. You may telephone or contact us by email at [email protected]
DEFINITIONS
Personal Information – Personal information means information in any form which can be attributed to an identifiable individual, but does not include business contact information, such as your name, title or position, business address, telephone number, facsimile number, or e-mail address.
Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) – All Canadian organizations engaged in commercial activities must comply with the PIPEDA and the Canadian Standards Association Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information incorporated by reference into PIPEDA. These obligations extend to lawyers and law firms, including RND Law Office.
PERSONAL INFORMATION AT RND LAW OFFICE
If you choose to use our Service, then you agree to the collection and use of information in relation to this Privacy Policy. We collect several different types of information for various purposes to provide and improve our Service to you. We will not use or share your information with anyone except as described in this Privacy Policy.
INFORMATION COLLECTION AND USE
Information Collected
We collect personal information fairly and in accordance with the law. The kinds of personal information we collect and use in relation to potential clients and clients will depend upon the information and services requested. We typically collect your personal information directly from you or through our interaction with you. However, sometimes we may obtain personal information about you from other sources. Such collection may be done at the
beginning of our relationship or during our retainer. With respect to corporation and institutional clients, we may collect information about your directors, officers, independent contractors and employees.
We collect personal information: (1) for the purpose of determining whether our law office will enter into a professional relationship with you; (2) in the course of a professional relationship, or (3) when we otherwise collect personal information, for example, when you provide us with information about yourself and your legal case, or someone else associated with your need for legal services.
While using our Service, we may ask you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify you. Personally identifiable information may include, but is not limited to:
- First name, Middle name, Last name
- Phone number
- Email address
- Address, State, Province, Postal code/ZIP, City/Town, Country
- Cookies and Usage Data
Information inputted in Contact Form: We want to inform you that if you fill out and submit the contact form on our website, then we will retain your personal information submitted, such as your name and contact details. Your personal information is collected solely for the purpose of allowing us to respond to your inquiry. We will not disclose this information to anyone other than the individuals at our firm. Please do not send us any confidential or sensitive personally identifiable information through this form (for example, your Social Security number; passport number; date of birth; drivers license number; or credit card, bank account or other financial information). If you submit any of this information through this form, you do so at your own risk and we will not be liable to you for the consequences of your submission.
Information submitted by Email: We will frequently communicate with you by email. It is up to you to provide us with an email address you consider sufficiently secure to receive confidential and/or privileged communications from us. If this is a personal matter, we recommend that you avoid using your work email address, which is likely the property of your employer and may be accessible by other people. You should be aware that e-mail is not an entirely secure medium, and you should be aware of this when contacting us to send personal or confidential information. Please do not send us any confidential or sensitive personally identifiable information through email (for example, your Social Security number; passport number; date of birth; drivers license number; or credit card, bank account or other financial information). If you submit any of this information through this medium, you do so at your own risk and we will not be liable to you for the consequences of your submission. Our emails to you will include confidential and/or privileged information. By forwarding our emails to other people, you may be at risk of waiving privilege or disclosing confidential information. Copying other people on emails you send us may also waive privilege or disclose confidential information. Waivers of privilege and disclosure of confidential information to others could hurt your case. We recommend taking necessary care in how you use the information you send us and receive from us by email.
Information submitted by Text/Message communication: If you choose to communicate with us by text messages or messaging apps, it may be hard to keep your information private and secure. You should take care to ensure that your messages to us, and any replies from us, are accessible only by you.
In the course of our relationship with you, we will need to collect, use, and sometimes disclose different types of personal information for various purposes associated with the services we provide as directed by you or your organization. Given the nature of our services, it is impractical to list all of types of personal information that may be collected, used or disclosed. However, subject to applicable law, our collection of personal information may include:
- your full name;
- contact information, such as your address, telephone number, e-mail address, or job titles;
- information to help establish your identity;
- medical and criminal records;
- nature of your legal issue, financial, credit, billing and account information, and other incidental; information relating to the services we provide;
- information regarding your legal requirements, situations and interests;
- information that is material to your legal issue, for example, immigration, financial, property ownership, family, employment, criminality, disciplinary, benefit or tax information, and any other information you give to us when you ask or instruct us to act for you;
- legal issue or area of law of interest, for instance, when you sign up to attend any RND Law Office seminar, event and function, or when you request receipt of materials concerning our services and developments in the law;
- information about individuals 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, arbitrators, witnesses and potential witnesses, expert witnesses and consultants;
- information regarding your organization or other organizations, including information regarding directors, officers, or employees of our clients or other parties, witnesses, beneficiaries, adverse parties, related parties, parties in interest, business partners, investors, shareholders, security holders, buyers, sellers, business partners, and customers of clients;
- information about you contained in communications within RND Law Office and between us and you, whether online or offline; and
- your payment information;
- information we may collect with your consent or as permitted or required by law.
We may obtain information about you from other sources including, for example:
- your website;
- government agencies, recruitment agencies, regulatory bodies and registry;
- public sources of information and publicly available records;
- public sources in the context of an investigation related to legal services;
- other professionals or organizations who serve you;
- other parties or witnesses in the context of litigation; and
- other parties or participants in a commercial transaction. and
Information Use
We only use your personal information for the original purposes it was given. Providing us with your personal information is always your choice. However, your decision not to provide certain information may limit or prohibit our ability to provide you with our services. We use personal information to enable us to manage and develop our business operations, including:
- to provide and maintain the Service;
- to notify you about changes to our Service;
- to monitor the usage of our Service;
- to detect, prevent and address technical issues of our Service;
- to assess whether we can act for you, including 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 information concerning our legal services from time to time;
- to provide you with information and marketing material on our services and developments in the law, and to invite you to our seminars, events and functions;
- to provide you with requested information, newsletters or other subscribed for products or services;
- to develop and use our knowledge management and precedent systems and permit employees of our office to consult documents that we have created on your behalf and that contain personal information;
- to manage and administer our business, including to avoid negligence and protect you and us against error and fraud;
- to fulfill our legal and professional obligations; and
- as permitted or required by law or for purposes for which you otherwise provide your consent.
DISCLOSURE AND SHARING OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
We will never share, sell, or rent your personal information with advertisers or unaffiliated third parties for their promotional use to enable them to market their products and services.
We may share your personal information as discussed below for storage, retention or transactional legal and administrative work. We may need to disclose the personal information we collect about clients or other individuals we deal with to third parties, including:
- when you have consented to the disclosure
- where we are required or authorized by law to do so, for example, where the rules of court require us to provide personal information to the opposite side and the court in a litigation matter
- where we are required or authorized by law to do so, for example, to cooperate with regulators or law enforcement authorities, or to comply with a legal process such as where a court issues a court order, subpoena, search warrant, or law enforcement request
- to comply with the requirements of the Law Society of Ontario and the Law Society of Saskatchewan, the regulatory bodies that govern the practice of law in Ontario and Saskatchewan respectively.
- where the legal services we are providing to you require us to give your personal information to third parties (in which case your consent will be implied, unless you inform us in writing otherwise at the outset of the retainer);
- where it is necessary to collect fees or disbursements, for instance, to a financial institution or collection agent;
- where we retain another law firm or agent to act or assist us in acting on your behalf (with your consent).
- where we retain another law firm (such as, for example, law firms in other jurisdictions) on your behalf.
- where we engage an expert or consultant on your behalf in a litigation matter;
- 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; and
- if we engage a third party to provide administrative services to us (such as computer back-up services, archival file storage, or business insurance) and the third party is bound by obligations regarding privacy that are consistent with this policy;
- in special cases where we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be violating our terms and conditions of use (disputing financial fees to financial and credit companies, or posting untruthful negative reviews);
- in the event of a merger by or growth of RND Law Office (in which case the third party will be bound by obligations regarding privacy that are consistent with this policy);
- to 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 we may be required to disclose or report personal information in limited circumstances where we believe in good faith that disclosure is required under the law to comply with a legal obligation, protect and defend the rights or property of RND Law Office, prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with the Service, to protect the personal safety of users of the Service or the public and to protect against legal liability
LIMITING COLLECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
RND Law Office will only collect personal information that is actually required in order to complete the legal services requested or other specified purposes
LIMITING USE, DISCLOSURE AND RETENTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
RND Law Office shall not use or disclose personal information except with the consent of the individual or where required or permitted to do so by law. All personal information will be retained and handled in accordance with the RND Law Office Privacy Policy.
We will share information about our clients amongst members of our firm and staff in order to properly and effectively provide specified legal services.
In the course of the provision of legal services, we may disclose certain personal information to third parties, where you have authorized the disclosure or where your consent can be easily inferred. We use certain trusted third parties (for example, providers of customer support, operations support and IT services) for the business purposes of helping us provide, and protect our services. These third parties will access your information to perform tasks on our behalf for the handling of your information per our instructions. The contractual means we use prohibit these third parties from using any your personal information for their own purposes, and they are required to maintain the confidentiality of the information we provide to them.
We will retain your personal information for the appropriate duration periods in accordance with our professional obligations as established by rules of the Law Society of Ontario and Law Society of Saskatchewan
SAFEGUARDING PERSONAL INFORMATION
RND Law Office takes precautions to ensure that your personal information is kept safe from loss, unauthorized access, modification or disclosure. Among the steps taken to protect your personal information are:
- premises security;
- confidentiality policies as part of our professional obligations;
- training for our staff;
- deploying technological safeguards like security software and firewalls to prevent unauthorized computer access; and
- internal password and security policies.
When we ask for sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, we protect it through the use of encryption during transmission, such as the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol. Our office employees are trained and required to safeguard your information and, using physical, electronic and procedural safeguards, we restrict access to personal information to those employees and agents for business purposes only. Additionally, we use internal and external resources to review the adequacy of our security procedures. The security of your personal information is of paramount importance to us, but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure and reliable. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
ACCURACY OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
RND Law Office has an obligation to ensure that personal information under its control is accurate, complete and up-to-date for the purpose for which it was collected. Should your personal information need to be amended during the course of the provision of legal services, please contact our office in writing by email so that we may amend your file accordingly.
ACCESS TO INFORMATION
Individuals may request access to their personal information under the control of RND Law Office and subject to certain limited exceptions at law, RND Law Office will generally provide you with access to your personal information. We will need to verify your identity before searching for or providing you with personal information.
Should your client file contain personal information about a third party, we will not be permitted to disclose such information to you unless information concerning the third party has been severed from the record.
In responding to your request for access, we will make every reasonable effort to reply to your inquiry within thirty (30) days.
CHILDREN’S PRIVACY
RND Law Office does not solicit any personal information from anyone under the age of 18 (“Children”). children. Our Service does not address Children. If you are not 18 or older, you are not authorised to request our services or use our website. Parents should be aware that there are parental control tools available online that can be used to prevent children from submitting information online without parental permission or from accessing material that is harmful to minors. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your Children has provided us with personal information, please contact us. If we become aware that we have collected personal information from children without verification of parental consent, we take steps to remove that information from our servers.
LOG DATA
We want to inform you that whenever you visit our Service, we may collect information that your browser sends to us that is called Log Data. This Log Data may include information such as your computer’s Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, browser version, pages of our Service that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, and other statistics
COOKIES
Like many other websites, our Service employs cookie technology to improve your online experience. A cookie is commonly defined as a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user’s web browser while a user is browsing a website. When the user browses the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie is sent back to the website by the browser to notify the website of the user’s previous activity. Information tracked may include information to help us determine the total number of visitors to the Site on an ongoing basis, and the types of Internet browsers and operating systems that our visitors use. We do not use this information for any other purpose and we do not cross-reference this information with any type of personal information that is voluntarily offered elsewhere through our website. We do track usage patterns on our website on an anonymous basis. Your identity cannot reasonably be ascertained from this information. Each time you visit our website, 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 URL’s you came from. We use this non-personal information to optimize our website service.
It is always within the discretion of the user to set Internet browsers to not accept cookies. This may however, affect your use of certain features of the website.
LINKS TO OTHER SITES
Our Service may contain links to other sites. If you click on a third-party link, you will be directed to that site. Note that these external sites are not operated by us. Therefore, we strongly advise you to review each linked
website’s privacy policy in order to determine if you trust the website. We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third-party sites or services.
PERSONAL INFORMATION IN RELATION TO POTENTIAL EMPLOYEES
If you apply for a position at RND Law Office, we will collect the personal information contained in, and generated in relation to, your application package, in order to evaluate your application and assess whether to offer you a position at RND Law Office. For candidates who are not offered or do not accept a position, we normally retain this information for a reasonable period in the event that an appropriate position becomes available or that you reapply to RND Law Office. If you accept a position at RND Law Office, the information will be retained in accordance with our privacy procedures applicable to the personal information of Employees of RND Law Office.
PERSONAL INFORMATION ABOUT OUR AGENTS, VENDORS, SUPPLIERS, EXPERT WITNESSES AND FOREIGN ASSOCIATES
RND Law Office may collect information about third-party agents, vendors, suppliers, expert witnesses and foreign associates (“Service Providers”) who provide goods, services and information to RND Law Office. This information would include name and contact information as well as any information (such as banking information) that we need to pay you for your services and other relevant information, such as experience and qualifications of Service Providers.
We use this information in order to assess suitability for particular assignments; to contact you, where necessary, in relation to the goods, services and information you are providing to RND Law Office; and to pay you for your services. We may also use this information to provide you with material regarding our services or developments in the law or to invite you to RND Law Office seminars, events and functions. 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, events and functions, you may unsubscribe or ask us not to contact you for these purposes
CLIENT CONSENT
At RND Law Office, we take instructions from our clients in order to proceed with their legal matters. In order to provide the services requested, we will proceed to collect, use, retain and disclose client personal information in accordance with its clients consent. Sometimes we will ask for your consent in writing, but in some cases we may accept your oral consent. Sometimes your consent may be implied through your conduct with us or the nature of our retainer.
Subject to certain legal and contractual exceptions at law and reasonable notice, you may amend or withdraw your consent to the collection, use or disclosure of personal information. However, should you choose to amend or withdraw your consent, this may impact on our ability to serve you and maintain our relationship and may also affect the legal services that we are able to provide.
DISCLAIMER TO SECURITY
By consenting to the Terms and Conditions of the Site and hence the Privacy Policy, you consent that no data transmission over the internet is completely secure. RND Law Office cannot guarantee the security of any information you provide to us and you acknowledge that transmit such information to us at your own risk.
I am aware of and consent to the retention, maintenance, and storage of my information and records relating to my matter in the following forms and locations: Paper (in office and/or storage files); electronic (e.g., computer, handheld devices for email, fax, and via the Internet using cloud storage and third-party cloud computing providers that may change from time to time; or other like mediums. RND Law Office will endeavor to take all steps required to preserve and maintain the confidentiality of all my information and records as set out above, however, I recognize and agree that such information and records are subject to unauthorized access outside the control of RND Law Office, and agree to hold RND Law Office harmless from any non-lawyer caused breaches of confidentiality of my information and records. I am aware I can ask for additional information at any time regarding RND Law Office’s ongoing steps, procedures and policies in place that may vary as required from time to time. I am aware of and consent to the retention, maintenance, and storage of my information and records relating to my matter.
CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
RND Law Office reserves to amend this privacy policy from time to time at its sole discretion by posting such revisions to our Service. Changes to this privacy policy will be effective upon posting. We will take reasonable steps to advise affected individuals of any material changes, if necessary. You are advised to review this privacy policy periodically to ensure that you are aware of and accept any changes made. Your continued use of our services and this website indicates your assent to the privacy policy. You may contact us at our office phone or email to obtain a current copy of this privacy policy.