Hooey Remus LLP recognizes the importance of privacy and the sensitivity of personal information. As lawyers we have a professional obligation to keep confidential all information we receive within a lawyer-client relationship. We are committed to protecting any personal information we hold. This Privacy Policy outlines how we manage your personal information and safeguard your privacy.

 

Your Privacy Rights

From January 1, 2004, all businesses in Canada engaged in commercial activities must comply with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the Canadian Standards Association Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information, which it incorporates. These obligations extend to lawyers and law firms, including Hooey Remus LLP. The Act gives you rights concerning the privacy of your personal information.

 

Hooey Remus LLP is responsible for the personal information we collect and hold. To ensure this accountability, we have developed this policy, and trained our lawyers and support staff about our policies and practices.

 

Why Does Hooey Remus LLP Need Personal Information?

Hooey Remus LLP provides legal services and products to a wide range of clients. In doing so, we produces direct marketing materials concerning our services and developments in the law.

 

What personal information do we collect?

Personal information is any information that identifies you, or by which your identity could be deduced. If we did not collect and use your personal information we could not provide you with legal services.

 

How do we collect your personal information?

We collect information 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 a retainer 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;
• your employer, if we are acting for you, at its request;
• your accountant.

 

Consent

In most cases, we shall ask you to specifically consent, if we collect, use, or disclose your personal information. Normally, we ask for your consent 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 Your Information

We use your personal information to provide legal advice and services to you, to administer our client time and billing databases, to collect any amounts owing from you to Hooey Remus LLP and to include you in any mailings of information about our legal services. 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. Hooey · Remus does not disclose your personal information 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 your Personal Information

Under certain circumstances, Hooey Remus LLP will disclose your personal information:

• when we are required or authorized by law to do so, for example if a court issues a summons or 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 or in court in a litigious matter) 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 the retainer, any of your information changes, please inform us so that we can make any necessary changes.

 

Is My Personal Information Secure?

Hooey Remus LLP takes 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

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.

 

Correcting Errors

If Hooey Remus LLP holds information about you and you can establish that it is not accurate, complete and up-to-date, Hooey Remus LLP will take reasonable steps to correct it.

 

Can I be Denied Access to My Personal Information?

Your rights to access your personal information are not absolute.

We may deny access when:

• denial of access is required or authorized by law (for example, when a record containing personal information about you is subject to a claim of legal professional privilege by one of our clients) ;
• information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings against you;
• when granting you access would have an unreasonable impact on other people's privacy;
• when to do so would prejudice negotiations with you;
• to protect our firm's rights and property;
• where the request is frivolous or vexatious.

If we deny your request for access to, or refuse a request to correct information, we shall explain why.

Hooey Remus LLP does not use your Social Insurance Number as a way of identifying or organizing the information we hold about you.

 

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 on occasion, request information about you from the files of consumer reporting agencies.

 

Communicating with Us

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 Hooey Remus LLP regularly reviews all of its policies and procedures, we may change our Privacy Policy from time to time.

 

Requests for Access

If you have any questions, or wish to access your personal information, please write to our Privacy Contact:

W. Bruce Drake

P.O. Box 40, Suite 400

One University Avenue

Toronto, Ontario M5J 2P1

416.362.2051.

 

If you are not satisfied with our response, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada can be reached at

112 Kent Street,

Ottawa Ontario K1A 1H3

1.800.282.1376.

 

Employment Inquiries

If you apply to Hooey Remus LLP for a position as a lawyer or for a staff position, we need to consider your personal information, as part of our review process. We normally destroy applications from candidates, together with transcripts and other enclosures, immediately after our review if we do not make an offer or after an offer from us has been rejected by the candidate. We retain a record of the candidate 's name, address, email address, if any, and the date of our response for our records. If we make an offer of a position which is accepted, the information will be retained in accordance with our privacy procedures for employee records

 

Applications for Articling Positions

We normally destroy applications for articling positions, together with transcripts and other enclosures, immediately after our review if we do not make an offer or after an offer from us has been rejected by the applicant. We retain a record of the applicant's name, address, email address, if any, and the date of our response for our records. If we make an offer of an articling position which is accepted, the information will be retained in accordance with our privacy procedures for employee records.

 

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 optimize our web service. We may provide aggregated information to third parties, but these statistics do not include any identifiable personal information.

Electronic transmissions of private Internet and e-mail signals may be intercepted by unscrupulous third parties. Even for persons with whom we have a solicitor-client relationship, Hooey Remus LLP cannot guarantee the confidentiality of any data transmission to or from our website or any e-mail transmission to or from our firm. Once we receive information from clients, we make all reasonable efforts to ensure its confidentiality on our systems and in our files.

If you do respond to our webmaster using the link at the bottom of each page, we will be free to use such information to improve our site or our services to our clients. We do not treat any communication or email to our webmaster as confidential.

We will treat any communication to or from third parties by data transmission to or from our website or e-mail transmission on client business as confidential. Otherwise, we do not treat any such communication to or from persons who are not clients as confidential.

You can visit the Hooey Remus LLP website without telling us who you are or revealing any information about yourself. The Hooey Remus LLP website does not use cookies, clear gifs, Web Beacons or Web Bugs, nor do we collect any personal information about you as you visit our website.

In preparation of a power of attorney for personal care on-line, we ask you to voluntarily provide information about yourself. We have provided a link to this Privacy Statement on that page, as well as on the bottom of every page on this website.

We also allow you to transmit credit card information in order to complete payment for a power of attorney created on-line. We will share such information as necessary with your credit card issuer or bank to receive payment authorization from your credit card issuer and as may be required by law. As we state in our power of attorney wizard, your credit card data is not encrypted during transmission. We have allowed for other payment methods for those who do not wish credit card information to be transmitted in this form.