Privacy Policy

Piccolo Heath LLP recognizes the importance of privacy and the sensitivity of personal information. 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.

Your Privacy Rights

From January 1, 2004, all businesses engaged in commercial activities must comply with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”), and the Canadian Standards Association Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information, which it incorporates. These obligations extend to lawyers and law firms, including Piccolo Heath LLP.

Although, as lawyers, the Law Society of Ontario’s Rules of Professional Conduct have required us to maintain the confidentiality of client information, PIPEDA gives you additional rights concerning the privacy of your personal information.

Piccolo Heath LLP 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.

What is Personal Information?

Personal information is information about an identifiable individual or information that allows an individual to be identified. It does not include name, business address, or telephone number of an employee of an organization.

Why Do We Need Personal Information?

Piccolo Heath LLP provides legal services and products to a wide range of clients. We collect personal information from our clients to:

  • provide legal services in accordance with instructions;

  • fulfill ethical duties, including those imposed by the Law Society of Ontario;

  • fulfill legal duties;

  • to defend a claim made against you, us or a third party or commence or continue a claim on your behalf;

  • avoid conflicts of interest;

  • in the course of providing legal services, share personal information to and from third parties, including opposing parties; parties sharing the same interests; opposing, foreign and other counsel and advisors; witnesses; decision-makers; and experts, as appropriate;

  • provide information about developments in the law;

  • advise of upcoming firm events;

  • develop and manage our knowledge-management precedent systems and databases;

  • detect and protect Piccolo Heath LLP and other third parties against error, negligence, breach of contract, fraud, theft, and other illegal activity, and to comply with Piccolo Heath LLP policies and contractual obligations; and

  • any other purpose to which our clients consent.

What Personal Information Do We Collect?

Personal information is any information that identifies you, or by which your identity could be deduced. If we did not collect and use certain types of personal information, we could not provide you with legal services.

We may collect and process different types of personal data in the course of operating our business and providing our services. These include:

  • Basic personal details such as names and job titles;

  • Contact data such as telephone numbers and postal or email addresses;

  • Financial data such as payment-related information or bank account details;

  • Demographic data such as addresses, preferences or interests;

  • Website usage and other technical data such as details of visits to our websites or information collected through cookies and other tracking technologies;

  • Personal data provided to us by or on behalf of our clients or generated by us in the course of providing our services, which may, where relevant, include special categories of personal data;

  • Identification and other background verification data such as a copy of drivers’ licences or passports to comply with client due diligence/“know your client” obligations and laws, and which are collected as part of our client acceptance and ongoing monitoring procedures;

  • Recruitment-related data such as curriculum vitaes, education and employment histories, details of professional memberships and other information relevant to potential recruitment to Piccolo Heath LLP;

  • Data that may provided to us in course of registering for and attending events or meetings, including access and dietary requirements;

  • Personal information for those providing instructions to Piccolo Heath LLP in order to comply with the Law Society of Ontario’s verification requirements; and

  • Any other personal data relating to client files that may be provided.

How Do We Collect Your Personal Information?

We collect information only by lawful and fair means, and not in an unreasonably intrusive way. Wherever possible we collect your personal information directly from you, both at the start of a retainer and in the course of our representation.

We may collect or receive your personal data in a number of different ways, including:

  • When you provide it to us directly, for example by corresponding with us by email, or via other direct interactions with us such as completing a form on our website;

  • When we monitor the use of, or interactions with, our websites, any marketing we may send to you, or other email communications sent from or received by Piccolo Heath LLP;

  • Third-party sources, for example, when we collect information about you to assist with “know your client” checks as part of our client acceptance procedures or where we receive information about you from recruitment agencies for recruitment purposes; or

  • Publicly available sources - we may, for example, use such sources to help us keep the contact details we already hold for you accurate and up to date or for professional networking purposes, e.g. LinkedIn.

Sometimes we may obtain information about you from other sources, for example:

  • your insurance company;

  • from a government agency or registry;

  • your employer, if we are acting for you, at its request; or

  • your accountant or other professional advisors.

We will use your personal information to provide legal advice and services to you, to administer our client (time and billing) databases, and to include you in any marketing activities by Piccolo Heath LLP. 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.

Disclosure of Your Personal Information

Under certain circumstances, Piccolo Heath LLP will disclose your personal information:

  • when we are required or authorized by law to do so, including by a court order or statutory obligation;

  • when you have consented to the disclosure;

  • when the legal services we are providing to you require us to give your information to third parties, 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 (such as computer back-up services or archival file storage) and the third party is bound by our Privacy Policy;

  • if we engage expert witnesses on your behalf;

  • if we retain other law firms or professionals on your behalf; and

  • if the information is Publicly Available Personal Information, as it is defined under PIPEDA.

If there is any information that you do not want us to store, or that you don’t have the consent or authority to provide (eg. an employee’s SIN), please redact that information before sending it to us.

Piccolo Heath LLP does not disclose your personal information to any third party to enable them to market their products and services. For example, we do not provide our client mailing lists to other law firms.

Updating Your Information

Since we use your personal information to provide legal services to you, it is important that the information be accurate and up-to-date. If during the course of the retainer, any of your information changes, please inform us so that we can make any necessary changes.

Is Your Personal Information Secure?

Piccolo Heath LLP takes all 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 file access to personal information;

  • deploying technological safeguards like security software and firewalls to prevent hacking or unauthorized computer access; and

  • internal password and security policies.

Access to Your Personal Information

You may ask for access to any personal information that we are storing. Summary information is available on request. More detailed requests which require archive or other retrieval costs may be subject to our normal professional and disbursement fees.

Your rights to access your personal information are not absolute. We may deny access when:

  • it is required or authorized by law;

  • to do so would reveal confidential commercial information, and the personal information cannot be severed from the record;

  • to do so could reasonably be expected to threaten the life or security of another individual, and the personal information cannot be severed from the record; or

  • the information was generated in the course of a formal dispute resolution process.

If we deny your request for access to, or refuse a request to correct information, we shall explain why. Piccolo Heath LLP does not use your Social Insurance Number as a way of identifying or organizing the information we hold upon you.

Correcting Errors

If Piccolo Heath LLP holds information about you and you can establish that it is not accurate, complete and up-to-date, Piccolo Heath LLP will take reasonable steps to correct it.

Communicating with Us

E-mail is not a 100% secure medium, so consider this when contacting us or sending personal or confidential information. We encourage clients to use our portals for providing sensitive information.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

Since Piccolo Heath LLP regularly reviews all of its policies and procedures, we may change our Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make any changes, we will post the changes on our website and will make the revised policy and changes available upon request to the Piccolo Heath LLP Privacy Officer, Patrizia Piccolo at ppiccolo@piccoloheath.com.

Requests for Access

If you have any questions, or wish to access your personal information, please write to our Privacy Contact, Patrizia Piccolo at ppiccolo@piccoloheath.com.

If you are not satisfied with our response, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada can be reached at 1-800-282-1376.

Employment Inquiries

If you apply to Piccolo Heath LLP 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 accordance with our privacy procedures for employee records.

Website

Our website contains links to other sites, which are not governed by this Privacy Policy. On our website, like most other commercial websites, 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.

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This Policy is effective March 2024