1. Introduction
FIONA MARGARET MACKIE KENNEDY t/as DELANEY & DELANEY (ABN 92 331 552 241) “Delaney & Delaney” is referred to in this Privacy Policy as we, us or our.
This Privacy Policy explains how we manage personal information. It also describes your rights to access and correct personal information we hold about you, and how you can make a complaint about our management of your personal information. This is in addition to our obligations of confidentiality to clients and other parties arising from sources other than the Privacy Act.
1.1 Application of this Policy
This Privacy Policy only applies to some of the personal information we manage. It only applies to personal information we manage for the purposes of or in connection with our obligations under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (the AML/CTF Act)
Other personal information we manage remains excluded by applicable exemptions in the Privacy Act.
1.2 Policy Updates
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. The current version will be available on our website at www.delaneyanddelaney.com.au.
2. Personal information: what we collect
2.1 Types of Personal Information
Depending on the circumstances, Delaney & Delaney may collect and hold a range of different information about you and any relevant entity or person. This information may include your:
- Identity information: name, date of birth, gender, signature, photographic identification, offices or directorships held;
- Contact information: residential and postal addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers;
- Professional and business information: occupation, employer, job title, professional qualifications, business holdings and structures;
- Financial information: bank account details, billing information, payment card details, tax file numbers*;
- Matter-related information: information relevant to your legal matter or the legal matter of our client;
- Transaction information: details of services provided to you or your organisation;
- Communication records: records of correspondence and communications with you;
- Website and technical data: IP address, browser type, device information, pages visited, cookies (see section 8);
- Recruitment information: employment history, qualifications, references, right to work status, background check results; and
- Sensitive information: including: sexual orientation, racial and ethnic origin, political beliefs, religious affiliation, criminal record, and health information.
The kinds of personal information we collect depends upon the nature of our relationship with you.
This policy does not apply to acts and practices that relate directly to the employee records of our current and former employees.
When we deal with corporations or agencies we may collect personal information about individual employees, directors or principals. If you are a corporation or agency and you provide us with personal information about such individuals, or you are aware that we have collected personal information about such individuals, we request that you refer those individuals to this Privacy Policy. You are responsible for ensuring that any personal information you provide is with the consent of the relevant individual.
2.2 Identity Verification and the AML/CTF Act
We may be required to verify your identity and collect certain information under the AML/CTF Act when we provide designated services. Identity documents might also be required for other services such as court matters, real property transactions and asset dealings.
This includes collecting identification documents and information about the source of funds and beneficial ownership of entities.
3. How we collect personal information
3.1 Sources of information
We collect information directly from our clients, from other lawyers, government sources or public sources such as registers or the internet.
Direct Collection
Where reasonable and practicable, we collect personal information directly from you.
This may occur when you:
- engage us to provide legal services;
- respond to communication with us or engage a solicitor or agent to do so;
- contact us by telephone, email, post or in person;
- complete forms or provide documents to us;
- visit our website or use our online services; or
- apply for employment with us.
Indirect Collection
We may also collect personal information about you from third parties, including:
- our client(s), where we collect information in the course of providing legal services;
- other parties to legal proceedings or transactions and their lawyers;
- witnesses of fact, expert witnesses, health care providers and hospitals;
- courts, tribunals, law enforcement and government agencies;
- publicly available sources, including public registers, websites and social media;
- referrers who introduce you to us or lead agencies and advertising sites;
- recruitment agencies and previous employers (for job applicants);
- banks, financial or other lending institutions or any other organisations involved with you; and
- identity verification, commercial data brokers and background check service providers.
We will also use the First AML platform to collect documents and information in connection with our obligations under the AML/CTF Act.
We may also collect information from other reporting entities and government agencies in connection with our obligations under the AML/CTF Act.
If you choose not to provide certain information about yourself, Delaney & Delaney may not be able to provide you with the services or information you require.
3.2 Anonymity and Pseudonymity
If you are a client, you have the option of requesting to deal with us anonymously or by using a pseudonym. However, in most cases this is not lawful nor practical for legal services. If you do not provide us with the personal information we request, we may not be able to provide you with legal services or respond to your enquiry.
4. Why we collect personal information and how we use it
4.1 Collection purposes
We collect, hold and use your information for a range of different purposes, including:
Primary Purposes
This includes:
- to verify your identity;
- providing legal advice and representation to our client(s);
- managing client matters and files;
- conducting legal research and investigations;
- preparing and reviewing legal documents;
- communicating with you and other parties;
- billing and collecting fees, including pursuit of our rights under a Costs Agreement or retainer;
- complying with our legal, professional and insurance obligations;
- to generate transcripts of recorded audio and video and to review the accuracy of any such transcription; and
- administering and managing our firm.
Secondary Purposes
We may also use and disclose personal information for secondary purposes that are related to our primary purposes, including:
- maintaining and developing our relationship with you;
- quality assurance and improvement of our services, including training our AI models or those of our AI providers (subject to our obligations of confidentiality to you);
- training and professional development;
- ongoing Customer Due Diligence as required by the AML/CTF Act;
- training AI or automated systems including AI development by our vendors with appropriate confidentiality safeguards in place;
- enforcement of our right to payment of fees;
- internal reporting and analysis; and
- risk management and insurance purposes.
We will not collect personal information that would be unlawful, unnecessary or unrelated to our business.
5. Disclosure of Personal Information
Your personal information and confidential data is held by us subject to our duty of confidentiality under the Australian Solicitor’s Conduct Rules (“ASCR”) and any applicable undertakings or court rules. We may disclose personal information to third parties subject to those obligations and for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including:
- to discharge our professional obligations to our clients or in the reasonable execution of our instructions;
- to comply with our legal obligations or in answer to a compulsory notice such as a subpoena or warrant, or to disclose information under the AML/CTF Act, Criminal Code(s), Legal Profession Act or other relevant legislation;
- to barristers, mediators, expert witnesses, investigators and consultants and other legal practitioners engaged to act for you (and/or our client) or in relation to the matter;
- other parties to legal proceedings or transactions as instructed, reasonably necessary or required by law;
- banks, financial institutions or other organisations involved in your transactions or as instructed by you or when reasonable necessary or required by law;
- courts, tribunals, government agencies and regulators;
- our professional indemnity insurers;
- a Costs Assessor in the event that an assessment is ordered or reasonably necessary.
- service providers who assist us to operate our business (including IT providers, AI providers, document management providers, and marketing service providers);
- related entities;
- as permitted under the ASCR confidentiality exceptions; and
- any person you expressly or impliedly authorise us to disclose information to.
We may not inform you that we have made a disclosure required by law if the law prevents us from doing so.
6. Overseas Disclosure
We will disclose information to overseas recipients where this is reasonably necessary to progress our instructions, for example, dealing with a company with an overseas office.
We may disclose personal information to recipients located outside Australia where reasonably necessary or convenient to facilitate the purposes of collection, holding, use and disclosure of information stated in this policy.
7. Security of Personal Information
7.1 Security Measures
We hold your personal information using a system designed to protect against data breaches, however like all data security systems, risks may only be mitigated but not eliminated. It is our practice to require our storage service providers to be reputable [and to seek assurances from them regarding security and confidentiality].
We retain personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, to comply with our legal and professional obligations and to ensure that pertinent evidence remains available if reasonably required.
8. Third party websites
Our website may contain links to third party websites, such as payment processors. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of those websites, and we encourage you to read their privacy policies.
9. Access and Correction
9.1 Access to and correction of your Personal Information
Access and correction
- We will respond to your request within a reasonable period, generally within 30 days. We may charge a reasonable fee to cover the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information. If you are a client or former client we do not charge for recovery or storage of records that are your property, but may charge for costs incurred in retrieval of other records or where urgent timelines or requests for documents to be delivered remotely, incur additional outlays.
- If you are not a client or former client, our confidentiality obligations to them and other relevant exemptions under the Privacy Act may preclude us giving you the information requested. Request for search or recovery costs in advance does not mean that information will necessarily be released. We will inform you of any applicable fees before processing your request.
Correction of Your Personal Information
- We take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we hold during the currency of your matter is accurate, up-to-date, complete and relevant. Records held subsequent to the completion of our work for you will not be monitored or updated unless further instructions are issued. If you believe that personal information we hold about you is inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, you may request that we correct it.
- If we refuse to correct your personal information, we will provide written reasons for the refusal and information about how you may complain.
- The Privacy Act permits us to refuse access in some circumstances. If we refuse your access request, we will provide you with written reasons for the refusal (unless unreasonable to do so or we are prohibited from doing so by law) and information about how you may complain.
10. Complaints and questions
If you have a question about this policy or complaint about how we have handled your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer. We ask that you provide details of your complaint in writing. We will acknowledge your complaint within 5 business days and investigate it promptly. We aim to resolve complaints within 30 days. If we need more time, we will keep you informed of our progress.
Privacy Officer
Fiona Margaret Mackie Kennedy, Principal
You may also contact the relevant legal services regulator in your State or Territory.