PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIALITY

This Privacy Policy explains how Downie Stewart may collect, store, use, and disclose any Personal Information that you provide to us. Your engagement or continued use of this website provides your acknowledgment of this Privacy Policy and your consent to us collecting, storing, using, and disclosing your personal information in the manner set out below.

The terms of this Privacy Policy may change from time to time.

Collection

In this Privacy Policy, ‘Personal Information’ means information relating to an individual which can be used to identify that individual. Downie Stewart may collect your Personal Information (including, without limitation, your name, email address, phone number, and postal address, and areas of interest). Downie Stewart collects Personal Information in order to conduct its business, to provide and market its services and to meet its legal obligations. If you do not provide Personal Information, we may not be able to provide services to you.

Cookies - automated collection

When you visit this website, Downie Stewart may use automated technology (such as usage monitoring software, cookies, and sessions) to collect and store certain information about your visit, including without limitation:

  1. The IP address and domain name used by your device to connect to the Internet;

  2. The operating system and the browser your device uses, and any search engine used to access this website;

  3. The date and time you are visiting;

  4. The pages you visit; and

  5. Any other information you expressly provide (such as your name and areas of interest). We use cookies to retain your name and areas of interest if you provide this information on the homepage of this website. These are first-party, persistent cookies. The areas of interest cookie has an expiry time of 30 days.

This information will be used to customise this website for your use and in aggregate (anonymised) form to analyse how this website is being used. Except for the reasons set out in this privacy policy, we will not disclose any such information except in aggregate form.

Use and disclosure

We will always use and disclose your Personal Information in accordance with this Privacy Policy, the Privacy Act 2020 and other applicable privacy law.

We will only use or disclose Personal Information that you have provided to us, or which we have obtained about you:

  1. If you have authorised us to do so;

  2. If we have given you notification of the intended use or disclosure and you have not objected to that use or disclosure;

  3. If we believe that the use or disclosure is reasonably necessary to assist a law enforcement agency or an agency responsible for national security in the performance of their functions;

  4. If we believe that the use or disclosure is reasonably necessary to enforce any legal rights we may have, or is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property and safety of us, our customers, or others; or

  5. If we are authorised, required or permitted by law to disclose the information.

We may use or disclose Personal Information that you have provided to us, or which we have obtained about you, for any of the following purposes:

  1. to provide our legal services and client services;

  2. to process your Personal Information for our own internal business purposes;

  3. to carry out firm and trust account transactions, such as client billing and payments, firm creditors, employee transactions and client trust account transactions;

  4. to undertake credit management activities;

  5. for debt recovery purposes, which may also include disclosing information to debt collectors;

  6. for dealing with commercial or legal conflicts;

  7. to provide promotional information and newsletters in hard copy or electronic form, or information that we believe may be of interest;

  8. to communicate with clients, potential clients, suppliers, staff, contractors and others;

  9. to purchase products and services; or

  10. to comply with our legal obligations, and to meet our reporting obligations as required by law.

We will not sell, rent, or lease your Personal Information to third parties.

We will only disclose your Personal Information to third parties who have agreed to treat your Personal Information in a manner consistent with this Privacy Policy.

By providing us with your Personal Information, you consent to us using and disclosing your Personal Information for the purposes contemplated in this Privacy Policy.

Storage and security

Downie Stewart will ensure that the Personal Information we hold is protected (against loss, unauthorised access, unauthorised use, unauthorised modification, unauthorised disclosure, and other misuse) by such security safeguards as it is reasonable in the circumstances for us to take. This extends to Personal Information held or processed on our behalf (such as in a cloud environment).

You authorise us to hold all your information electronically. Your information (about you and about your matter) is stored in Sydney on servers owned by Amazon Web Services Australia Pty Ltd whose address is L37 2-26 Park St, Sydney, New South Wales 2000 and you directly authorise that company to store your personal and matter information

In addition, Microsoft 365 is regularly backed up and stored at the Sydney IBX Data Centre at 200 Bourke Road, Alexandria, Sydney NSW 2015, Australia, and you directly authorise that storage of your personal and matter information there.

Rights of access and correction

You may request access to, or correction of, any personal information we hold about you by contacting us on info@downiestewart.co.nz. Please notify us of any changes to your Personal Information to ensure it is as up-to-date as possible.

Third-party content

This website may contain hyperlinks to third-party websites. We are not responsible for the content of such websites, or the manner in which those websites collect, store, use, and distribute any Personal Information you provide. When visiting a third-party website from hyperlinks displayed on this website, we encourage you to review the privacy statements of those websites so that you can understand how the Personal Information you provide will be will collected, stored, used and distributed. 

Unsolicited electronic messages - approval

To the extent you provide us with an email address, you agree that we may send you commercial electronic messages.