McCabes ACN 626 085 685 and its related entities (McCabes, we, us or our) are bound by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), including the Australian Privacy Principles (Privacy Law).
This Privacy Policy describes the way that we collect, hold, store and disclose your personal information. We will treat your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Law.
By providing personal information to us, you consent to us collecting, holding, using and disclosing your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
What personal information do we collect and hold?
Personal information means information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable from the information.
The personal information we collect about you will usually include your name and contact details (address, telephone number and e-mail address). To provide legal services to you, we may also need to collect and hold:
- additional general personal information, such as your date of birth, driver’s licence number, employment history, educational qualifications, financial records, income details, asset listings, and bank account details; and
- sensitive information, such as your family composition, racial or ethnic origin, criminal record, medical records, disability status, sexual preferences, religious belief or health information.
We will only collect sensitive information about you with your consent or when permissible under Australian law and will only use this information for a legitimate purpose where it is reasonably necessary.
You are not required to provide us with any of your personal information. However, if you do not provide us with your personal information, we may not be able to provide you with our services, communicate with you or respond to your enquiries.
How do we collect personal information?
We may collect personal information about you when you:
- request us to provide you with legal services;
- access, use, or browse our website, our MC Max application or any other application that we may release from time to time (Applications);
- subscribe to a McCabes newsletter;
- provide personal information to us in the course of our provision of legal services to you;
- attend an event hosted or sponsored by us;
- supply products or services to us; or
- apply for or register your interest in employment with us.
We will primarily collect your personal information directly from you, or from your authorised representatives.
We may also from time to time collect personal information about you from third parties such as regulatory authorities, your other professional advisers or publicly available records.
If we receive personal information from you about your customers, employees or other individuals, you are responsible for ensuring that such information has been disclosed to us in accordance with the Privacy Law.
Why do we collect personal information?
We may collect, hold and use your personal information so that we can:
- provide legal services to you;
- provide you with legal updates and information about events we are hosting or sponsoring;
- manage our relationships with you and, where the information was given to us for another specific purpose (such as a job application), for that purpose;
- comply with our legal and professional obligations.
- manage client referrals;
- verify your identity;
- conduct market research and analysis;
- maintain user profiles within the Applications;
- improve and develop the Applications; and
- assist you with your enquiries.
We may also use your personal information to send you promotional material in relation to our services from time to time. If we do so, we will provide you with the option to opt-out of receiving this material.
To whom do we disclose personal information?
We may disclose your personal information to our related companies operating as law firms under the McCabes brand in order to provide you with legal services and otherwise as required for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy.
We may also disclose your personal information to other third parties from time to time, such as experts, counsel and other professional advisers, regulatory bodies or external service providers (such as Checkbox Technology Ltd (ABN 35 612 175 685) and its related bodies corporate which hosts our Applications. Where we do so, disclosure will be as permitted under the Privacy Law and/or with your consent if required.
McCabes is part of Geneva Group International which has members in more than 120 countries worldwide. If the nature of services you request requires it, we may disclose your personal information to a person located in another country, including a member of Geneva Group International. Before we disclose personal information to an overseas recipient, we will take reasonable steps to obtain your consent and to ensure that the overseas recipient does not breach the Australian Privacy Principles in respect of that personal information. Those countries to which we are most likely to disclose personal information include Canada, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Germany.
We do not sell or trade personal information about you to or with third parties.
How do we store and secure personal information?
We value the security and confidentiality of the personal information we collect and hold about you.
We store most personal information we collect and hold about you in computer systems and databases operated either by us or our external service providers. We also record some information about you in paper files which we store securely.
We implement and maintain processes and security measures to protect personal information we hold from misuse, interference, loss, or unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. These processes and systems include:
- confidentiality agreements for our employees and contractors;
- security measures for our systems access;
- periodic evaluation of information protection practices;
- acceptable use agreements for our employees with respect to personal smart phones, laptops and tablets;
- ensuring that our service providers have appropriate security safeguards to keep the personal information we hold about you secure; and
- use of secured offices and data storage.
We will retain your personal information for as long as it is required for our business functions, or for any other lawful purpose. For example, we necessarily retain records of client names and the names of opposing parties indefinitely, so as to avoid conflicts of interest.
When we no longer need to retain your personal information for the purposes outlined above, we will destroy or de-identify the information as required by law.
While we take these reasonable steps to protect the personal information, we hold about you, you should take appropriate care to help safeguard your information.
The Applications may contain links to other websites. We do not share your personal information with those websites and we are not responsible for the privacy practices of the owners or operators of those websites.
Cookies
We may use ‘cookies’, web beacons and other similar technologies on the Applications. Cookies are small text files stored on your computer, mobile device or the web page you are viewing.
We may use this information to provide the Applications to you, for statistical, marketing and website development purposes, and to enhance your personalised experience of the Applications. To the greatest extent possible, this data is anonymous.
For example, when you visit our website, we collect general anonymous information (such as your browser type, information downloaded, pages visited and the domain name and country from which you request information) periodically for statistical and website development purposes.
We will not make any attempt to use this information to personally identify you.
You may choose not to use cookies by selecting the appropriate settings in your browser. However, please note that if you do so, this may affect your ability to use the full functionality of the Application.
Access to and correction of personal information
You can request access to, and request us to update or correct, the personal information we hold about you.
If you would like to do so, or if you would like any further information about our privacy policy and practices, please contact our Privacy Officer, using the contact details below:
The Privacy Officer
Level 38, 25 Martin Place, Sydney, NSW, 2000
Telephone: + 61 2 9261 1211
Email: [email protected]
We may refuse to provide access if the law allows us to do so.
Currency of this Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy was last updated on 14 May 2020.
Changes to this Policy
We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect any changes in legal requirements or the way in which we deal with your personal information. We will publish the most recent version of our Privacy Policy on our website which will take effect as soon as it is published on our website. By continuing to use our services, you will be deemed to have accepted any changes to our Privacy Policy.
You can obtain a copy of our current Privacy Policy from our website or by contacting us at the details above.
Complaints
If you wish to make a complaint about how we handle your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer using the contact details above. We will make every endeavour to respond to your request promptly.
If you are not satisfied with our response or we do not respond within 30 days, you can make a complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.