Reilly D'Heureux Lanzi 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.

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 Reilly D'Heureux Lanzi LLP. The Act gives you rights concerning the privacy of your personal information. Reilly D'Heureux Lanzi 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.

Reilly D'Heureux Lanzi LLP provides legal services and products to a wide range of clients. The use of personal information is often an integral part of the work we do in preparing legal documents for our clients and communicating with courts, government authorities, or other parties on behalf of our clients.

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.

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.

In many 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. Often, your consent may be implied through your conduct with us or by the nature of the services you have retained us to provide.

We use your personal information to provide legal advice and services to you, to administer our client time and billing databases and to include you in any direct marketing activities of our firm. 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. Reilly D'Heureux Lanzi LLP 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.

Under certain circumstances, Reilly D'Heureux Lanzi LLP will disclose your personal information: when we are required or authorized by law to do so, for example where required by statute or if a court issues a subpoena; when you have consented to the disclosure; when the legal services we are providing to you require us to give your information to third parties (for example a lender in a real estate mortgage transaction) 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.

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.

Reilly D'Heureux Lanzi 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. destruction of information no longer required.

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.

If Reilly D'Heureux Lanzi LLP holds information about you and you can establish that it is not accurate, complete and up-to-date, Reilly D'Heureux Lanzi LLP will take reasonable steps to correct it.

Your rights to access your personal information are not absolute. We may deny access, inter alia: 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); when 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. Reilly D'Heureux Lanzi LLP does not use your Social Insurance Number as a way of identifying or organizing the information we hold upon you.

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 or in informational brochures prepared by our firm). As a general rule, in order to avoid any future conflicts in representation, we need to know the identity of any party to whom we give legal advice or to whom we provide a consultation, whether or not our firm is retained to act in a particular matter. 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 to disclose information to FINTRAC in relation to certain large cash transactions.

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.

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.

Since Reilly D'Heureux Lanzi LLP regularly reviews all of its policies and procedures, we may change our Privacy Policy from time to time.

If you have any questions, or wish to access your personal information, please write to our Privacy Contact, Marc A. D'Heureux, at 555 Kingston Road West, 2nd Floor, Pickering Village, Ajax Ontario, L1S 6M1 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.

If you apply to Reilly D'Heureux Lanzi LLP 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.

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.