Hicks Morley recognizes the importance of maintaining the privacy, security and accuracy of personal information in accordance with applicable privacy legislation. The Hicks Morley Privacy Policy outlines how we treat the Personal Information of our clients, service providers and others.
Subject to legal and contractual requirements, you may refuse or withdraw your consent to certain of the identified purposes at any time by contacting our privacy officer. Withdrawal or refusal of consent may result in an inability of the firm to provide you with continued service.
If you provide Hicks Morley or our service providers and agents with personal information of another individual, you represent that you have all necessary authority and/or have obtained all necessary consents from such person to enable us to collect, use and disclose such personal information for the purposes set forth in this Privacy Policy.
Collection of Personal Information
“Personal Information” is defined under Canadian law as information about an identifiable individual or as information that allows an individual to be identified. Personal information in this policy means information about an identifiable individual as defined from time to time in applicable privacy legislation. It does not include business contact information: your name, title or position, business address, telephone number, facsimile number, or e-mail address.
Hicks Morley may collect personal information including:
- name, home address, telephone number;
- personal e-mail address;
- billing/account information;
- credit card information; and
information related to legal or other service issues including:
- employee (and family) information;
- agent and officer information;
- witness information;
- adverse party/parties-in-interest/intervenor information;
- professional advisor information;
- insurance/trust beneficiary information;
- director information;
- investigator information;
- adjudicator information;
- expert and other professional advisor information; and
- our clients’ business partners, investors, shareholders, competitors and customers who are individuals.
Use/Disclosure of Personal Information
Hicks Morley normally collects, uses and discloses personal information about our clients and service providers in order to provide clients with professional legal services. This may include the following purposes:
- establishment and maintenance of our commercial relationships;
- provision of legal advice;
- acting as counsel in litigation, negotiations and related legal services; and
- fulfilling lawyers/firms legal obligations (including the avoidance of conflicts of interest).
To achieve these purposes, personal information may need to be shared between Hicks Morley and authorized third parties (including opposing or interested parties, intervenors, opposing/other counsel, agents/advisors, witnesses, and adjudicators) for the purpose of:
- providing legal services;
- initiating the commercial/contractual relationship with clients, suppliers and other third parties, including to evaluate credit standing;
- to match credit bureau or credit reporting agency information;
- administering commercial relationships with clients, service providers and other third parties, including invoicing, account administration, payment collection and processing, and fulfilling contractual obligations;
- to assess and respond to client, supplier and other third party needs and preferences, including to contact and communicate with such parties and to conduct surveys, research and evaluations;
- to develop, enhance, market, sell or distribute Hicks Morley products and services and those of our authorized services providers;
- to distribute our client and legal newsletters, conference information and other material to individuals on our mail and e-mail lists, either directly or through third-party distribution service providers;
- to produce and maintain our knowledge-management precedent systems and databases;
- to develop and manage Hicks Morley business and operations;
- to detect and protect Hicks Morley and other third parties against error, negligence, breach of contract, fraud, theft and other illegal activity, and to audit compliance with Hicks Morley policies and contractual obligations;
- to engage in business transactions, including the purchase, sale, lease, merger, amalgamation or any other type of acquisition, disposal, securitization or financing involving Hicks Morley;
- as authorized/required by or under the law; and
- for any other purpose to which you consent.
Disclosure of Personal Information
From time to time, Hicks Morley may disclose your personal information to:
- service providers, including an organization or individual retained by Hicks Morley to perform functions on its behalf, such as marketing, data processing, document management and office services;
- an organization or individual retained by Hicks Morley to evaluate your creditworthiness or to collect debts outstanding on an account;
- a financial institution, on a confidential basis and solely in connection with the assignment of a right to receive payment; the provision of security or other financing arrangements; or a person who, in the reasonable judgment of Hicks Morley, is providing or seeking the information as your agent; and
- any third party or parties, where you consent to such disclosure or where disclosure is required or permitted by law
Access to Personal Information
Upon your written request, subject to certain exceptions, Hicks Morley will inform you of the existence, use, and disclosure of your personal information and will give you access to that information. Access requests should be sent to the firm’s Privacy Officer, using the contact information below.
Security
Hicks Morley uses physical, electronic, administrative and technological safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of your personal information. The firm maintains secure data networks protected by industry standard firewall and password protection systems.
In addition, where personal information is sent to a third party for processing, we make sure, through our contracts with them, that all personal information is kept secure.
Website Privacy
Cookies are small data files containing a unique identification number that identifies the visitor’s browser, but not necessarily the visitor, to our computers each time our website is visited.
When visiting the Hicks Morley website we may use cookies to collect information such as the type of Internet browser and operating system the visitor uses, the domain name of the website from which the visitor came, date and duration of the visit, number of visits, average time spent on our website, pages viewed and number of cookies accumulated.
Unless we are specifically informed we do not know who has accessed our website. In addition to the identified purposes described in the Privacy Policy, we may use this website information and share it with other organizations with whom we have a commercial relationship to measure the use of our website, to improve the functionality and content of the website and to facilitate usage by a visitor.
Some internet browsers can be reset to either reject cookies or to notify the user they have received a cookie. In some instances, refusing a cookie may not permit our website to provide its full range of services.
Electronic Communications
In order to provide our website visitors with a service or information, visitors may voluntarily submit personal information to us for purposes such as seminar attendance, obtaining information, making inquiries, reviewing publications and filling out surveys. If you are known to Hicks Morley as a registered user of an online service, we may combine and store personal information about your use of our website and the online information you have provided with certain other online and offline information we may have collected.
E-Mail Communications
Occasionally, we may send marketing or promotional e-mail communications to you with information that may be useful, including information about the services of Hicks Morley and other third parties with whom we have a relationship. In this process, we may collect certain information (such as the date/time you first opened our e-mail communications, the number of times you opened our e-mail communications and the number of times you clicked-throughs on a link in our e-mail communications) and compile related statistics. We may combine and store any such information to manage and improve our e-mail communications to you. We will include instructions on how to unsubscribe and inform us of preferences if you decide you do not want to receive any future marketing or promotional e-mails from Hicks Morley.
Links
This site may present links to other websites. These sites may also collect your data. Visitors are advised that linked websites may have different privacy policies and practices. Hicks Morley assumes no responsibility for such third party websites. It is advisable to review any sites’ privacy policy before providing personal information.
Changes to the Privacy Policy
Hicks Morley reserves the right to modify or supplement this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make a change to this Privacy Policy, we will post such changes on our website. Hicks Morley will obtain the necessary consents required under applicable privacy laws if it seeks to collect, use or disclose your personal information for purposes other than those to which consent has been obtained unless otherwise required or permitted by law.
Further Information
We welcome your input and questions. For information on Hicks Morley’s privacy practices, please contact the Hicks Morley Privacy Officer at:
Attention: Firm Privacy Officer
Hicks Morley Hamilton Stewart Storie LLP
77 King St. W., 39th Floor Royal Trust Tower
Box 371, TD Centre
Toronto, Ontario M5K 1K8
privacyofficer@hicksmorley.com