Privacy Policy - Times Lawyers

1. Introduction

Times Lawyers is referred to in this Privacy Policy as we, us or our.

This Privacy Policy explains how we manage personal information. It also describes your rights to access and correct personal information we hold about you, and how you can make a complaint about our management of your personal information. This is in addition to our obligations of confidentiality to clients and other parties arising from sources other than the Privacy Act.

1.1 Application of this Policy

This Privacy Policy only applies to some of the personal information we manage. It only applies to personal information we manage for the purposes of or in connection with our obligations under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (the AML/CTF Act).

Other personal information we manage remains excluded by applicable exemptions in the Privacy Act.

1.2 Policy Updates

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. The current version will be available on our website at timeslawyers.com.au.

2. Personal information: what we collect

2.1 Types of personal information

We collect your contact and identity details, financial information and case-related information about you and any relevant entity or person. This may include sensitive information.

The types of personal information we may collect include:

Identity information: name, date of birth, gender, signature, photographic identification, visa status;
Contact information: residential and postal addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers;
Professional information: occupation, employer, job title, professional qualifications;
Financial information: bank account details, billing information;
Matter-related information: information relevant to your legal matter or the legal matter of our client;
Transaction information: details of services provided to you or your organisation;
Recruitment information: employment history, qualifications, references, right to work status, background check results.

2.2 Identity Verification and the AML/CTF Act

We may be required to verify your identity and collect certain information under the AML/CTF Act when we provide designated services. Identity documents might also be required for other services such as court matters, real property transactions and asset dealings.

This includes collecting identification documents and information about the source of funds and beneficial ownership of entities.

3. How we collect personal information

3.1 Sources of information

We collect information directly from our clients, from other lawyers, government sources or public sources such as registers or the internet.

Where reasonable and practicable, we collect personal information directly from you. This may occur when you:

engage us to provide legal services;
respond to communication with us or engage a solicitor or agent to do so;
contact us by telephone, email, post or in person;
complete forms or provide documents to us;
visit our website or use our online services; or
apply for employment with us.

We may also collect personal information about you from third parties, including:

our client(s), where we collect information in the course of providing legal services;
other parties to legal proceedings or transactions and their lawyers;
courts, tribunals, law enforcement and government agencies;
publicly available sources, including public registers, websites and social media;
referrers who introduce you to us or lead agencies and advertising sites;
recruitment agencies and previous employers (for job applicants); and
identity verification, commercial data brokers and background check service providers.

3.2 Anonymity and Pseudonymity

If you are a client, you have the option of requesting to deal with us anonymously or by using a pseudonym. However, in most cases this is not lawful nor practical for legal services. If you do not provide us with the personal information we request, we may not be able to provide you with legal services or respond to your enquiry.

4. Why we collect personal information and how we use it

We collect, hold, use and disclose personal information for the primary purpose of providing legal services to our clients, complying with regulatory and insurance obligations and operating our legal practice.

This includes:

providing legal advice and representation to you or to our client(s);
managing client matters and files;
conducting legal research and investigations;
preparing and reviewing legal documents;
communicating with you and other parties;
billing and collecting fees, including pursuit of our rights under a Costs Agreement or retainer;
complying with our legal, professional and insurance obligations; and
administering and managing our firm.

We may also use and disclose personal information for secondary purposes that are related to our primary purposes, including:

maintaining and developing our relationship with you;
quality assurance and improvement of our services, including training our AI models or those of our AI providers (subject to our obligations of confidentiality to you);
training and professional development;
ongoing Customer Due Diligence as required by the AML/CTF Act;
enforcement of our right to payment of fees;
internal reporting and analysis; and
risk management and insurance purposes.

5. Disclosure of Personal Information

We may disclose personal information to third parties to facilitate the purposes of collection noted in section 4. These purposes include disclosure to parties to proceedings or transactions and their representatives, to courts, government and regulatory agencies as may be necessary or appropriate to establish legal rights and to progress transactions in which we are instructed. We also disclose information to third parties (such as data storage or archiving companies, our regulators or our insurers) who hold or process information for us.

6. Overseas Disclosure

We will disclose information to overseas recipients where this is reasonably necessary to progress our instructions (dealing with a company with an overseas office, for example).

The following circumstances are common examples when that may apply:

where your matter involves overseas parties or overseas proceedings;
to overseas law firms or legal practitioners engaged in a matter;
to our staff, staff of a related entity or contractors if working or travelling overseas;
to parties such as regulators and auditors who may use overseas processors or offices;
to service providers whose systems or servers are located overseas (including cloud storage, AI and IT service providers if we consider that the confidentiality arrangements that will apply to such information are sufficient); and
where you instruct or authorise us to do so.

7. Security of Personal Information

7.1 Security Measures

We hold your personal information using a system designed to protect against data breaches; however, like all data security systems, risks may only be mitigated but not eliminated. It is our practice to require our storage service providers to be reputable and to seek assurances from them regarding security and confidentiality.

7.2 Retention and Destruction

We retain personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, to comply with our legal and professional obligations and to ensure that pertinent evidence remains available if reasonably required.

8. Third-party websites

Our website may contain links to third-party websites, such as payment processors. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of those websites, and we encourage you to read their privacy policies.

9. Access and Correction

9.1 Access to and correction of your Personal Information

You have the right to request access to or correction of the personal information we hold about you. To make an access request, please contact our Privacy Officer (see section 10).

If we refuse to correct your personal information, we will provide written reasons for the refusal and information about how you may complain.

The Privacy Act permits us to refuse access in some circumstances. If we refuse your access request, we will provide you with written reasons for the refusal (unless unreasonable to do so or we are prohibited from doing so by law) and information about how you may complain.

10. Complaints and questions

If you have a question about this policy or complaint about how we have handled your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer. We ask that you provide details of your complaint in writing. We aim to resolve complaints within 30 days. If we need more time, we will keep you informed of our progress.

Times Lawyers Privacy Officer
Address: Suite 110, Level 1, Times Square, 250 McCullough Street, Sunnybank QLD 4109
Email: info@timeslawyers.com.au
Phone: 07 3344 2888

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may escalate your complaint to:

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) or the Legal Services Commission.
Website: www.oaic.gov.au
Phone: 1300 363 992

You may also contact the relevant legal services regulator in Queensland.