Balfour Meagher Pty understands that privacy and how we collect, use, disclose and protect your information is important to you. We are committed to ensuring the privacy of your information and to complying with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), which are contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act).

In summary, personal information is information or an opinion (whether true or not) about an identified, or reasonably identifiable, individual.

1. What Personal Information does Balfour Meagher collect and hold?

Balfour Meagher is an independent Australian legal and business advisory firm. The types of personal information that Balfour Meagher collects will depend on the nature of your dealings with us. We may collect personal information from you when you:

  • instruct Balfour Meagher to provide you with legal advice;
  • purchase or subscribe to a Balfour Meagher online service;
  • subscribe to a Balfour Meagher newsletter;
  • subscribe to our website (which includes our website’s sub-domains such as our Careers page) or to one of our mailing lists;
  • attend a Balfour Meagher seminar;
  • have business dealings with us (whether as one of our suppliers, or as a regulator we deal with, or in the context of a transaction), or
  • apply or register your interest for employment with Balfour Meagher.

For detailed information as to how we collect, use and disclose the personal information of job applicants, please refer to section 8 of this policy.

The personal information we will collect from you will usually include your name, title, address and e-mail address and contact numbers (telephone, fax, mobile). If necessary for the purposes of providing advice to you, or for providing you with other information (such as email updates) sometimes we may collect other personal information from you, such as the areas of our practice which you are interested in. However, we do not collect personal information that we do not need.

Please note that, while we seek to minimise the personal information we collect, if you do not provide us with the personal information we request, we may not be able to provide you with the services and other assistance you seek.

Generally, we endeavour to collect personal information directly from the individuals concerned. However, if this is not practicable, we may collect personal information about individuals from third parties, including from publicly available sources. If we do, we will take reasonable steps to ensure that the individuals concerned are made aware of the collection of their information.

If you are one of Balfour Meagher’s ‘business contacts’ (e.g. a contact person in one of our suppliers, or in a government agency or company with which we deal), we may collect basic business contact information from you (e.g. your name, title and work contact details). Balfour Meagher will not ask to collect sensitive information about you (such as details of your racial or ethnic origin, political affiliation, religious beliefs, sexual preferences, criminal convictions or health information) unless it is needed for the purposes of providing legal advice.

2. How does Balfour Meagher use Personal Information?

Balfour Meagher’s policy is only to use personal information collected from business contacts for the business purpose for which it was collected.

Balfour Meagher need to collect personal information so that we can provide our products and services, and conduct our business. We also collect personal information so that we can communicate new legal or firm developments, including advertising new products or services that we offer, to our clients and to those people who have subscribed to our website, alert services or mailing lists.

If, at any time, you do not wish to receive these kinds of communications, please let us know using the contact details set out in section 9 below.

3. Will Your Personal Information be given to anyone else?

Balfour Meagher does not sell, rent or trade personal information about you to or with third parties. Personal information may be disclosed outside of Balfour Meagher in the circumstances described below:

(a) Disclosures to external service providers

Balfour Meagher may disclose personal information to external service providers who provide services to you and help us operate our business. Examples of our external service providers include:  third party data storage providers; IT and other software and systems providers; companies who provide photocopying and archiving services;, advertising and marketing agencies who assist us with our campaigns and programs, and research organisations and consultants who conduct research on our behalf.

If Balfour Meagher engages external service providers, Balfour Meagher takes steps to ensure that those external service providers comply with the APPs when they handle personal information about you; and are authorised only to use personal information that we provide to them for the limited purposes specified in our agreement with them. (b) Disclosures overseas

Where Balfour Meagher engages external information technology service providers, we ensure that wherever possible, our data is stored within Australia.

(c) Disclosures required or permitted by law

Otherwise, Balfour Meagher will only disclose personal information if this is required by law or permitted under the Privacy Act. Balfour Meagher is also bound by professional obligations of confidentiality, including in relation to personal information.

4. Security of Personal Information

Balfour Meagher takes reasonable steps to ensure the security of your personal information. Our premises are in secure buildings with access restricted to passcard holders. Our IT systems are password protected and we conduct regular audit and data integrity checks. We frequently update our anti-virus software in order to protect our systems (and the data contained in those systems) from computer viruses. In addition, all Balfour Meagher employees are required, as a condition of employment, to treat personal information held by Balfour Meagher as confidential

5. Access and Correction

Under the Privacy Act, you have the right to:

  • Seek access to your personal information handled by Balfour Meagher;
  • Ask us to update or correct your personal information when it is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date; and
  • Opt-out of receiving direct marketing communications from us.

If you wish to access the personal information that Balfour Meagher holds about you, please set out your request in writing, and forward this to our Privacy Officer, using the contact details set out at the end of this Privacy Policy.

To provide you with access to your personal information held by us on our current records, Balfour Meagher can provide you with a copy of the relevant personal information (ordinarily, an electronic print-out or a photocopy). Balfour Meagher will not charge you for the cost of providing this type of access to these current records.

For legal and administrative reasons, Balfour Meagher may also archive non-current records containing personal information, such as back up data files and offsite storage. Please note that if we do provide access to old records, we may charge you for the cost of providing such access.

If you are of the view that personal information about you is inaccurate or out of date, or if you have any other queries about access and correction, please contact our Privacy Officer using the contact details set out below.

6. Online Privacy Issues

Use of cookies

When you visit our website, a small data file called a “cookie” is stored on your computer or mobile device by our server.

We use cookies or digital markers to maintain user sessions (e.g. if you subscribe to the site to gain access to a publication, we use cookies so when you next visit you do not need to re-enter your details). Like most website providers, we generate statistics about how many people visit our site and how people use our website. We use web logs and cookies to do this. This enables us to keep our site relevant and useful. However, generally this information will not identify you. We do not link this information back to your identity or other information that you have provided to us. We do not store any information that identifies you inside cookies.

We and our service providers may also use cookies and other digital markers to assist us with our online marketing services and advertise to our website visitors on other third party websites. Cookies placed on third party websites help us to monitor the efficacy of our business relationships with third parties, improve performance as well as personalise your experience when you visit our and our service providers’ websites. When you visit other websites, you may see an advertisement for Balfour Meagher’s products or services because you have previously visited our website. Balfour Meagher may disclose the information collected via use of cookies on our websites to third parties for marketing purposes.

By using our website(s) and not opting-out of cookies, you consent to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy.

Most web browsers are set by default to accept cookies. However, if you do not wish to receive cookies you may set your browser to either prompt or refuse cookies (including Balfour Meagher’s cookies).   If you use your browser settings to block all cookies, you may not be able to access and/or use all or parts of our website.

Access to other websites

Sometimes our website contains links to other websites, for your convenience and information. When you access a website other than www.mblegal.com.au, please understand that Balfour Meagher is not responsible for the privacy practices of that site. We suggest that you review the privacy policies of each site you visit.

7. Making a complaint

If you wish to make a complaint about how Balfour Meagher handles your personal information, please contact us setting out your complaint in writing, and forward it to our Privacy Officer, using the contact details below.

We will deal with all requests for access to personal information or complaints as quickly as possible and will endeavour to get back to you within a reasonable timeframe.

8. How do we handle the personal information of job applicants?

Balfour Meagher collects personal information about and from individuals who apply for employment with Balfour Meagher. The information we collect includes the job applicant’s:

  • Personal contact details and gender;
  • Educational and employment history, and relevant qualifications and employment history;
  • Eligibility to work in Australia; and
  • Referees’ contact details.

We may collect this information directly from the job applicant or indirectly from a third party, including from a recruitment agency.

If necessary, we will also collect information about applicants from referees and from professional social networking sites like LinkedIn. If the applicant proceeds to the interview stage, we will collect information about the applicant’s performance during interview.

Balfour Meagher is committed to a policy of diversity and inclusion. For this reason, we also collect information as to whether a job applicant identifies as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. We collect this information for the sole purpose of monitoring the implementation of our equal employment opportunities policy. Balfour Meagher will not use this information for any other purpose.

If you do not provide with us the information we request, we may not be able to process or assess your job application.

Balfour Meagher uses the personal information we collect about job applicants to assess their eligibility and suitability for employment with the firm. Generally, our assessment of applicants’ personal information will relate to a particular role. However, we may also retain and use applicants’ personal information to assess their suitability for other roles with the firm. We do not disclose the personal information we collect from applicants to any other person or entity.

For information as to how an applicant may access and correct the personal information we hold about them, or complain about a breach of the APPs, please see sections 5 and 7 of this Policy respectively.

As a matter of policy, Balfour Meagher stores all personal information relating to our job applicants is stored in Australia and is not accessible to third parties located outside Australia.

9. Additional Privacy Information and How to Contact Balfour Meagher

This Balfour Meagher Privacy Policy may change from time to time. The Balfour Meagher Privacy Policy will be made available to anyone who requests it, whether at our offices or by use of our website.

If you have any questions or comments about the Balfour Meagher Privacy Policy, please set out your request in writing, and forward this to our Privacy Officer, using the contact details below.

Email: admin@bmlegaladvsiors.com.au

Post: Suite 8, Level 2/11 Ventnor Street, West Perth, WA 6005.

Telephone:  +61 (0)8 9322 3842

This Privacy Policy applies to Balfour Meagher Pty Ltd (ACN 621 980 523)

Our Privacy Policy was last updated on 14 November 2017.