ORP Law is committed to respecting your rights and obeying the law and so we wish to explain your privacy rights. In this policy, “personal information” means any information about an identifiable individual. This policy applies to ORP’s obligation owed to clients, employees, visitors, agents and its lawyers.
GATHERING PERSONAL INFORMATION
ORP gathers personal information about you –
- in determining if we can serve you as counsel in any matter
- in satisfying the standard legal requirements that we know our client
- in preparing documentation or advancing any matter you have retained us to do
- in establishing the billing procedures in relation to the services provided to you
- in considering the admission of persons to be employed by ORP
ORP gathers your personal information in many forms from you or otherwise – print, electronic, facsimile, telephone, e-mail or other forms of social media and communication, but in doing so it will only use lawful means and only for necessary purposes that have been disclosed to you.
ORP will collect personal information about you without your consent where –
- required by law or by order of a court or tribunal
- where necessary to facilitate ORP in collecting its fees owed by you
- where the information is public
ORP provides access to its website. Its servers and authorized third party Internet providers track general information about visitors to the website such as their domain name, Internet protocol address and time of visit. These Internet service providers also collect and aggregate information regarding which pages of the website content are being accessed. This information is used internally.
OBLIGATIONS ON FIRM TO HANDLE PERSONAL INFORMATION
ORP operates in Toronto in the Province of Ontario, Canada and is responsible under applicable privacy legislation both provincial and federal to handle personal information in its possession and control and is also subject to the authority of the Law Society of Ontario and the obligations it places on law firms in Ontario regarding the protection of the confidentiality of client information. These obligations apply to all members of Ontario law firms – lawyers, law clerks, legal assistants and any other associate, agent or staff of such firms.
All the personal information ORP gathers about and concerning you shall be held in the strictest confidence and not revealed to anyone unless expressly or implicitly authorized by you. The obligation of ORP to maintain confidentiality regarding you arises when you become a client of ORP – i.e. when ORP agrees to represent your interests and to provide professional legal services to you. As a consequence and apart from the information required by ORP to determine if it will take you on as a client, you should not send personal information to ORP until there has been an agreement to take you on as a client.
ORP, when requesting personal information from you, will always identify the purpose in seeking such information. Under no circumstances will ORP sell, trade, disclose, barter or exchange for consideration any of your personal information it has obtained. Any such personal information will only be retained by ORP so long as it is required for the purpose for which it was collected, or retained by law, or to address any issue that may arise at a later date. When your personal information is no longer required for any of these purposes, ORP will destroy,
delete, or erase it maintaining the confidentiality of such information in the process.
Currently, ORP stores personal information in its offices in Toronto, Ontario. It has taken steps to maintain adequate physical, procedural and technical security regarding its office and information storage facilities to prevent any loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure or modification of personal information – i.e. a data breach. All professional and nonprofessional persons working with or for ORP are provided with training on maintaining the confidentiality and protection of the personal information provided to it.
CONCERNS ABOUT FIRM’S HANDLING OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
ORP tries to ensure that any personal information provided to it and in its possession is as accurate, current and complete as necessary for the purposes for which it has been received. In the event you believe the personal information held by ORP about you is inaccurate or you wish to access it, you may make a request to the Privacy Officer.
ORP has appointed a Privacy Officer to oversee privacy matters. Our Privacy Officer may be reached by e-mail at SCanto@orplawyers.com, or may be reached by letter at:
Steven Canto, B.A., LL.B.
Privacy Officer
ORP Lawyers
180 Dundas Street West,
Suite 1500
Toronto, ON
M5G 1Z8