Privacy Capability Assessment
Delivering privacy assurance and improved business
efficiencies at cost-effective prices
Introduction
In today's interconnected digital landscape, safeguarding your business against cyber and privacy risks is not just an option – it's a necessity. At Albrecht Burrows, we understand the critical importance of proactive risk management in the face of evolving cyber threats. Our expertise in cyber and privacy risk management empowers businesses to assess, address, and mitigate potential vulnerabilities effectively and cost-efficiently.
With cyber attacks on the rise and privacy regulations becoming increasingly stringent, businesses can no longer afford to overlook the importance of comprehensive risk management strategies. Our tailored solutions provide you with the peace of mind that comes from knowing your organization is equipped to navigate the complexities of the digital world securely. Partner with us to secure your business today and build a resilient foundation for tomorrow.
What is a Privacy Capability Assessment?
The Privacy Capability Assessment (PCA) is a comprehensive solution that benchmarks your privacy practices against established best practices and regulatory obligations providing actionable, pragmatic recommendations to enable your organisation to improve your privacy controls and processes and address the continually evolving privacy regulations.
Our comprehensive approach includes holistically assessing the current state of your privacy management program and privacy risks, developing forward-looking recommendations to meet the ever increasing privacy expectations of consumers and regulators. We have developed an approach that aligns with internationally recognised privacy frameworks including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Privacy Framework, the ISO 27701 extension to ISO27001, and the UK Information Commissioner Office's (ICO) Privacy Accountability Framework.
A PCA covers all aspects of your privacy management program, including compliance with legislative requirements, policies and procedures, governance arrangements, data retention, lawful processing of personally identifiable information, resourcing, training and culture, and outsourcing and data sharing arrangements, including the use of Cloud services.
Why now?
Good information handling practices makes good business sense. Organisations that maintain mature practices for handling personal information enhance their brand's reputation, increase consumer and employee confidence and trust, and ensure accuracy and security of beneficial data while minimising risks of harms to individuals and potential regulatory actions.
A Privacy Capability Assessment (PCA) helps you identify opportunities to uplift the maturity of your organisation’s privacy management program and meet the increasingly high public expectations and complex regulatory obligations.
The PCA enhances an organisation's overall data protection strategy and enables organisations to adapt to the ever-changing regulatory environment. The Australian Government has proposed 116 amendments to Australia's privacy laws, expected to be introduced to Parliament in 2024, that will impact heavily on every organisation. Our PCA will help to ensure your organisation is prepared for the pending changes and not scrambling to comply with complex new laws at the last minute. Early preparation can also be financially beneficial by spreading your investment in maturity uplift activities over a longer timeframe.
Organisations with mature and robust privacy programs can build trust with customers and drive long-term reputational and financial advantages.
The challenge for many organisations is knowing whether their existing privacy program is fit for purpose and understanding what changes they need to make to reach their target level of maturity.
How does it work?
The Privacy Capability Assessment benchmarks your organisation's privacy controls and practices against established, internationally recognised Privacy Frameworks . The engagement workflow will follow a defined five step process outlined below:
Our team begins each engagement by gaining a deep understanding of your organisational structure, people, processes, technologies, and privacy objectives. During this phase we will confirm expectations and create a customised approach based on your environment, privacy requirements, and challenges.
We will guide you on the selection of an appropriate Privacy Framework as part of the Initiate phase this typically involves selecting from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Privacy Framework, the ISO 27701 extension to ISO27001, or the UK Information Commissioner Office's (ICO) Privacy Accountability Framework. Selecting which Privacy Framework is the best fit for you organisation can be complex.
Our expert privacy lawyers will guide you through that process and help you establish your target maturity level that will guide the actionable recommendations generated as part of the PCA outputs.
Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your current privacy management program is key to understanding your privacy practices and building a long-term strategy. To achieve this objective, our team will conduct interviews with your key personnel and collect copies of your current privacy policies. We will collect information on the types of personal information you collect and process, where you store it, who you disclose it to such as third-party service providers, and your data retention practices.
We will also collect publicly available information about your business and copies of your ASIC records. This helps us to determine the scope of the applicable privacy rules and laws.
Our privacy lawyers will evaluate the supporting evidence against the selected Privacy Framework and applicable privacy laws and rules, identify gaps, and benchmark your privacy maturity level.
During this phase, we will provide our initial findings and recommendations.
The Privacy Capability Assessment's key deliverable is a privacy accountability report featuring an executive summary, current privacy control maturity benchmarks, and actionable recommendations for improvement.
This phase includes an in-depth workshop, up to 2hrs in length to walk through the findings and recommendations.
We will provide you with a final report with actionable recommendations clearly identifying potential quick-wins and next steps to mitigating your privacy risks.
We will also provide a discounted proposal for any additional services or assistance you may require to implement the recommendations and support your privacy management program going forward.
What are the benefits to your business?
A PCA will help you assess the compliance of your privacy program against legislative requirements and provide you with an independent view of your current maturity level.
Preparing for privacy breaches helps to ensure you can respond quickly and efficiently reducing the costs of response, loss of customer trust, and risk of legal and regulatory actions. Our Privacy Capability Assessment highlights strengths and areas for improvement, empowering your organisation to better enhance your privacy risk management and reduce the potential costs arising in a data breach incident.
Cyber resiliency assessments and plans help to demonstrate that your Directors & Officers are meeting their obligations under the Corporations Act reducing the risk of enforcement actions. The PCA can act as independent assurance and provide you with ready-at-hand documentation in the event of an audit or regulatory enquiry.
Identifying if your privacy practices and data processing activities could create risks of harm for individuals, even when your organisation may be compliant with a strict reading of the applicable laws or regulations, can help with ethical decision-making. This assists organisations to optimise beneficial uses of data while minimising adverse consequences for individual's rights and freedoms. It helps to avoid a loss of trust that can damage an organisation's reputation, lost customers and opportunity, slow adoption of products or services, or abandonment by consumers.
You will be able to demonstrate that you meet the increasingly high public expectations around privacy protection.
Privacy data breaches often result in long-tail reputation harm to businesses. It can take years to recover to a pre-breach financial state and rebuild consumer trust. Even years to decades later, people remember what companies had data breaches in the public eye. Our privacy lawyers have managed hundreds of privacy data breaches that were never public and are highly experienced in managing crisis communications. Through this experience we understand the root causes of reputation harm from privacy incidents and how to protect against this type of harm.
Additionally, we have seen a rise in regulators holding Executives accountable for pre-breach gaps in privacy compliance and inadequate personal information handling practices, often using the details of breach investigations and pre-breach audits as evidence. As lawyers we are in a good position to align the service outputs to protect Legal Professional Privilege (LPP). LPP helps to prevent third-parties, such as regulators, from using your Privacy Capability Assessment against you in future legal claims. We have designed our services in light of the recent Federal Court of Australia decision against Optus allowing breach investigation reports to be used as evidence in a class action against them as the work was not performed by lawyers or for the primary purpose of providing legal advice.
As a law firm not tied to any technology vendor or insurance underwriter we are truly neutral and able to provide your Board, Directors, and Senior Managers with Give an objective assessment of the state of your privacy program.
Transparent and Flexible Pricing
Privacy Capability Assessment (PCA)
Description | Item | Quantity | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
solutions starting from | $3,500 |
Fractional Privacy Officer Plans
Foundations Package
- Privacy Policy updates/drafting and 1 round of editing by a privacy lawyer
- Data Breach Response Plan template, guidance, and 1x review
- Collection Notices and Consent Forms
- General ad-hoc privacy enquiries (up to 4 hours per month)
Established Package
- Everything in Foundations plus:
- Model contractual clauses for privacy and data breach management
- Personal Information Data Retention Policy template and 1 round of editing by privacy lawyer
- Record of Processing Activities (ROPA) worksheet, guidance, and 1 round of review
- Privacy Impact Assessment template
- 4 additional hours per month for general ad-hoc privacy enquiries
(total = 8 hours per month)
Advanced Package
- Everything in Established plus:
- Model Data Processing Agreement (DTA): Controller - Processor
- Business Continuity Plan template, 1 hr workshop, and 1 round of review and edits of your completed BCP
- Privacy Impact Assessment covering 1 major system with 1 round of editing, conducted by a privacy lawyer
- 4 additional hours per month for general ad-hoc privacy enquiries (total = 12 hours per month)
Privacy Helpdesk - Ad-hoc hours
Privacy Helpdesk
4 hours
- Access to senior privacy lawyer
- 4 hours of informal privacy advice
- review of draft privacy documents
- ad-hoc privacy advice
- Hours valid to use for 12 months from date of purchase
Privacy Helpdesk hours are not usable for data breach response services or work relating to large projects or complex issues (typically requiring more than 4 hrs effort on a single enquiry or relating to: complex international or multi-jurisdictional privacy law, machine learning, facial recognition, artificial intelligence, data breach response, insurance claims, or disputes & litigations)
Privacy Helpdesk
8 hours
- Access to senior privacy lawyer
- 8 hours of informal privacy advice
- review of draft privacy documents
- ad-hoc privacy advice
- Hours valid to use for 12 months from date of purchase
Privacy Helpdesk
12 hours
- Access to senior privacy lawyer
- 12 hours of informal privacy advice
- review of draft privacy documents
- ad-hoc privacy advice
- Hours valid to use for 12 months from date of purchase
Get a no obligation consultation
At Albrecht Burrows, we understand the complexity and urgency of cyber and privacy risks facing businesses today. Get a no obligation consultation with our experts to better understand how your business can increase your resilience to cyber and privacy threats and regulatory risks. Our team of experienced multidisciplinary professionals will work closely with you to create personalised risk management solutions tailored to your business' unique needs needs and budget. Don't wait until it's too late – schedule your no-obligation consultation today and take proactive steps towards protecting your business from cyber threats and privacy breaches.
Testimonials
What sets AB apart is their flexible and pragmatic approach - they share our values, our DNA, and they think outside the box. The team are highly skilled commercial lawyers who possess unparalleled expertise in regulatory areas, a deep understanding of business, and exceptional negotiation skills."
Regan Carey
Head of Legal and Compliance
Craigs Investment Partners
AB offers exceptional legal advice delivered by highly skilled and brilliant lawyers who are fantastic to deal with; personable, easy to talk to and compassionate. The commerciality of their advice is matched only by their commitment to simplifying the law and finding practical, creative solutions!
Tas Demos
Managing Partner
BDH Leaders
Meet Our Team
James A. Cole
Partner | Head of Cyber & Privacy
James is a lawyer, computer scientist, and criminologist practicing in cyber and technology, data protection and privacy, data breach response, and cyber insurance. With over 25 years of experience in information security and a multidisciplinary background, James combines technical and legal expertise to help clients navigate the complex and evolving cyber and privacy landscape.
James has handled hundreds of cyber and privacy breaches and is passionate about helping businesses build resilience to cyber and privacy risks.
Mark Anderson
Legal Consultant, Lawyer (NZ)
Mark is a highly awarded legal risk adviser and barrister. He is a leading expert in a variety of legal risk areas, including cyber, privacy and technology law.
Mark has provided incident response advice globally to clients in need, including those in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and across APAC, after developing global incident response panels drawing together legal, IT, Forensic and PR professions to manage cyber crises. He has managed some of the highest profile cyber breaches in Australasia.
Case Studies
1. Financial Institution Compliance: Our hybrid computer science – legal team members helped the client successfully map their current cyber maturity level and legal obligations, establish a maturity uplift roadmap in coordination with their IT provider, and worked with their insurance broker to complete accurate proposal form responses resulting in the successfully obtaining cyber insurance coverage for an affordable premium. 2. SaaS Company AI & Facial Recognition Compliance: We helped an Australian SaaS web app maker successfully navigate the complexities of international data protection laws as they apply to biometric information in retail virtual try-on technology minimising their overall privacy and data protection risks and helping the company implement a sound multinational expansion strategy aligned to the client's risk tolerance. 3. Transport Logistics Incident Response: Working with a prominent logistics company, we provided timely and compassionate advice and assistance in responding to a devastating ransomware attack from day 1 through to full recovery and post-recovery risk mitigation successfully returning the client to normal operations in less than one week with no regulatory actions or adverse media.
Data breach emergencies
If you have experienced a data breach, whether unintential employee errors, employee data theft, or you’ve been the victim of a cyber-attack, the first 48 hours is crucial. So don’t waste any time, just get in touch.
Reach out, day or night.
If you don’t reach us straight away, we will get in touch ASAP!
Email us on [email protected]
Breach emergency Line: 02 8318 5980
Assessment Solutions
A Privacy Capability Assessment provides a holistic snapshot of your organisation’s approach to handling personal information and assesses whether your capabilities align with your privacy objectives and legal obligations.
By contrast, a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) analyses an existing or proposed project, practice or technology and assesses it's level of compliance with the privacy laws - such as the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). A PIA takes a deep dive into a particular initiative, examines its data flows, and ensures the initiative is compliant with relevant APPs and any other applicable privacy rules.
Yes.
You should revisit your PCA on at least an annual basis and see if anything has changed. You need to update the PCA if you have made changes to:
- your personal information handling practices;
- storage;
- vendors / suppliers;
- systems; or
- the types of personal information you collect, process, store, or disclose.
You should also update the PCA anytime the privacy laws change or your business practices change and you gain exposure to new privacy rules or foreign privacy laws.
A Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) is a process used to protect privacy-by-design when an you start or acquire a new business, implement a new process, starting working with a new supplier or Cloud service or Processor, or launch a new product or technology. The PIA is focused on your activity's compliance to the privacy rules and laws.
A Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) is an ongoing process, regularly applied to personal data processing, identifying, and mitigating data protection risks. The DPIA is focused on the risks to privacy associated with the activity.
Yes it is. A PIA can be conducted against existing projects, practices and systems.
However, it is best practice to carry out a PIA during the planning stages of an project or system and throughout the implementation phases. This way, privacy issues can be addressed early rather than being treated as an afterthought and the resutling PIA is updated as the project matures resulting in a privacy compliant initiative at go-live.
Yes you do. Privacy Impact Assessments are living documents. They need to be revisited every time a trigger event occurs.
Trigger events to refresh your PIA include:
- The privacy laws change;
- You make a material change to the previously assessed initiative or system such as technology upgrades, deploying a new system, change the data flows, changing the data storage, or changing suppliers / vendors;
- You make a change to the purpose of the personal information processing or you change what personal information you collect, or what processing you are doing on the personal information.
The easy way to think of it is: if something about your system or process changes, update the PIA.
Policy and Process
Every organisation that is covered by the Privacy Act, or any foreign privacy laws, must have a compliant Privacy Policy that is written in plain language, is freely accessible, and provides details about your collection, processing, storage, and disclosure of personal information.
It's important to note that a Privacy Policy is a living document that needs to be regularly reviewed and updated - especially when your privacy practices or business activities change or the law changes.
A comprehensive Privacy Policy lets you demonstrate that your organisation takes it's privacy obligations seriously. Consumers expect an organisation to take reasonable steps to protect the personal information they entrust to the company and to be transparent in how that information is handled. This is demonstrated through the Privacy Policy.
Recent high-profile privacy breaches have increased consumer focuses on privacy protections and demonstrated the devastating impact a privacy breach can have on affected individuals and the organisation. Affected individuals can suffer substantial harms ranging from financial loss and identity theft to psychological harms. A privacy breach can also expose mishandling of personal information resulting in regulatory investigations and penalties.
There are also substantial risks in not keeping a Privacy Policy up-to-date and accurate. False or misleading statements made in a Privacy Policy can constitute misleading and deceptive conduct under the Australian Consumer Law resulting in substantial penalties and costly legal proceedings.
Complaints
Privacy laws grant express Rights and Freedoms to individuals. Some laws, such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - that has been adopted in some form by more than half the world - include rights ranging from access, correction, and objection, to the right to be forgotten.
A significant part of the Australian Government proposal to amend the Privacy Act includes expansion of the existing rights under the Australian Privacy Principles. As of the start of 2024, Australians already have the right to request access and correction. Failing to respond within set time limits can result in an interference with privacy and a regulatory complaint. The proposed legislative amendments would introduce new rights, such as the Right to be Forgotten. Additionally, the proposals include a new penalty regime and a tort - the right to bring a legal action, for interference with privacy.
Your organisation should take any privacy complaints seriously. All privacy complaints need to be thoroughly investigated and any legal issues identified and addressed in a timely manner. This can be complex, as you need to respond to the complainant while not interfering with the privacy of anyone else.
Failing to respond to a privacy complaint, or simply dismissing it, could result in escalation of complaints to the Privacy Commissioner, regulatory action, and adverse media. This can lead to reputational harm and lost customers and opportunity.
Breach Prevention and Response
Privacy breaches can enliven a wide range of regulatory notification obligations. A lack of preparedness can also drive up the response costs. During a privacy breach, it is important to be able to quickly assess what personal information is impacted and who it relates to in order to conduct risk of serious harm assessments and comply with regulatory notification obligations.
With proper preparedness and planning, you can ensure your response is timely, efficient, and aligned to your legal obligations. This helps to minimise potential harms to impacted individuals and reduce the potential reputational harm to your organisation. Additionally, the more prepared you are, the lower the response costs. eDiscovery, the process to determine what personal information is impacted and to whom it relates, is one of the most expensive components of incident response activities. Access to a quality, up-to-date, and accurate data map allows you to rapidly exclude irrelevant data sources from eDiscovery activities increasing efficiency and reducing cost.
If you don't know what personal information is on a particular system, you may have to waste a lot of time and money ingesting that data source into eDiscovery just to find it wasn't relevant.
Efficiency in breach response is even more critical as the notification time requirements in data breach notification regulations are getting narrowed to as low as 72 hours. Preparation helps you avoid a late notification penalty.
Awareness and Culture
Every member of your staff should receive at least some training on protecting personal information. However, any staff involved in the collection, handling, storage, or disclosure of personal information need to have regular training on recognising privacy protected information, what their obligations are at law and according to your Privacy Policy, and what they can do to appropriately safeguard personal information.
Staff members that have privacy related job roles, such as a Privacy Officer, your in-house legal team, your risk management staff, and your senior managers and executives may need to have a more in-depth understanding of your privacy policies, legal obligations, and privacy practices. This may also apply to staff that handle large volumes of personal information, such as your marketing team. These groups often require specialist training in handling privacy risks and complaints. You incident response team should also receive more in-depth privacy training.
Privacy training should occur regularly. Annual training is an absolute minimum. More frequent training is often needed and more effective.
Terms and Conditions
We are required by the Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW) (Uniform Law) to set out the following terms of our engagement for your acceptance or further negotiation.
In these Terms, references to Albrecht Burrows, "we", "us", "our" refer to Alliance Legal Pty Ltd (ABN ) trading as Albrecht Burrows of Level 12, 111 Elizabeth Street, Sydney NSW 2000.
This document, together with our General Terms of Business, sets out the terms of our offer to provide legal services to you and constitutes our costs agreement and disclosure pursuant to the Uniform Law. The Terms and the Accepted Options in this Proposal form the entire agreement between You and Us during our engagement and any references to the "Proposal" in this document refers to both the Terms and the Accepted Option.
By accepting this Proposal as set out herein and below in the Terms, you agree that this Proposal serves as a binding Costs Agreement and Disclosure under Schedule 1 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW) between Albrecht Burrows and You for the provision of legal services and may be enforced in the same way as any other contract.
The prices quoted in the attached proposal are indicative prices only unless specified as fixed price.
Some services are on a recurring basis and will be charged on an ongoing basis in accordance with the selected billing frequency until cancelled in writing with one month notice. By selecting a recurring service you agree to be charged for the selected service amount, plus GST, until cancelled.
You will be proportionately charged for work involving shorter periods less than an hour. Our charges are structured in 6 minute units. For example, the time charged for an attendance of up to 6 minutes will be 1 unit and the time charged for an attendance between 6 and 12 minutes will be 2 units.
The agreed scope of work may include a fixed price. Where a fixed price is agreed, the following standard hourly rates charged by our professional staff will only apply to out of scope work. Where we have quoted a discounted hourly rate in the scope of work, the lesser of the quoted hourly rate or the following rates will apply:
(a) $650 plus GST for a Director, or Principal;
(b) $580 plus GST for a Partner, or Special Counsel;
(c) $450 plus GST for a Senior Associate;
(d) $380 plus GST for an Associate;
(e) $350 plus GST for a Solicitor; and
(f) $150 plus GST for a Paralegal.
Our rates are reviewed on a regular basis and may change during the course of a matter. In relation to lengthy matters this may impact upon our cost estimates (which may be revised accordingly). You will be given 30 days' notice in writing of any changes to our charge out rates.
Where you have been referred by a third-party such as your insurance broker, IT provider, or accountant, we may pay them referral fee. This fee is paid by us and is not an additional cost to you.
2.1 We may incur disbursements (being money which we pay or are liable to pay to others on your behalf). Disbursements may include search fees, court filing fees, process server fees, expert fees, witness expenses, travel expenses, transcript expenses and barrister's fees.
2.2 Where you instruct us to brief a barrister or other expert and they provide a disclosure and costs agreement we will provide this to you.
Our usual policy is to issue a tax invoice on a monthly basis or upon completion of a specific task or tasks. All tax invoices are due and payable 14 days from the date of the tax invoice. You consent to us sending our tax invoices to you electronically at your usual email address or mobile phone number as specified by you.
You may accept the Costs Disclosure and Costs Agreement by:
(a) signing and returning this document to us; or
(b) continuing to instruct us.
Upon acceptance you agree to pay for our services on these terms.
Interest at the maximum rate prescribed in Rule 75 of the Legal Profession Uniform General Rules 2015 (Uniform General Rules) (being the Cash Rate Target set by the Reserve Bank of Australia plus 2%) will be charged on any amounts unpaid after the expiry of 30 days after a tax invoice is given to you. Our tax invoices will specify the interest rate to be charged.
The Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW) (the Uniform Law) provides that we cannot take action for recovery of legal costs until 30 days after a tax invoice (which complies with the Uniform Law) has been given to you.
It is your right to:
(a) negotiate a costs agreement with us;
(b) negotiate the method of billing (e.g. task based or time based);
(c) request and receive an itemised bill within 30 days after a lump sum bill or partially itemised bill is payable;
(d) seek the assistance of the designated local regulatory authority (the NSW Commissioner) in the event of a dispute about legal costs;
(e) be notified as soon as is reasonably practicable of any significant change to any matter affecting costs;
(f) accept or reject any offer we make for an interstate costs law to apply to your matter; and
(g) notify us that you require an interstate costs law to apply to your matter.
If you request an itemised bill and the total amount of the legal costs specified in it exceeds the amount previously specified in the lump sum bill for the same matter, the additional costs may be recovered by us only if:
(a) when the lump sum bill is given, we inform you in writing that the total amount of the legal costs specified in any itemised bill may be higher than the amount specified in the lump sum bill, and
(b) the costs are determined to be payable after a costs assessment or after a binding determination under section 292 of the Uniform Law.
Nothing in these terms affects your rights under the Australian Consumer Law.
If you have a dispute in relation to any aspect of our legal costs you have the following avenues of redress:
(a) in the first instance we encourage you to discuss your concerns with us so that any issue can be identified and we can have the opportunity of resolving the matter promptly and without it adversely impacting on our business relationship; and
(b) you may apply to the Manager, Costs Assessment located at the Supreme Court of NSW for an assessment of our costs. An application for assessment must be made within 12 months after the final bill in this matter was provided or request for payment made or after the costs were paid.
It is our policy that, when acting for new clients, we do one or more of the following:
(a) ask the client to pay monies into our trust account;
(b) ask the client for their credit card details.
Unless otherwise agreed with you, we may determine not to incur fees or expenses in excess of the amount that we hold in trust on your behalf.
You authorise us to receive directly into our trust account any judgment or settlement amount, or money received from any source in furtherance of your work, and to pay our professional fees, internal expenses and disbursements in accordance with the provisions of Rule 42 of the Uniform General Rules. A trust statement will be forwarded to you upon completion of the matter.
On completion of your work, or following termination (by either party) of our services, we will retain your documents for 7 years. Your agreement to these terms constitutes your authority for us to destroy the file after those 7 years. The authority does not relate to any documents which are deposited in safe custody which will, subject to agreement, be retained on your behalf indefinitely. We are entitled to retain your documents while there is money owing to us for our costs.
You will be liable for the cost of storing and retrieving documents in storage and our professional fees in connection with this.
We may cease to act for you or refuse to perform further work, including:
(a) while any of our tax invoices remain unpaid;
(b) if you do not within 7 days comply with any request to pay an amount in respect of disbursements or future costs;
(c) if you fail to provide us with clear and timely instructions to enable us to advance your matter, for example, compromising our ability to comply with Court directions, orders or practice notes;
(d) if you refuse to accept our advice;
(e) if you indicate to us or we form the view that you have lost confidence in us;
(f) if there are any ethical grounds which we consider require us to cease acting for you, for example a conflict of interest;
(g) for any other reason outside our control which has the effect of compromising our ability to perform the work required within the required timeframe;
(h) if in our sole discretion we consider it is no longer appropriate to act for you; or
(i) for just cause.
We will give you reasonable written notice of termination of our services. You will be required to pay our costs incurred up to the date of termination.
You may terminate our services by written notice at any time. However, if you do so you will be required to pay our costs incurred up to the date of termination (including if the matter is litigious, any cancellation fees or other fees such as hearing allocation fees for which we remain responsible).
Without affecting any lien to which we are otherwise entitled at law over funds, papers and other property of yours:
(a) we shall be entitled to retain by way of lien any funds, property or papers of yours, which are from time to time in our possession or control, until all costs, disbursements, interest and other moneys due to the firm have been paid; and
(b) our lien will continue notwithstanding that we cease to act for you.
We may in any manner we regard appropriate disclose the fact that we act or have acted for you, and the type of work but in doing so we will not disclose other confidential information.
Also, we may place an advertisement in an appropriate financial journal or industry journal at our cost after completion of the work, but only after obtaining your prior approval that you must not unreasonably withhold.
However, if you request it now, we will make sure we do not disclose details of the work or your name to anyone except as necessary in the course of doing the work.
We share office space with BDH Leaders Pty Limited, a financial consultancy. Where We are providing legal services to you concurrently to you receiving services from BDHL Leaders Pty Limited, services provided by BDH Leaders Pty Limited are not provided by Us and should not be relied upon as such. Our services are not, and should not be relied upon, as being provided by BDH Leaders Pty Limited. Our services are distinct and separate despite the use of shared office space. We take all reasonable steps to ensure the confidentiality of your information and legal matter.
You agree that we may use your logo on our website in the “Trusted by” section (or equivalent), and that we may refer to our engagement with you when speaking with external parties including potential clients. In addition, you agree that any testimonial(s) you give us can be used on our website and reproduced for other marketing and business development purposes including social media platforms and award applications.
These authorisations can be withdrawn by you in writing at any time.
We will collect personal information from you in the course of providing our legal services. We may also obtain personal information from third party searches, other investigations and, sometimes, from adverse parties.
We are required to collect the full name and address of our clients by Rule 93 of the Uniform General Rules. Accurate name and address information must also be collected in order to comply with the trust account record keeping requirements of Rule 47 of the Uniform General Rules and to comply with our duty to the courts.
Your personal information will only be used for the purposes for which it is collected or in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). For example, we may use your personal information to provide advice and recommendations that take into account your personal circumstances.
If you do not provide us with the full name and address information required by law we cannot act for you. If you do not provide us with the other personal information that we request our advice may be wrong for you or misleading.
Depending on the nature of your matter the types of bodies to whom we may disclose your personal information include the courts, the other party or parties to litigation, experts and barristers, the Office of State Revenue, PEXA Limited, the Land and Property Information Division of the Department of Lands, the Registrar General and third parties involved in the completion or processing of a transaction.
We do not disclose your information overseas unless your instructions involve dealing with parties located overseas. If your matter involves parties overseas we may disclose select personal information to overseas recipients associated with that matter in order to carry out your instructions.
We manage and protect your personal information in accordance with our privacy policy (which can be found on our firm website or a copy of which we shall provide at your request). Our privacy policy contains information about how you can access and correct the personal information we hold about you and how you can raise any concerns about our personal information handling practices. For more information, please contact us in writing.
We are able to send and receive documents electronically. However, as such transmission is not secure and it may be copied, recorded, read or interfered with by third parties while in transit. If you ask us to transmit any document electronically, you release us from any claim you may have as a result of any unauthorised copying, recording, reading or interference with that document, for any delay or non-delivery of any document and for any damage caused to your system or any files.
Where applicable, GST is payable on our professional fees and expenses and will be clearly shown on our tax invoices.
By accepting these terms you agree to pay us an amount equivalent to the GST imposed on these charges.
The law of New South Wales governs these terms and legal costs in relation to any matter upon which we are instructed to act.
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