Timothy A. Brooks Professional Corporation (“TB Law”) is committed to protecting personal information and an individual’s right to privacy. As a matter of professional responsibility and commitment to providing exceptional customer service, we are dedicated to protecting any personal information we hold.
This policy outlines how we will manage your personal information and protect your privacy. It addresses the collection, use, retention and disclosure of personal information in respect of our clients. This privacy policy does not apply to personal information about employment candidates or our employees, partners, contracted staff, which is dealt with separately.
Our privacy policies and procedures only apply to personal information about identifiable individuals. They do not apply to business information. Personal information does not include the name, title, business address or telephone number of an employee of an organization. In the context of this policy, the term “clients” includes all current, former and prospective clients.
Generally, we collect personal information in order to provide legal or other related services to our clients, to administer client accounts, to establish and manage client relationships and other commercial relationships, and to comply with regulatory requirements. As well, we collect personal information to provide our clients with newsletters and to hold seminars concerning our activities and developments in the law. We also collect personal information to evaluate client satisfaction.
Personal information that we collect includes:
We collect your personal information only by lawful and fair means and only with your consent or as required or permitted by law. Whenever possible and appropriate, we collect your personal information from you directly or from persons whom you have requested to provide us with information. Sometimes we may collect information about you from other sources such as financial institutions, insurance companies, mortgage professionals, real estate professionals, title insurance companies, conveyancing software companies, witnesses in litigation matters, other parties involved in your transaction or file, government agencies or registries, employers (if we are acting for you at your employer’s request), accountants or other professional advisors, and credit bureaus.
We may use your personal information for the following purposes:
Subject to our professional obligations of confidentiality, the Solicitor will only disclose your personal information for purposes related to its providing services to you, or with your express consent, or if required or authorized by law. For example, we may disclose your information:
In addition, we may disclose your personal information to third parties if we merge or reorganize. We may disclose your personal information before and after a transaction. However, if the transaction is completed, we will require the third party to provide a comparable level of protection for your personal information. If the transaction is not completed, we will require the third party to destroy securely, or to return to us, any records containing your personal information.
We may obtain your consent to our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information either expressly, for stated purposes, or impliedly when the purposes are indicated by the relevant circumstances or follow logically from other stated purposes. By providing us with personal information, you consent to the collection, use and disclosure of information relating to providing our services, managing our relationship with you, administering our business and as permitted or required by law, in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
We will seek your consent as required by law before using personal information for any purpose beyond the scope of your original consent. You may withdraw your consent at any time, subject to legal and contractual restrictions and reasonable notice. Please note, however, that withdrawing consent may affect our ability to serve you and maintain our relationship.
For example, if you no longer wish to receive our publications or receive information about our services, including by email, please send an e-mail message to: info@tblaw.ca with the subject line “unsubscribe”, or contact us in any of the ways listed below under “Questions or Concerns”.
Since we may use your information to provide legal services to you, it is important that the information be accurate and up to date. Please inform us if any of your information changes so that we can make any necessary changes.
We have policies and procedures in place to protect your personal information from loss, unauthorized access, modification or disclosure. In addition, we operate out of secure premises and have implemented technological safeguards including security software, passwords and firewalls to prevent unauthorized computer access.
Please note that no method of transmitting or storing information is completely secure. While we take appropriate measures to protect your personal information, there is always a risk that it may be lost, intercepted or misused. We may exchange electronic versions of documents and e-mails with you using commercially available software that is vulnerable to attack by viruses and other destructive electronic programs. We cannot guarantee that all communications and documents sent via e-mail will always be received, or that such communications and documents will always be virus free. We make no warranty with respect to the integrity of any electronic communications between us and you or with respect to the security of any such communication and you consent to our exchange of electronic communications, including confidential documents, unencrypted.
Your personal information is stored at secure locations and on servers controlled by the Solicitor at our offices. It may also be stored at the offices of our service providers.
When we transfer your personal information to a third party to provide administrative and other services, we use appropriate measures to ensure that the third party will only use your personal information to perform the services we have specified. The global nature of our technology sometimes requires us to use administrative service providers who may be located in the United States or elsewhere outside of Canada. Accordingly, your personal information may be transferred outside of Canada and if so, will be subject to the legal requirements of the applicable foreign jurisdictions, including local requirements to disclose information to courts, law enforcement and national security authorities. If you wish to obtain more information about our policies and procedures relating to our transferring and processing information outside of Canada, please contact us in any of the ways described below under “Questions or Concerns”.
You may ask for access to any information that we hold about you. You also may ask how we collected the information, how we are using it, and to whom we have disclosed it. Your request for access must be in writing, and should be sent to us in any of the ways described below under “Questions or Concerns”. We will acknowledge your request in writing. We may request that you provide us with information to allow us to confirm your identity before providing you with the information that you have requested. Access will generally be provided free of charge; however, if you request that information be copied or transmitted, we may charge a reasonable fee. We will notify you of the amount of the charge in advance, and provide you with an opportunity to withdraw your request. We will provide you with access to your information within 30 days of our receipt of your request, or provide written notice that additional time is required to comply with your request.
In certain circumstances we may be unable to provide access to some or all of the information that we hold about you. If we are unable or not permitted by law to provide you with access, we will provide you with an explanation and indicate further steps which are available to you.
If you are in the European Union, please note that this section applies to our processing of your personal data in addition to the other terms of this Privacy Policy. Any reference to “personal information” in this Privacy Policy should be understood as referring to “personal data”, defined under the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) as “any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person”.
The Solicitor collects personal data about you. The Solicitor as data controller processes your personal data in compliance with the requirements of the GDPR, as amended from time to time.
Legal bases upon which we process your Personal Data
We only process your personal data:
Retention of your personal information
We only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes identified in this Privacy Policy or as long as required for our legal or business purposes.
Additional data subject rights
In addition to the rights described above under “Access to Your Personal Information”, you may in some cases ask us to delete your personal data. You can also object to certain personal data about you being processed and request that processing of your personal data be limited. Please note that the limitation or deletion of your personal data may mean we will be unable to provide the services described above. You also have the right to receive your personal data in a machine-readable format and have the data transferred to another party responsible for data processing. If you disagree with how we process your Personal Data, you are also entitled to report this to the competent supervisory authorities in the European Union.
We regularly review our privacy policies and procedures. Therefore, we may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time. The most current version of our Privacy Policy will be posted on our website at http://www.tblaw.ca/privacy-policy. Regardless of any changes we make to our Privacy Policy, we will only use your personal information in accordance with the version of the Privacy Policy in place at the time you provided your information, or as otherwise required or permitted by law, unless you have given your express consent for us to do otherwise.
If you have any questions or concerns or wish to obtain further information about our personal information policies and procedures, or if you wish to access your personal information or change any consent regarding our use or disclosure of your personal information, please contact us in any of the ways described below. We treat all privacy concerns seriously. We will investigate any concern and seek to resolve it within a reasonable time.
Timothy A. Brooks
Barrister & Solicitor
4711 Yonge St, 10th Floor
Toronto, ON M2N 6K8
Telephone: 647-670-1888
Fax: 647-670-1886
E-mail: info@tblaw.ca
