AJT Legal Privacy Policy
1. Introduction
AJT Legal Pty Ltd (ABN: 93 642 145 999) are 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.ajtlegal.com.au
2. Personal information: what we collect
2.1 Types of personal information
We collect your contact and identity details, financial information and case related information about you and any relevant entity or person. This may include sensitive information.
The types of personal information we collect and hold will depend on the legal services we provide to you. This may include:
- Identity information: your name, former names, date of birth, gender, signature, photographic identification, government-issued identification documents (such as a driver's licence or passport), and information collected to verify your identity in accordance with applicable legal and regulatory requirements, including verification of identity (VOI) requirements for property transactions.
- Contact information: residential, postal and business addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers and other contact details.
- Professional and business information: your occupation, employer, job title, professional qualifications, and information relating to companies, trusts, partnerships or other entities with which you are associated, including details of directors, shareholders, officeholders, trustees and beneficiaries where relevant to the legal services we provide.
- Financial information: bank account details, billing information, payment information, trust account transaction details, tax file numbers (where authorised or required by law), and information relating to your assets, liabilities, income and financial circumstances where relevant to your matter.
- Property and transaction information: information relating to real property, including ownership details, titles, contracts, mortgages, settlement information, transfer documents and related property transaction records.
- Estate planning and estate administration information: information relating to your testamentary intentions, wills, enduring powers of attorney, company powers of attorney, testamentary trusts, family relationships, executors, attorneys, guardians, beneficiaries, estate assets and liabilities, and other information relevant to estate planning, probate, letters of administration, family provision applications or other estate litigation.
- Matter-related information: information, documents and records relevant to your legal matter, including instructions, correspondence, evidence, court documents and information relating to other parties where reasonably necessary to provide our legal services.
- Transaction information: details of the legal services we provide to you and transactions undertaken on your behalf.
- Communication records: records of correspondence and communications with you and with third parties where relevant to your matter.
- Website and technical information: information collected when you use our website or communicate with us electronically, including your IP address, browser type, device information, pages visited and cookies (see Section 8 – Cookies).
Where it is reasonably necessary for the legal services we provide, and where permitted or required by law, we may also collect and hold sensitive information relevant to your matter. This may include health information (for example, where issues of legal capacity or testamentary capacity arise), criminal history information, or other sensitive information that is reasonably necessary for us to provide legal services or to comply with our legal obligations.
We collect personal information directly from you wherever practicable. We may also collect personal information from third parties where authorised by you or where permitted or required by law, including from government agencies, courts and tribunals, financial institutions, medical practitioners, accountants, real estate agents, brokers, executors, beneficiaries, attorneys, and other parties involved in your legal matter.
We store personal information in secure electronic and physical records, including in our cloud-based practice management software (Smokeball), Microsoft 365 systems, email, and paper files where required.
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;
- make an enquiry to engage us to provide legal services;
- complete forms or provide documents to us;
- complete forms or provide documents to us;
- visit our website or use our online services;
- participate in meetings, consultations or other communications with us;
- otherwise interact with us in the course of providing our legal 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); and
- identity verification, commercial data brokers and background check service providers.
3.2 Anonymity and Pseudonymity
Where lawful and practicable, you may choose to deal with us anonymously or by using a pseudonym.
However, because we provide legal services, it will generally not be practical or lawful for us to act for you or provide legal advice unless we know your identity. We are subject to professional and legal obligations that require us to verify the identity of our clients and ensure that we are receiving instructions from the appropriate person.
If you choose not to provide the personal information we reasonably request, or wish to remain anonymous or use a pseudonym where this is not practicable, we may be unable to provide you with legal services, respond to your enquiry, or otherwise assist you.
4. Why we collect personal information and how we use it
We hold personal information in electronic and physical records. This includes information stored on our secure computer systems, cloud-based practice management software, email systems, and in paper files where required, complying with regulatory and insurance obligations and operating our legal practice.
We take reasonable steps to protect the personal information we hold from misuse, interference and loss, and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. These steps include physical security measures, password protection, access controls, encryption where appropriate, and secure document management practices.
When personal information is no longer required, we will take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify it, unless we are required or authorised by law to retain it.
Secondary purposes include financial management, system improvement, enforcement of our right to payment and managing the relationship between our firm and former clients once the retainer has concluded.
Long form additions:
Collection purposes
4.1 Primary Purposes
This includes:
- providing legal advice and representation to you or 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; and
- administering and managing our firm.
4.2 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.
5. Disclosure of Personal Information
We may disclose personal information to third parties to facilitate the purposes of collection noted in section 4. These purposes include disclosure to parties to proceedings or transactions and their representatives, to Courts, government and regulatory agencies as may be necessary or appropriate to establish legal rights and to progress transactions in which we are instructed. We also disclose information to third parties (such as data storage or archiving companies, our regulators or our insurers) who hold or process information for us.
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 you or 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;
- 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.
6. Overseas Disclosure
We will disclose information to overseas recipients where this is reasonably necessary to progress our instructions (dealing with a company with an overseas office, for example).
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 sections 2 and 5 of this policy.
Long form additions:
- The following circumstances are common examples when that may apply:
- where your matter involves overseas parties or overseas proceedings;
- to overseas law firms or legal practitioners engaged in a matter;
- to our staff, staff of a related entity or contractors if working or travelling overseas;
- to parties such as regulators and auditors who may use overseas processors or offices;
- to service providers whose systems or servers are located overseas (including cloud storage, AI and IT service providers if we consider that the confidentiality arrangements that will apply to such information is sufficient); and
- where you instruct or authorise us to do so.
Cross-border disclosure of personal information
Countries where personal information may be disclosed include: United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand, Singapore.
7. Security of Personal Information
We take reasonable steps to protect the personal information we hold from misuse, interference, loss, and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
These steps include maintaining physical, electronic and procedural safeguards appropriate to the nature of the information we hold. This may include secure document management systems, access controls, password protection, multi-factor authentication, encryption where appropriate, secure disposal of documents, and staff training on privacy and confidentiality obligations.
While we take reasonable steps to safeguard personal information, no method of electronic transmission or storage is completely secure. Accordingly, we cannot guarantee the security of information transmitted to us electronically.
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.
7.2 Retention and Destruction
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
You have the right to request access to or correction of the personal information we hold about you. To make an access request, please contact our Privacy Officer (see Section 10).
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.
Long form additions:
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.
- We will respond to correction requests within a reasonable period. If we correct information that we have previously disclosed to a third party, we will notify that third party of the correction if you request us to do so.
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 10 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
Angela Treichel – Legal Practitioner Director of AJT Legal.
You may also contact the relevant legal services regulator in your State or Territory.
Long form additions:
Privacy officer details and complaints
AJT Legal
Address: PO Box 414, Gympie Qld 4570
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 07 5471 8069
If you are not satisfied with our response, you may escalate your complaint to:
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) or the Legal Services Commission.
Website: www.oaic.gov.au
Phone: 1300 363 992
Email: [email protected]
Post: GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001