Privacy Policy

GENERAL

At Australian Family Lawyers, we are committed to protecting your privacy. We use the information we collect about you to maximise the services that we provide to you. Australian Family Lawyers respects the privacy and confidentiality of the information provided by you and adheres to the Australian Privacy Principles pursuant to the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679.

Australian Family Lawyers, “we”, “our” and “us” refers to Australian Family Lawyers Pty Ltd. We offer a wide range of legal services. We refer to these products, together with our other services and website as “Services” in this policy.

Please read our Privacy Policy below carefully.

HOW WE COLLECT AND USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Collection of your personal information

We collect information about you when you provide it to us, when you use our Services, and when other sources provide it to us, as further described below.

The term “Personal Information” in this privacy policy means any information from which your identity is apparent or can be reasonably ascertained.

We receive and store information you enter on our website or give us in any other way from time to time. You may provide basic contact information such as your name, phone number, address, and email address to enable us to send information or process our services for your needs and we may also collect additional information at other times, including but not limited to, when you provide feedback, change your content or email preferences, respond to a survey, or communicate with Australian Family Lawyers customer support or queries.

We respect the privacy of our online visitors. We may collect information on or through this website that can personally identify you. For example, we collect personally identifiable information which you volunteer to us to respond to visitor questions and comments about us and our products and services, and to mail e-newsletters (“Personal Data”).

When visitors come to our site, third parties (such as Google, Yahoo & AdRoll) may place cookies on your browsers for targeted advertising purposes.

A cookie is a small text file that our site may place on your computer as a tool to remember your preferences. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website.

A list of all the types of personal data collected by your website. For example, IP addresses, cookie identifiers or other tracking technologies such as pixels, and end-user website activity.

Use of personal information

If you contact us we will collect the email address you nominate and any other identifying information you provide, such as a name or phone number.

We use your personal information in a number of ways including:

• To provide our Services and personalise your experience. We use information about you to provide the Services to you, including to process transactions with you and provide customer support;
• For research and development – we may use your personal information to assist us in making our Services smarter, faster, secure, integrated and useful to you. We use collective learning about how people use our Services, as well as feedback provided directly to us, in order to troubleshoot and identify trends, usage, activity patterns and areas for integration and improvement of our services;
• To communicate with you about the Services;
• Customer support – we may use your information to resolve any issues you may encounter, to respond to your requests for assistance and to improve the Services;
• For safety and security – we may use information about you and your Service to verify accounts, activity, to monitor suspicious or fraudulent activity and to identify violations of Service Policies; and
• To protect our legitimate business interests and legal rights – where required by law or where we believe it is necessary to protect our legal rights, interests and the interests of others, we use information about you in connection with legal claims, compliance, regulatory and audit functions, and disclosures in connection with the acquisition, merger or sale of business.

You may change your details at any time by advising us in writing via email.

Direct Marketing

We may use personal information collected from you for the purpose of providing you with direct marketing material and information. This will only apply if you have registered or subscribed to such publications by entering your details with us. However if you wish to cease receiving any such information you may let us know either by email or mail and your request will be actioned as soon as possible.

Third Party Service providers

We use Google and/or other third-party service providers to serve ads on our behalf across the Internet and sometimes on this website. They may collect anonymous information about your visits to our website (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number), and your interaction with our products and services. They may also use information about your visits to this and other websites to target advertisements for goods and services in order to provide more relevant advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.

Legal Bases for processing (for EEA users)

If you are an individual in the European Economic Area (EEA), we collect and process information about you only where we have legal bases for doing so under applicable EU laws. The legal bases depend on the Services you use and how you use them. This means we collect and use your information only where:

• We need it to provide you the Services, including to operate the Services, provide customer support and personalised features and to protect the safety and security of the Services.
• It satisfies a legitimate interest (which is not overridden by your data protection interests), such as for research and development, to market and promote the Services and to protect our legal rights and interests.
• You give us consent to do so for a specific purpose.
• We need to process your data to comply with a legal obligation.

If you have agreed to our use of information about you for a specific purpose, you have the right to change your mind at any time, but this will not affect any processing that has already taken place. Where we are using your information because we or a third party have a legitimate interest to do so, you have the right to object to that use, but in some cases this may mean that you are no long able to use the Services.

STORAGE AND SECURITY

How we store and secure information that we collect

All information Australian Family Lawyers receives from its customers is stored via our Customer Relationship Manager. All of the customer data Australian Family Lawyers collects is secured against unauthorised use or access and password protected. Credit card information is not stored by us on our servers.

How long we keep information

How long we keep information we collect about you depends on the type of information, as described in further detail below. After such time, we will either delete or anonymise your information or, if this is not possible (for example, because the information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your information and isolate it from any further use until deletion is possible.

Account information:  We may retain your account information for a minimum of seven (7) years from the later of the date on which the information was received or the file was opened . We also retain some of your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, to resolve disputes, to enforce our agreements, to support business operations, and to continue to develop and improve our Services. Where we retain information for Service improvement and development, we take steps to eliminate information that directly identifies you, and we only use the information to uncover collective insights about the use of our Services, not to specifically analyse personal characteristics about you.

Marketing information: If you have elected to receive marketing emails from us, we retain information about your marketing preferences for a reasonable period of time. We retain information derived from cookies and other tracking technologies for a reasonable period of time from the date such information was created.

DISCLOSURE OF YOUR INFORMATION

Details are only supplied to a third party supplier when it is required by law, for goods or services which you have purchased or to protect Australian Family Lawyers copyright, trademarks and other legal rights.

We share information we collect about you in the ways discussed below. In order to use our services we may in some instances pass all or some of your personal information on to our suppliers. We will not sell or rent any personally identifiable information about you to any third party.

Sharing with third parties – We may share information with third parties that help us operate, provide, improve, integrate, customise, support and market our Services.

Service Providers: We work with third-party service providers to provide website and application development, hosting, maintenance, backup, storage, virtual infrastructure, payment processing, analysis and other services for us, which may require them to access or use information about you. If a service provider needs to access information about you to perform services on our behalf, they do so under close instruction from us, including policies and procedures designed to protect your information.

Australian Family Lawyers Partners: We work with third parties who help us improve the Services we provide to you. This help could be consulting, sales and / or technical assistance, to deliver improvements for you. We may share your information with these third parties in connection with the help they are giving to us, such as to assist with marketing and promotions. We may also share information with these third parties where you have agreed to that sharing.

Links to Third Party Sites: The Services may include links to other websites. These links are meant for your convenience only. Links to third party websites do not constitute sponsorship or endorsement or approval of these websites. Please be aware that Australian Family Lawyers is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other websites. We encourage our users to be aware, when they leave our website, to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by our website.

Your consent:  We share information about you with third parties when you give us consent to do so. For example, we often display personal testimonials of satisfied customers on our public websites. With your consent, we may post your name alongside the testimonial.

Compliance with Enforcement Requests and Applicable Laws; Enforcement of Our Rights: In exceptional circumstances, we may share information about you with a third party if we believe that sharing is reasonably necessary to (a) comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request, including to meet national security requirements, (b) enforce our agreements, policies and terms of service, (c) protect the security or integrity of our products and services, (d) protect our customers or the public from harm or illegal activities, or (e) respond to an emergency which we believe in good faith requires us to disclose information to assist in preventing the death or serious bodily injury of any person. For more information on how we respond to government requests, see our Guidelines for Law Enforcement and our Transparency Report.

We will use reasonable means to protect the privacy of your Personal Data while in our possession or control. We will not knowingly share any of your Personal Data with any third party other than our service providers who assist us in providing the information and/or services we are providing to you. To the extent that we do share your personal information with a service provider, we would only do so if that party has agreed to comply with our privacy standards as described in this Privacy Policy.

Any non-personal information, communications and material you send to this website or to us by email, or which we obtain from third parties without promises of confidentiality, may be kept, used and disclosed by us on a non-confidential basis. We are free to use and reproduce any such information freely, and for any purpose whatsoever. Specifically, we will be free to use any ideas, concepts, know-how or techniques contained in such information for any purpose, including developing, manufacturing or marketing products.

Finally, if there is a change of control in one of our businesses (whether by merger, sale, or otherwise), or a sale or transfer of its assets, customer information, which may include your Personal Data, could be disclosed to a potential purchaser under an agreement to maintain confidentiality, or could be sold or transferred as part of that transaction. And finally we would only disclose your information in good faith and where required by any of the above circumstances.

HOW WE TRANSFER INFORMATION WE COLLECT INTERNATIONALLY

We collect information globally and primarily store that information in the Australia and New Zealand. For the purpose of providing the Services to you, we may transfer, process and store your information outside of your country of residence, to wherever we or our third-party service providers operate. Whenever we transfer your information, we take steps to protect it.

International transfers within Australian Family Lawyers:

For the purposes described in this policy, in order to facilitate our global operations, we may transfer information to either Australia and New Zealand and allow access to that information from countries in which we have operations. These countries may not have equivalent privacy and data protection laws to the laws of many of the countries where our customers and users are based.

HOW TO ACCESS AND CONTROL YOUR INFORMATION

You have certain choices available to you when it comes to your information. Below is a summary of those choices, how to exercise them and any limitations.

In certain circumstances, you have the right to

• request a copy of your information;
• to update or amend your information where it is incorrect or incomplete;
• to object to our use of your information (including for marketing purposes);
• to request the deletion or restriction of your information; or
• to request your information in a structured, electronic format (data portability).

We note that your request and choices may be limited in certain cases. For example, if fulfilling your request would reveal information about another person, or if you ask to delete information which we are permitted by law or have compelling legitimate interests to keep. If you have unresolved concerns, you may have the right to complain to a data protection authority in the country where you live, where you work or where you feel your rights were infringed.

You may contact us, on the details provided below if you wish to exercise any of your above-mentioned rights.

Data portability:

Data portability is the ability to obtain some of your information in a format you can move from one service provider to another (for instance, when you transfer your mobile phone number to another carrier). Depending on the context, this applies to some of your information, but not to all of your information. Should you request it, we will provide you with an electronic file of your basic account information.

CHANGE IN PRIVACY POLICY

As we plan to ensure our Privacy Policy remains current, this policy is subject to change. We may modify this policy at any time, in our sole discretion and all modifications will be effective immediately upon our posting of the modifications on this website. Please return periodically to review our Privacy Policy.

How we deal with complaints and requests

You may request access to Personal Information about you that we hold and you may ask us to correct your Personal Information if you find that it is not accurate, up-to-date or complete. You may also make a complaint about our handling of your Personal Information. These services are free of charge.

To protect your privacy and the privacy of others, we will need evidence of your identity before we can grant you access to information about you or change it.

You can contact us by email, or send your request or complaint to the postal address below. We undertake to respond within 30 days. If the request or complaint will take longer to resolve, we will provide you with a date by which we expect to respond.

MISCELLANEOUS

Contacting us

If you wish to notify us of your new contact details, update your personal information, opt out of direct marketing, make a complaint about a breach of privacy or have any questions in relation to the accuracy of your information or privacy, please contact our Information and Privacy Officer below:-

Privacy Officer

Australian Family Lawyers

411 Collins St

MELBOURNE VIC 3000

info@australianfamilylawyers.com.au

(03) 9088 3185