Lime Lawyers Pty Ltd trading as Lime Lawyers is a Queensland law firm with expertise in Personal Injury Claims. We are committed to protecting your privacy in compliance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (‘the APPs’).
We appreciate that it is important that you clearly understand how we gather, store and use any personal information that you provide to Lime Lawyers.
What information might be collected from you?
When you contact Lime Lawyers we will generally request some basic personal information to assist you with your legal enquiry. This personal information includes; your current legal name, any previous names, your date of birth, residential address, contact telephone and mobile numbers, and your email address.
If you decide to retain Lime Lawyers to act for you in your legal matter, we will require further personal information which may include; next of kin details, tax file number, Medicare number, Centrelink reference number, medical history, employment history and educational history.
In some instances we may need to collect ‘sensitive’ information about you for the purposes of your legal matter. ‘Sensitive’ information includes information regarding a person’s ethnicity, sexual preferences, criminal record or health information.
Under the APPs, Lime Lawyers is entitled to collect sensitive information about you in circumstances where the collection of this information is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of a legal claim.
Lime Lawyers collects information either by telephone, written correspondence, facsimile or electronically (ie. email or on the Internet).
We will explain our requests to collect your personal information to you and will only collect this information for a specific purpose related to your legal matter or where required by law to do so.
Collection of information through use of our website
Lime Lawyers collects information regarding activity on our website. This includes information about the number of people who visit our website, the date and time of visits to our website, and the number of pages viewed. This information does not identify the individuals who view our website but it allows us to evaluate data about activity on our website to then improve the experience of people who visit our website.
Information is collected by ‘cookies’ that are placed on the Internet browser application used by people who visit our website.
If you wish to restrict or disable the cookies which are set when visiting the Lime Lawyers website, you can do this through the security settings of your Internet browser application. Please note that restricting or disabling cookies may impact the functionality of our website.
How will your personal information be used and/or when will it be disclosed?
Personal information will be used to:
Should another party approach Lime Lawyers with a demand to access your personal information, we will take reasonable steps to redirect the third party to request the information directly from you, wherever it is lawful and reasonable for us to do so.
If we are obligated to disclose your personal information to another party we will take reasonable steps to advise you of this in advance, however we will only do so in circumstances where it is lawful and reasonable for us to do so.
How personal information will be stored
At Lime Lawyers, personal information will be stored either in electronic format or in hard copy paper form. We will endeavour to keep all your personal information safe regardless of the format in which it is stored.
We will take all reasonable steps to protect your personal information from misuse and loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
The measures we will use to protect your personal information include: ensuring all Lime Lawyers staff are educated about client confidentiality and privacy protection, username and password protected access to our computer and telephone systems, current anti-virus protection to our computer systems, secure storage of archived hard copy paper information and (when legally appropriate) the effective destruction of documents containing personal information.
Disclosure to third party service providers
If you decide to retain Lime Lawyers to act for you in your legal matter, disclosure of your personal information may occur to third party professionals or service providers. This would be in circumstances where Lime Lawyers had engaged a third party professional or service provider, such as a barrister, medical expert or forensic accountant to provide their professional opinion for your legal matter.
We maintain effective control over personal information at all times and have contractual arrangements in place with all of our third party service providers to protect personal information from unauthorised use or disclosure.
Access to, and correction of personal information
You have the right to request access to your information and to request that Lime Lawyers update or correct your personal information.
You can request a copy of your personal information in writing to PO Box 356, North Lakes, QLD, 4509 or emailing enquiries@limelawyers.com.au.
We can restrict your access to your personal information if we believe doing so: would pose a serious threat to the life, health or safety of any individual or to public health or safety, would have unreasonable impact upon the privacy of others or your request is frivolous or vexatious.
We can also restrict access to information if doing so is prohibited by court order or under Australian law or if the disclosure would compromise our position or the position of others in anticipated or existing legal disputes or negotiations.
If you discover that the personal information you have provided to Lime Lawyers is incorrect or incomplete, please contact our office on (07) 3067 2700 or by emailing enquiries@limelawyers.com.au at your earliest opportunity so the information we hold can be updated.
When your personal information changes (such as a change of residential address) please contact us within 1 month of any change so that we can update your personal information on our system.
Secondary purposes for personal information
As part of what we hope to be an on-going professional relationship between Lime Lawyers and our clients, we may from time to time send out information related to the other legal services that we offer. We do however respect the wishes of individuals who do not wish to receive such material from us and have ‘opt-out’ procedures that can be activated for use with the promotional material that we may send from time to time.
Destruction of Personal Information
At the conclusion of a legal matter when the final bill is rendered, we will retain a copy of the legal file for a period of 7 years after which time we will arrange for its effective destruction.
Privacy Complaints
If you have a privacy related complaint or concern, please contact our office on (07) 3067 2700 so we can discuss this with you. Lime Lawyers appreciates your feedback and takes all privacy complaints extremely seriously.
In our experience, making a telephone call and discussing your concerns and allowing us the opportunity to address this with you can be incredibly beneficial and be all that is required to resolve your issue.
However, if you wish to make a formal complaint about the way we have dealt with your personal information, you must provide this in writing to our address at PO Box 356, North Lakes, QLD, 4509 or email to enquiries@limelawyers.com.au.
Your written complaint should contain your contact details, outline in detail the nature of your complaint, and also provide information as to what happened and who was involved. This will assist our understanding of your complaint so we can respond appropriately.
If you are not happy with our response to your formal complaint, you can then contact the Office of Australian Information Commissioner by telephone on 1300 363 992 or by email on enquiries@oaic.gov.au.
Further Information
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us at enquiries@limelawyers.com.au.
If you require further information about privacy generally, please visit the Office of Australian Information Commissioner at http://www.oaic.gov.au.
This Privacy Policy was updated on 22 March 2015.