Your Privacy Rights

From January 1, 2004, all businesses 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 the Allinotte Law Office Professional Corporation. The Act gives you rights concerning the privacy of your personal information. You can view the Act at www.privcom.gc.ca.

Journey Law 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.

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Why Does Journey Law Need Personal Information?

Journey Law provides legal services to a wide range of clients. In the course of our business, we may also from time to time produce direct marketing materials concerning our services and developments in the law.

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What personal information do we collect?

Personal information is any information that identifies you, or by which your identity could be deduced.

In order to provide you with effective legal representation, we may collect specific information about you, your former or current spouse, your children, including but not limited to your and/or their employment, earnings, medical history, children, birth dates, social insurance numbers, businesses, and any other personal information relevant to the legal services you have retained us to provide.

If we did not collect and use your personal information we could not provide you with legal services.

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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;
• your bank or financial institution;
• your financial advisor;
• a government agency or registry;
• your employer;
• your accountant; and/or
• your doctor or psychologist

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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.

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In some cases, we will need to use a third party software to verify your identity to meet the requirements of the Law Society of Ontario. You consent to the disclosure of your information to third party identification verification software. For the purposes of verifying your identity, you consent to institutions disclosing the information necessary to verify your identity. This includes authorizing your mobile carrier to disclose your mobile account details for the purpose of verifying your identity. Those details may include your name, address and device details.

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Use of Your Information

We use your personal information to provide legal advice and services to you, to administer our client billing databases, and to include you in any direct marketing activities. 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. We will not disclose your personal information to any third party to enable them to market their products and services.

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

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Disclosure of your Personal Information

Under certain circumstances, the Journey Law will disclose your personal information;
• when we are required or authorized by law to do so, for example if a court issues a subpoena;
• when you have consented to the disclosure;
• when the legal services we are providing to you requires us to give your information to third parties (for example a lender in a real estate mortgage transaction or your financial statement to the other party or their lawyer in a family 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; and/or
• if the information is already publicly known.

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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.

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Is My Personal Information Secure?

Journey Law 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; and
• internal password and security policies.

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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.

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Correcting Errors

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

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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; and/or
• 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.

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Can I request anonymity?

Whenever it is legal and practicable, we may offer you 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. This Act may also require us to disclose information to FINTRAC (Financial Transactions Reports Analysis Centre of Canada) in relation to certain large cash transactions.

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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.

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Communicating with Us

E-mail, cellular telephones and facsimile transmissions are not 100% secure mediums, and you should be aware of this when contacting us to provide personal or confidential information.

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Changes to this Privacy Policy

Since Journey Law regularly reviews all of its policies and procedures, we may change our Privacy Policy from time to time.

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Requests for Access

If you have any questions, or wish to access your personal information, please write to our Privacy Contact, Michele Allinotte, 101-132 Second Street East, Cornwall, Ontario, K6H 1Y4, (613) 933-7720, email hello@journeylaw.ca.

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.

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Employment Inquiries

If you apply to Journey Law for a job, we need to consider your personal information, as part of our review process. We normally retain information from candidates after a decision has been made, unless you ask us not to retain the information. If we offer you a job, which you accept, the information will be retained in accordance with our privacy procedures for employee records.

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TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF USE

ATTENTION: Your use of the Journey Law’s website (the “Website”) is subject to the terms and conditions set forth under the Legal Notice below and our Privacy Policy. By using the Website, you agree that you accept and will abide by these terms and conditions. If you do not accept these terms and conditions, do not use the Website. These terms and conditions and our Privacy Policy may change from time to time and it is your responsibility to check for such updates.

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Legal Notice

Journey Law DOES NOT ACCEPT ANY LIABILITY FOR YOUR USE OF THIS WEBSITE, WHICH USE IS STRICTLY AT YOUR OWN RISK.

The information provided on the Website (the “Content”) is protected by copyright © Journey Law Professional Corporation and/or Michele Allinotte 2019. All rights reserved. We may update or modify the Content at any time and without notice.

We hereby authorizes you to display on your computer, download and print pages of the Website and the Content, subject to the following provisions: (i) the Content may not be altered in any manner without our prior consent; and (ii) the Content is only to be used for personal, educational or non-commercial use and will not be redistributed, broadcast or copied to any other media without our prior consent.

The Content is offered free of charge strictly on an “as is” basis and is intended to provide users with general information only. Journey Law does not warrant or guarantee the accuracy, completeness or fitness of the Content for any particular purpose. Although we are committed to updating the Content, such Content may no longer be accurate for a variety of reasons including, without limitation, the passage of time, legislative changes or recent court decisions. The Content does not constitute legal advice or a legal opinion on any subject matter. If you wish to obtain legal advice, please contact Journey Law or your own qualified legal professional.

For your convenience and information only, the Website may provide links to third party websites. You acknowledge that when you click on a link to a third party website, you will be leaving the Website and assume the risks inherent in doing so, including risks of personally identifiable information being collected without your consent and damages caused by computer viruses, Trojan horses or other destructive/disruptive code which may be downloaded from such linked websites. We have not verified the nature or accuracy of the information contained on such third party websites and assumes no liability for any damages you may suffer from visiting such third party websites.

If you breach any of these terms and conditions, your authorization to use the Website automatically terminates and you must immediately destroy any downloaded or printed Content.