Briner Law Firm – Privacy Policy
Introduction
The Briner Law Firm acknowledges how important your privacy is to you and we recognize the sensitivity of personal information. We have a professional obligation to keep confidential all information we receive within a lawyer-client relationship and as a third-party escrow agent. We are committed to protecting any personal information we hold.
Why Does Briner Law Firm Need Personal Information
We provide legal services, escrow services, and products to a wide range of clients. In order to be able to give legal advice and perform escrow services, we need access to all relevant facts and information that relate to the representation of our clients.
This information will necessarily include personal information about our clients and about individuals other than our clients.
What personal information do we collect?
Personal information is any information that identifies someone, or by which their identity could be deduced.
How do we collect personal information?
How we collect personal information about clients, or others, will depend upon the nature of the information we require.
Where practical, we endeavor to collect personal information directly from the person to whom the information pertains. When necessary, we will collect personal information from other sources.
It is our policy to collect personal information about individuals other than our clients only by lawful and fair means and not in an unreasonably intrusive way.
Wherever possible we collect your personal information directly from you, at the start of performance of services and in the course of our representation.
Sometimes we may obtain information about you from other sources: for example,
- your insurance company;
- your real estate agent in a property transaction;
- from a government agency or registry and public records;
- your employer, if we are acting for you, at its request;
- your accountant.
Consent
By retaining our firm for legal advice or representation, you consent to our necessary collection, use or disclosure of your personal information in order that we may properly advise and represent you.
In some circumstances, we may ask you to specifically consent, if we collect, use, or disclose your personal information. Normally, this consent would be in writing, but in some circumstances, we may accept your oral consent.
Sometimes, your consent may be implied through your conduct with us.
Use of Information
We use personal information only for the purposes for with it was originally collected. We use this information to provide legal advice and services, to administer our client databases and to include clients in any direct marketing activities. If you tell us that you no longer wish to receive information about our services, or about new developments in the law, we will not send any further material.
We do not disclose personal information, client or otherwise, to any third party to enable them to market their products and services. For example, we do not provide our client mailing lists to other law firms.
Disclosure of Personal Information
We disclose personal information only with consent or in accordance with the law.
Under certain circumstances, we will disclose your personal information:
- 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 in other jurisdictions, on your behalf;
- if the information is already publicly known.
Updating Your Information
Since we use your personal information to provide legal services to you, it is important that the information be accurate and up-to-date. If during the course of services, any of your information changes, please inform us so that we can make any necessary changes.
Is My Personal Information Secure?
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;
- restricted file access to personal information;
- deploying technological safeguards like security software and firewalls to prevent hacking or unauthorized computer access;
- internal password and security policies.
Access to Your Personal Information
Your may request access to your personal information held by us. We do reserve the right to confirm the identity of the person seeking access to personal information before complying with any access requests.
Requests should be forwarded in writing to the address set out below.
If we are unable to provide you with access to all the personal information we hold about you, then the reasons for denial of access will be provided to you.
Credit Bureaus
To help us make credit decisions about clients, prevent fraud, check the identity of new clients and prevent money-laundering, we may on occasion, request information about you from the files of consumer reporting agencies.
Web Site & Electronic Communication
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 optimize our web service. We may provide aggregated information to third parties, but these statistics do not include any identifiable personal information.
You should be aware that e-mail is not a 100% secure medium, and you should be aware of this when contacting us to send personal or confidential information.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
Since we regularly review all of our policies and procedures, we may change our Privacy Policy from time to time.