Privacy Policy | Goldhart Law

Your privacy is important to us. Goldhart Law Professional Corporation is committed to maintaining the confidentiality, security and accuracy of your personal information.

Scope

This Privacy Policy describes the information that Goldhart Law Professional Corporation collects in the normal course of its business, including through its website (the “Site”), how we use that information and to whom Goldhart Law Professional Corporation may disclose that personal information.

This Privacy Policy applies to Goldhart Law Professional Corporation and its affiliated organizations (collectively “Goldhart Law Professional Corporation”). References in this Privacy Policy to Goldhart Law Professional Corporation, “we” “us”, “our”, and similar terms should be interpreted accordingly. The Privacy Policy applies to Personal Information collected, used and disclosed through Goldhart Law Professional Corporation’s operations including any Personal Information collected through the Site.

Much of the personal information collected, used or disclosed by Goldhart Law Professional Corporation is done in the course of the provision of legal services and is governed by solicitor-client privilege, regulatory requirements governing the legal profession in the Province of Ontario and codes of professional conduct and ethics therein. Those principles and rules apply to any Personal Information in Goldhart Law Professional Corporation’s custody or control and are not overridden by the provisions set out in this Privacy Policy.

The Site includes links to other internet sites or resources and business operated by other persons (collectively called “Other Sites”). Goldhart Law Professional Corporation has no responsibility or liability for, or control over, Other Sites, their business, goods, services, or content. We urge you to find out the privacy policies of these Other Sites and advise you that your dealings with the owners and operators of the Other Sites are at your own risk.

Goldhart Law Professional Corporation complies with all applicable privacy legislation including the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (Canada) as is appropriate in the circumstances. This Privacy Policy should be interpreted and construed as subject to the provisions of those Acts in those jurisdictions where they apply.

What is Personal Information?

For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, “Personal Information” means information about an identifiable individual, but does not include the name, title, business address or telephone number of an employee of an organization where the name, title, address or telephone number is used for a business purpose.

Provision of Personal Information to Goldhart Law Professional Corporation

There are various interactions with Goldhart Law Professional Corporation through which you may provide us with your Personal Information including:

Opening a client file;
Sending an e-mail to Goldhart Law Professional Corporation to be connected with a lawyer;
Calling Goldhart Law Professional Corporation to be connected with a lawyer;
Registering for a client or legal information session hosted by Goldhart Law Professional Corporation; or
Posting on a blog that is hosted by Goldhart Law Professional Corporation.

The type of Personal Information you provide depends on the nature of the interaction with the firm and often the information will not be personal in nature because it will be contact information to allow us to contact you at your place of work. However, where the information is Personal Information, we will comply with applicable privacy legislation in the collection, use and disclosure of that Personal Information.

Consent

Consent can be implied or express. If you provide Goldhart Law Professional Corporation with your Personal Information through the Site you are consenting to our use of that Personal Information in order to contact you or for any other purpose reasonably connected to your provision of Personal Information. Using our Site means that you consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your Personal Information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to the collection, use, disclosure or management of your Personal Information in accordance with this Privacy Policy, you should NOT use the Site.

We may also collect standard information about all users of the Site including IP addresses, time, date, referring internet sites, search data and pages visited.

You may also provide Personal Information when you open a client file or work with Goldhart Law Professional Corporation or if you register for a legal information session hosted by Goldhart Law Professional Corporation. In those situations Goldhart Law Professional Corporation will rely on either express or implied consent as is appropriate in the circumstances, to permit us to use your Personal Information.

As permitted by applicable privacy legislation, we reserve the right to use or disclose your Personal Information without your knowledge or consent where we are permitted or required to do so by applicable law, regulation or by applicable rules of professional conduct governing the legal profession.

At any time you may advise us that you no longer consent to the use or disclosure of the Personal Information that you have provided for any or all of the identified purposes and, subject to our right to do so without your knowledge or consent or contractual obligations, we shall no longer do so.

Use of Personal Information

If you provide Goldhart Law Professional Corporation with your Personal Information we will use it for the purpose for which it was collected. If your Personal Information was provided through the Site we will use it to communicate with you, respond to your request for information, to ensure proper functioning of our Site or to review the effectiveness and usefulness of our Site.

If you provide your Personal Information in relation to a file or request for legal services we will use that Personal Information to communicate with you, provide you legal services and meet any applicable legal requirements such as service requirements.

If you provide your Personal Information in respect of a legal information session or other marketing initiative, we will use your Personal Information to communicate with you about a specific or future event or initiative that may be of interest to you or that may provide you with information relevant to your relationship with the firm.

We may also use your Personal Information for any other purpose permitted by the applicable law including:

when we are required or authorized by law to do so, for example if a court issues a subpoena;
when you have consented to the disclosure;
when the legal services we are providing to you requires us give your information to third parties (for example a lender in a real estate mortgage transaction) your consent will be implied, unless you tell us otherwise;
where it is necessary to establish or collect fees;
if we engage a third party to provide administrative services to us (like computer back-up services or archival file storage) and the third party is bound by our privacy policy;
if we engage expert witnesses on your behalf;
if we retain other law firms at your request, and on your behalf; and
if the information is Publicly Available Personal Information, as it is defined under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

Site Creates no Lawyer /Client Relationship

No Lawyer/Client, advisory or fiduciary of relationship is created by any use of the Site or by use of this Privacy Policy including by any use of the Site to communicate with Goldhart Law Professional Corporation or a Goldhart Law professional by email or through this Site.

The Site may not be used to request legal advice or to transmit any confidential information relating to the provision of legal advice.

Any information that you transmit to Goldhart Law Professional Corporation through the Site may not be secure, may not be treated as confidential and is not protected by solicitor-client privilege.

We will collect your name, address, telephone number, email address and any additional details you choose to provide to us if you complete the form located in the subscription area of our Site in order to receive newsletters or promotional material. We will use this Personal Information solely for the purposes of including your information in our database and in our mailing list in order to provide you with the requested information and to invite you to upcoming events that may be of interest to you and to respond to any specific request that you have made.

Cookies

When an individual visitor accesses the Site, we may use a browser feature called a ‘cookie’ to collect information such as the type of internet browser and operating system the visitor uses, the domain name of the Site from which the visitor came, date and duration of the visit, the number of visits, the average time spent on the Site, pages viewed and number of cookies accumulated. A cookie is a small text file containing a unique identification number that identifies the visitor’s browser, but not necessarily the visitor, to our computers each time our Site is visited. Unless a visitor specifically informs us (e.g. by registering for an event or sending us correspondence from the Site), we will not know who the individual visitors are.

In addition to the identified purposes described in our Privacy Policy, we may use this information and share it with other organizations with whom we have a commercial relationship to measure the use of our Site, to improve the functionality and content of the Site and to facilitate usage by a visitor.

Visitors can reset their browsers either to notify them when they have received a cookie or refuse to accept cookies. If you are using the Site and have not set your browser to reject cookies, you are considered to have consented to their use. If you refuse to accept cookies please note that you may have difficulty using certain features of the Site.

Other use of your information

We do not sell or disclose your Personal Information to anyone, except as required by law, to protect our rights and property or in order to fulfil the identified purposes for which we collected the personal information.

Security of Information

We use physical, administrative and electronic procedures to attempt to keep Personal Information secure. These means of protecting and maintaining the security of the Personal Information help to prevent unauthorized access, maintain data security and ensure the appropriate use of your Information once we have received it.

While Goldhart Law Professional Corporation takes appropriate safeguards with Personal Information, no Site or physical protection of Personal Information can be completely secure. Therefore you should not send confidential or sensitive information by the internet or by email unless you take appropriate precautions such as encryption.

Access to Your Personal Information

You may ask for access to any personal information we hold about you. Summary information is available on request. More detailed requests which require archive or other retrieval costs may be subject to our normal professional and disbursement fees.

Can I be denied access to my Personal Information?

Your rights to access your personal information are not absolute. We may deny access in certain circumstances including when:

it is required or authorized by law (for example, when a record containing personal information about you is protected by solicitor-client privilege);
to do so would reveal confidential commercial information, and the personal information cannot be severed from the record;
to do so could reasonably be expected to threaten the life or security of another individual, and the personal information cannot be severed from the record; or
the information was generated in the course of a formal dispute resolution process.

Can I request anonymity?

Whenever it is legal and practicable, we may offer the opportunity to deal with general inquiries without providing your name (for example, by accessing general information on our website). The Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act requires us to confirm the identity of all new clients. It may also require us disclose information to FINTRAC in relation to certain large cash transactions.

Credit Bureaus

To help us make credit decisions about clients, prevent fraud, check the identity of new clients and prevent money-laundering, we may – with your consent – request information about you from the files of consumer reporting agencies.

Web Site

Our website contains links to other sites, which are not governed by this privacy policy.
On our website, like most other commercial websites, we may monitor traffic patterns, site usage and related site information in order to optimise our web service. We may provide aggregated information to third parties, but these statistics do not include any identifiable personal information.

Amendments to Privacy Policy

Goldhart Law Professional Corporation reserves the right to make changes to this Privacy Policy at its sole discretion at any time without notice to you.

Each time you use the Site, you should check this Privacy Policy as it exists at the time.