Privacy Policy
AAK Law LLP recognizes the importance of privacy and the sensitivity of personal information. It is part of our fundamental commitment to you to provide legal services of the highest quality, in a timely manner, at a reasonable cost. 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.
As of January 1, 2004, all businesses engaged in commercial activities must comply with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, (“PIPEDA”) unless the Federal Government has exempted the organization because it is subject to substantially similar provincial legislation. To date, lawyers and their partnerships or associations in Ontario are not exempted and Ontario has not enacted any substantially similar legislation to PIPEDA. Therefore, AAK Law is subject to PIPEDA. In addition, we have obligations under the Rules of Professional Conduct to maintain absolute confidence regarding information about our clients. PIPEDA gives you additional rights concerning the privacy of your personal information.
AAK Law is responsible for the personal information we collect and hold. To ensure this accountability, we have developed this privacy policy and trained our lawyers and support staff about our policies and practices.
Personal information is any information that identifies you, or allows you to be identified, including such information as your home address/phone/email, billing information, credit information, family information, ethnicity, sexual orientation, blood type, medical information and personal financial information. Personal information does not usually include business contact information such as your name, title, employer/organization, or business address, phone/fax number or email. For the purposes of this privacy policy, personal information has the same definition as in the controlling legislation. We must obtain personal information in order to provide you with legal services. If we did not collect and use personal information we could not provide you with those services. We only collect that personal information which is reasonably necessary for our commercial relationship.
AAK Law provides legal services and products to a wide range of clients. We collect personal information about and from our clients in order to:
- Communicate with you;
- Enter into commercial relationships with you or others for the purposes of carrying on our practice, including the issuing of accounts, collecting and processing payments, and meeting contractual or insurance obligations;
- Provide legal services to you and on your behalf;
- Maintain and enhance our internal knowledge management databases;
- Comply with regulatory and audit requirements of the Law Society and other governmental or regulatory authorities;
- Advise you of developments in the law;
- Advise you of the services that we provide, firm news and firm events;
- Market our firm;
- Any other purpose to which you consent.
We collect information only by lawful and fair means. Wherever possible we collect your personal information directly from you, at the start of a retainer and in the course of and in connection with that retainer. Sometimes we may obtain information about you from other sources during the course of our retainer. Examples of other sources include:
- Your insurance company;
- Your real estate agent in a property transaction;
- A government agency or registry;
- Your employer;
- Your accountant;
- Your health care providers, and
- Other consultants retained by you or on your behalf to assist with the retainer.
By submitting personal information to AAK Law, or its service providers, agents or anyone else on its behalf, you agree that we may collect, use and disclose such information according to this privacy policy. If you provide AAK Law, or its service providers, agents, or anyone on its behalf, personal information about anyone else, by giving us such information, you represent to us and confirm that you have obtained all necessary authority and or consents from that other person to enable us to collect, use and disclose that personal information according to this privacy policy.
In addition, if you retain us to act for you, you will be required to sign a retainer agreement in which you give us your express consent to collect, use and/or disclose personal information about you during the course of our representation of you, as we determine may be necessary in order to fully represent you.
We use your personal information to provide legal advice and services to you, to conduct our normal client relationships, administer our client time and billing databases, and to include you in any direct marketing activities. In these respects, we assume that we have your consent to use your personal information unless you advise us to the contrary. 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.
AAK Law does not disclose your personal information to any third party to enable them to market their products and services without your consent. For example, we do not provide our client mailing lists to anyone, except as may be required by law.
In addition, if you retain us to act for you, you will be required to sign a retainer agreement in which you give us your express consent to collect, use and/or disclose personal information about you during the course of our representation of you, as we determine may be necessary in order to fully represent you.
Under certain circumstances, such as the following, AAK Law will disclose your personal information:
- When you consent;
- When we are required or authorized by law to do so (for example, if a court issues a subpoena or summons);
- 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, or a doctor for a medical-legal referral in a personal injury action), 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, archival file storage or contract employees) 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;
- To any person whom AAK Law reasonably believes is providing or requesting disclosure of personal information as your agent;
- If the information is already publicly known.
AAK Law takes 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 internal file access to personal information stored electronically;
- Technological safeguards, such as security software and firewalls, to prevent hacking or unauthorized computer access;
- Internal password and security policies.
In addition, each lawyer is obligated by the Rules of Professional Conduct to maintain all client information as strictly confidential. Every AAK Law employee is bound by our privacy policy. People and businesses with whom we do business are required to have privacy policies that comply with the legislation.
You may ask for access to any personal information we hold about you. Summary information is available on written request. More detailed requests that require archive or other retrieval costs may be subject to our normal professional and disbursement fees.
We keep personal information as long as is reasonable in order to conduct our business with you, or longer, if required by law.
If we hold information about you and you can establish that it is not accurate, complete and/or up to date, we will take reasonable steps to correct it.
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;
- Where the request is frivolous or vexatious.
If we deny your request for access to information, or refuse a request to correct information, we shall explain why.
AAK Law 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 deal with general inquiries without providing your name (for example, by accessing general information on our website).
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 email is not a 100% secure medium, and you should be aware of this when contacting us to send personal or confidential information.
If you apply to AAK 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 your confidential employee records.
You may visit our website, www.aaklawoffice.com. Should you do so, you can be certain that we will not ask for any personal information.
Our website may contain links to other sites which are not governed by this privacy policy.
We may collect personal information through our website, but only when you voluntarily enter the website, submit a form electronically, use links contained on the website or send us email. When you provide information to us through these mechanisms, you consent to our collection, use and disclosure of such information according to this privacy policy. Personal information provided through these mechanisms will be used only for the purpose(s) for which you submitted the personal information, to respond to you, and to send you information from time to time that we think may be of interest to you.
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.
AAK Law regularly reviews all of its policies and procedures. We may change our Privacy Policy from time to time. Please review our website occasionally, to keep abreast of any changes.
If you have any questions, or wish to access your personal information,
please write to our Privacy Contact at:
AAK Law, LLP
Barristers & Solicitors
2550 Argentia Rd Mississauga, ON L5N 5R1
Attention: Aneel Kamran
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
