O’Brien Criminal & Civil Solicitors is committed to protecting the privacy of personal information obtaining in fulfilling its duties to the court and its clients. As a trusted legal advisor, employer and incorporated legal practice we take privacy and security of your personal information very seriously.
We are bound by the Australian Privacy Principles as contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).
This Privacy Policy (‘Policy’) sets out our commitment to protecting the privacy of your personal information that we collect through this website www.obriensolicitors.com.au and www.unlawfularrest.com.au (Together, ‘Website’) or directly from you.
Please read this Policy carefully and contact us if you have any questions.
Personal Information
O’Brien Criminal & Civil Solicitors collects and holds personal information from various sources in the ordinary course of fulfilling our duties to the courts, our clients and through the achievement of our strategy and objectives. We will collect personal information from you in the course of providing our legal services. We may also obtain personal information from third party searches, other investigations and, sometimes, from adverse parties.
“Personal Information” is defined in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) as information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable:
- whether the information or opinion is true or not; and
- whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not.
The main types of personal information we collect may include:
- Names and contact details including phone numbers, postal and/or residential addresses and email addresses;
- Information that can identify you, including date of birth or residence status; drivers licence number, passport details, marital status and photographs;
- any facts or opinions that are connected to an enquiry that we are conducting on behalf of a client or potential client to effectively provide legal services; and
- any other personal information that is provided through a website, mobile application or other on-line platform belonging to Slater and Gordon or as otherwise requested by us or provided by you.
We are required to collect the full name and address of our clients by Rule 93 of the Uniform General Rules. Accurate name and address information must also be collected in order to comply with the trust account record keeping requirements of Rule 47 of the Uniform General Rules and to comply with our duty to the courts.
Your personal information will only be used for the purposes for which it is collected or in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). For example, we may use your personal information to provide advice and recommendations that take into account your personal circumstances.
If you do not provide us with the full name and address information required by law we cannot act for you. If you do not provide us with the other personal information that we request our advice may be wrong for you.
With your permission, sometimes we may also need to collect sensitive information. Sensitive information is a subset of personal information that is given a higher level of protection under the Australian Privacy Principles. Sensitive information includes personal information about an individual’s:
- health (including predictive genetic information)
- racial or ethnic origin
- political opinions
- membership of a political association, professional or trade association or trade union
- religious beliefs or affiliations
- philosophical beliefs
- sexual orientation or practices
- criminal record
- biometric information that is to be used for certain purposes
- biometric templates.
The personal information (including sensitive information) collected or held by O’Brien Criminal & Civil Solicitors will be referred to in this policy as “personal information”.
Method of collection of Personal Information
In most circumstances, we will collect personal information through completed questionnaires and forms that have been provided to us, interviews and telephone conversations.
You may also be asked to voluntarily respond to questionnaires, surveys or market research in order to seek your opinion and feedback.
Where you are a client of O’Brien Criminal & Civil Solicitors receiving legal services from us, we often collect your personal information from external professional sources (i.e. health professionals, financial advisors, accountants, other legal parties and their legal advisors).
With the exception of personal information obtained from opposing legal parties, this personal information will, in the usual course, be obtained under your express authority or within the scope of the instruction you have provided us and will be securely stored on your file.
We may also collect personal information about you from other people or organisations, such as referral sources, service providers, agents, advisors, current or former employers or your family members.
Sometimes we collect personal information about you that is publicly available – for example, from social media or public registers e.g. Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), Australian Business Register (ABR).
If we receive personal information from third parties, we will protect it as set out in this policy.
Use of Personal Information
O’Brien Criminal & Civil Solicitors will only use your personal information for the purpose for which you have provided it, as permitted by this Privacy Policy, or otherwise consistently with the APP and Privacy Act. We will not disclose your personal information to third parties, unless you have consented to such disclosure or in other circumstances where such disclosure is required or permitted by law.
Depending on the nature of your matter the types of bodies to whom we may disclose your personal information include the courts, the other party or parties to litigation, experts and barristers, the Office of State Revenue (OSR), PEXA Limited, the Land and Property Information Division of the Department of Lands, the Registrar General and third parties involved in the completion or processing of a transaction.
We do not disclose your information overseas unless your instructions involve dealing with parties located overseas. If your matter involves parties overseas we may disclose select personal information to overseas recipients associated with that matter in order to carry out your instructions.
O’Brien Criminal & Civil Solicitors retains and safely stores personal information that is provided to us, including such information obtained at a pre-client stage, as this enables us to respond more efficiently and to inform such persons of our other legal services or developments that may be of interest to them at a later stage.
Personal information is stored on our protected computer systems and within secure paper-based files as appropriate.
We retain personal information for as long as it is necessary to fulfil the purposes outlined above and as otherwise specified in applicable record retention policies and procedures. At the conclusion of legal matters, we are required to keep legal files for a minimum period of 7 years from the closure of a legal file unless we are instructed to the contrary. In some cases, we may be required to retain documents for a longer period of time (e.g. documents that inform the making of a Will). We will also retain personal information for the purposes of ongoing legal and regulatory compliance as well as for establishing, exercising or defending legal proceedings.
Website Privacy Policy
This Policy also applies to any personal information we collect via our website, including www.obriensolicitors.com.au and www.unlawfularrest.com.au, in addition to personal information you provide directly – such as where you make a request or enter information into a registration form.
For statistical and analytical purposes, we collect information on website activity (such as the number of users who visit our website, the date and time of visits, the number of pages viewed and location). This information provides us with statistics that can be used to analyse and improve our website and services. We also analyse the traffic through our website, which may involve the use of cookies for marketing and market research more generally.
We do not use this technology to access your personal information.
Because we want your user experience to be as informative and helpful as possible, websites belonging to O’Brien Criminal & Civil Solicitors sometimes contain links to other websites of interest. We do not have any control over those third party websites. We are not responsible for or liable for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such third party websites, and such third party websites are not governed by this policy.
Correction to Personal Information
From time to time, we may take steps to verify information by collecting information from publicly available resources, for example, telephone directories or electoral rolls to improve the integrity of the information that we hold.
We provide a transparent system of allowing individuals to access their information and seek corrections to any inaccuracies. Requests for access and correction to information for pre-clients should be made by contacting our administration team using the contact details at the end of this policy.
In certain circumstances, we are permitted to deny the request for access, or limit the access that we provide.
If you believe that information we hold about you is incorrect or out of date, or if you have concerns about how we are handling your personal information, please contact us and we will try to resolve those concerns.
If you wish to have your personal information deleted, please let us know and we will take reasonable steps to delete it (unless we need to keep it for legal or internal risk management reasons, or compliance with our professional obligations).
If we become aware of any concerns or problems concerning our privacy practices, we will take these issues seriously and work to address any concerns. If you have any further queries relating to this policy, or you have a problem or complaint, please contact our administrative team
Our Privacy Contacts
For privacy related matters please contact our team by email at or by telephone on +61 2 9261 4281 between 8:30am and 5:30pm AEST Monday to Friday.
