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Web Site Use and Privacy Policy
Please note the following with respect to your use of the mannlawyers.com web site:
The content of this site is provided for information purposes only. The contents are not to be construed as legal advice, and should not be relied upon or used by you in any way to determine a course of action or inaction. You may obtain advice about your particular situation from us, but only after one of our lawyers has consulted with you directly.
Solicitor-client privilege will not attach to any e-mail messages or form submissions.
This is not a secure site and, as such, confidentiality of e-mail messages and/or form submissions should not be expected. E-mail should not be used as a medium for instructing our lawyers and/or staff. Any instructions should be conveyed in writing or by way of telephone.
Any marks mentioned or associated with any sounds and/or images contained in the pages of this site are trademarks of their respective owner(s).
The content of this site, including articles, is provided on an "as is" basis, may contain typographical errors and is not warrantied as to accuracy or quality.
Links to and from the pages of this site in no way imply an endorsement of the information, goods and/or services at those other sites.
This policy describes how we collect, use and disclose your personal
information.
Mann & Partners, LLP is dedicated to maintaining the privacy
of your personal information.
Subject to certain limited exceptions, all information that you
provide to us in the course of our professional relationship will
be held in the strictest of confidence and not disclosed, released
or otherwise conveyed without your implicit or express consent.
What is considered to be personal information? Personal information
has been defined in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic
Documents Act (Canada) (“PIPEDA”) to be information
about an identifiable individual. This would include any information
that identifies an individual or information that would allow
the identity of an individual to be deduced. It would be fair
to say that personal information includes information that relates
to such individual’s personal characteristics, circumstances,
health or their activities and views.
What is not considered to be personal information. Information
that you would normally find on a business card (e.g. name, business
address and telephone number) is not considered to be “personal
information” under the Act, however, our role as your legal
advisors require us to guard even this information confidential.
Your consent. Subject to some important exceptions, we will request
your specific consent when we collect, use or disclose your personal
information. In some circumstances your consent will be implied
through your instructions to us, or your conduct with us. In some
circumstances your consent will not be required such as when it
is clearly in your best interests and consent is not available
in a timely way or when the information is already publicly available.
For example, in order to properly investigate a breach of an agreement
or contravention of a federal or provincial law we may collect
personal information belonging to others (general public) that
is either required or may be incidental to said purpose without
any consent.
What personal information do we collect, why do we collect it
and how is it collected. In general terms, we will collect any
and all information that in our reasonable opinion is necessary
to provide you with our advice and services. This may include
information about how to contact you, and about your legal circumstances
so that we properly advise you with respect to your rights, responsibilities
and options and so that we may diligently carry out your instructions.
We only collect such information by lawful means and whenever
possible we try to obtain said information directly from you.
In certain circumstances we may collect such personal information
about you from third parties, such as your accountant, insurance
company, real estate agent, or employer.
In addition to the foregoing we will utilize your personal information
to invoice you for our services, to process payments and/or to
collect unpaid accounts and may, unless you instruct us otherwise,
use said information to:
- to advise you of new developments in the law
- to advise you of any promotion that we may be having at that
point in time
In every case we limit our collection of personal information
to that which is reasonably required in the circumstances.
Our firm consists of a number of lawyers, occasionally students-at-law
and a number of support personnel. We also use contract personnel,
consultants, other lawyers, experts and other agencies to assist
us in our work. We may be required to disclose some of your personal
information in the course of providing our legal services. In
addition to the foregoing, our computer consultants, office maintenance
and security staff, file storage companies, temporary workers,
may have access to information from time-to-time. In all cases
we will work to ensure that anyone with access to the information
we retain is strictly restricted and controlled.
Disclosure of personal information. Subject to our professional
obligation with respect to confidentiality, we may under certain
circumstances disclose your personal information. Such circumstances
are:
when you have consented to such disclosure;
when required or authorized by law, court order or by order of
a tribunal, for example, to comply with lawful requests by external
regulators that have the legal authority to require that we provide
personal information and/or interview our lawyers and staff as
part of their mandates.
Such regulators may include the Law Society of Upper Canada,
Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, the Human Rights Commission
etc. when the legal services we are providing to you require us
to give your personal information to third parties (for example
a lender in a real estate mortgage transaction or to Industry
Canada with respect to an incorporation) your consent will be
implied, unless you instruct us otherwise where it is necessary
to establish or collect our fees via court process if we engage
a third party to provide administrative services to us (like archival
file storage) and that third party is bound by our privacy policy
or has a privacy policy that meets the standards of the policy
set out herein if we engage a third party to assist us in providing
our services to you (such as a title search company) and that
third party is bound by our privacy policy or has a privacy policy
that meets the standards of the policy set out herein if we engage
an expert witness on your behalf if we retain other law firms
in other jurisdictions on your behalf if the information is already
publicly known where we believe, upon reasonable grounds, that
there is an immanent risk to an identifiable person or group of
death or serious bodily harm.
In such circumstances we will not disclose more information than
is required. We do not sell, barter, trade or exchange any personal
information.
Viewing and correcting your personal information. The accuracy
of your information is important and we welcome any inquiries
you might have regarding your personal information that we have
collected and retained.
To review your personal information which is retained by Mann
& Partners, LLP and, if applicable, to have it corrected,
or if you have any questions or concerns regarding your information
or our privacy policies or procedures, please write to:
Privacy Compliance Officer
Mann & Partners, LLP
Barristers & Solicitors
1600 Scott Street, Suite 612
Ottawa, Ontario, K1Y 4N7
Alternatively, you may call or fax us at: Tel: 613-722-1500,
Fax: (613) 722-7677.
We will need to confirm your identity in advance of allowing
access to said personal information. There is no charge for verifying
or correcting information. Depending on the circumstances, there
may be a charge if you want a copy of your records. We will only
correct factual information and not any professional opinions
that we may have formed and may ask you to provide evidence showing
that our information is erroneous.
Please note you may be denied access to your personal information
under the following circumstances:
- if allowing you access would likely reveal personal information
about a third party
- if the information is subject to solicitor-client privilege
if revealing the information would reveal confidential commercial
information belonging to Mann & Partners, LLP
- if revealing the information could affect the security of
another person
- where the information relates to an investigation of a breach
of an agreement or a contravention of the laws of Canada or
a province
- where the information was generated in the course of a formal
dispute resolution process
- where the information relates to existing or anticipated legal
proceedings against you
- where to allow you access to the information would prejudice
negotiations with you
- where the request is frivolous or vexatious
We take 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
- security measures in regard to physical storage devices, including
fire-proof safes and locked cabinets
technological safeguards for electronic hardware such as firewalls
and routers
- internal password and security policies with respect to electronic
hardware
- information reduced to a paper form is either under supervision
or in a locked or restricted area
- all of our cell phones are digital to reduce the possibility
of interception
- our staff has received the requisite training in order to
be compliant with this privacy policy
- we offer different methods of exchanging electronic information,
including the possibility of encryption
We retain your personal information after delivery of our services
in order to answer any queries you may have and for our own accountability
to external regulatory bodies. However, in order to safeguard
your privacy we may only retain your personal information for
a limited time period.
For some legal files that period can be very lengthy, as it is
often of great utility to have the old file material to refer
to in any future representation of the same client. For other
legal files, that period may only be a few years. These files
are stored securely. For more information about your file type
and how long it will be retained, please inquire directly with
the lawyer of your choice.
Last wills and testaments and powers of attorney will be retained
until we receive a written direction to release said documents.
Applications for employment will be retained for a maximum of
six (6) months after receipt unless we are requested by the applicant
not to retain said application material.
We destroy electronic data by deleting it and paper records by
shredding.
Changes to this privacy policy. This Privacy Policy is in effect
as of January 1, 2004. We may from time-to-time review and revise
our privacy practices and this privacy policy. In the event of
an amendment an appropriate notice will be posted on www.mannlawyers.com.
Employment Inquiries. If you apply to Mann & Partners, LLP
for a job, we need to consider your personal information as part
of our review process. If we offer you a job, which you accept,
the information will be retained in accordance with our privacy
procedures for employee records.
Credit Bureaus. To assist us in making credit and other business
decisions, prevent fraud, and check the identity of prospective
clients, we may on occasion, request information about you from
the files of consumer reporting agencies.
Web site. Our web site may from time-to-time contain links to
other sites, which are not governed by this privacy policy. On
our web site 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.
A cookie is the term for a technology that installs a small amount
of information on your computer to permit a web site to recognize
future visits form that computer. You can set your internet browser
to notify you when you receive a cookie in order to accept or
reject that cookie or to block cookies all together. Our web site
does not currently use cookies.
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