PRIVACY

WEBSITE POLICY

Shillington McCall LLP does not use any information gathered from our website. The sole purpose of our website is to inform, assist and educate our present and potential clients with respect to our firm and services.

ROTECTING YOUR PRIVACY

Shillington McCall LLP is committed to protecting the privacy of personal information. We will do so through collecting, using and disclosing personal information in a responsible and careful manner and only to the extent that we must to provide services offered by our firm. We will deal with personal information according to the principals outlined in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

PRIVACY INFORMATION DETAILS
WHAT IS PERSONAL INFORMATION?

"Personal information" is information about an identifiable individual. It is information that reveals a distinctive trait about you or helps others identify you and includes information about personal characteristics (such as ethnic background, family status, address, age, gender and income), health (such as medical conditions, history and services) and activities or views (such as religion, politics and personal opinions). "Personal information" does not include business information such as an individual’s business address or telephone number. Business information is not protected by privacy legislation.

PRIVACY PRINCIPLES

Shillington McCall LLP is a law firm which practices in the area of insurance defence. Our clients are usually organizations involved in the insurance industry. We deal with various legal issues and proceedings before the courts and other official tribunals. In order to provide services to our clients, we will deal with a number of individuals and organizations that may, in the course of their duties or ours, have limited access to information held by us. These include copy companies, process servers, investigators, health care professionals, other lawyers, computer and other technical consultants, our landlord and its security and maintenance staff, bookkeepers, accountants and /or regulatory agencies. We prevent or limit their access to information as much as we reasonably can and ensure that they agree to follow appropriate privacy principles consistent with our privacy policy.

Our privacy policy consists of the following key principles:

• Accountability: We are responsible and accountable for the personal information under our control. In addition to developing this privacy policy, we have appointed Alexander Neaves, a lawyer with our firm, as our privacy officer. He is responsible for analyzing our personal information handling practices and ensuring compliance with this policy and PIPEDA.
  
  
• Identifying Purposes and Consent: We collect, use and disclose personal information in order to provide legal advice and services to our clients. Those legal services include defending and/or advancing our clients’ legal interests, as well as the interests of those individuals or organizations insured by our clients, in legal proceedings and other legal matters. This is the primary purpose for which we collect, use and disclose personal information.
  
  
• We may also collect or disclose information for purposes related to or secondary to our primary purpose. These secondary purposes include, but are not limited to, the following:
  To advise clients and others of developments in the law and of services provided by our firm;
• To establish and maintain communications with clients, prospective clients and others;
• To invoice clients or others for goods or services, to process payments/ and to collect unpaid accounts;
• To arrange and conduct meetings, appointments and/or interviews with clients, prospective clients or others involved in legal matters related to our clients or prospective clients;
• To conduct reviews of our services, performance, and practices including quality assurance reviews or audits;
• To fulfil any obligations that we may have to other parties, including regulators, government agencies, the courts and other tribunals. In some circumstances, we may consult with other professionals so that we may properly fulfil such obligations;
• To comply with the applicable law.

• We usually obtain personal information directly from individuals or their agents or counsel, or from our clients, other parties in legal matters or third parties such as health care providers, employers, investigators and witness.. If we obtain personal information directly, and it is reasonably practical to do so, we will try to obtain the person’s express consent to collect, use and disclose personal information. If personal information is voluntarily provided to us or is obtained through participation in legal proceedings involving our clients or those insured by our clients, we will consider that the information was provided with the person’s express or implied consent. However, because most of the personal information that we collect, use and disclose is incidental to providing legal advice and services to our clients, its collection, use and disclosure is often done without the individual’s express consent because we are reviewing an apparent breach of law or breach of an agreement and obtaining consent would likely compromise the availability or accuracy of the information.
  
  
• If you choose to provide us with personal information, you may also choose to withdraw your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your information in writing. Your decision to withdraw or withhold consent may be severely limited and / or may have significant legal consequences. Withdrawing or withholding consent is always subject to any overriding legal requirements or commitments. We will inform you of further particulars of the effects withdrawing of your consent, should you choose to do so.
  
  
• Limiting Collection, Disclosure and Retention of Personal Information: We will only collect personal information for the purposes identified in this policy. We will only collect personal information by lawful means.
  
  We will not sell, rent or loan any personal information. We will not disclose personal information unless it is in accordance with the purposes identified in this privacy policy or required by law or the rules of the court or other tribunal. We may be required to disclose personal information to individuals or organizations that provide services to us (including copy companies, process servers, investigators, health care professionals, etc.) or are involved in legal matters and will do so in accordance with the principles identified in this privacy policy and in order to provide legal advice or services to our clients. In those cases, we will take precautions to ensure that those parties protect personal information in a manner similar to the protections identified in this privacy policy.
  
  We will retain personal information for as long as is reasonably necessary to fulfill the purposes for which the information was collected. Because legal matters and proceedings are unpredictable, it is impossible to identify with any precision how long we will be required to retain personal information in connection of a legal matter or proceeding. When the information is no longer required, it will be safely and securely destroyed.
  
  
• Accuracy: We make reasonable efforts to ensure that your personal factual information is as accurate and current as necessary for the purposes for which it is used. If your information changes, please advise us. We may make appropriate changes based on sufficient evidence provided by you. If we do not agree with your proposed changes to your personal information, we will inform you in writing.
  
  
• Protecting Personal Information: We take reasonable precautions appropriate to the nature of the personal information that we collect in order to protect it from loss, unauthorized use or unauthorized disclosure. Personal information is kept under supervision and/or in areas with restricted access, in filing cabinets that lock and / or on computers with password protection. If sending personal information by electronic mail, it should be anonymized or encrypted.
  
  
• Access and Openness: We are open and honest about how we deal with your personal information. At any time, you may have a copy of our privacy policy and / or address questions or concerns to our privacy officer, Alexander Neaves at 519-645-7330 or aneaves@shillingtonmccall.ca.
  
  You have the right to have access to the personal information about you in our possession, including whether we have such personal information, what that information is and to whom we have disclosed it. Any requests for access to personal information must be made in writing. We will respond to your request within 30 days in most cases. There may be a fee to process your request and we will provide you with notice of that fee in advance.
  
  There are exceptions to your right to access the personal information about you in our possession. We may refuse your request for access to your personal information in certain circumstances. Those circumstances include, but are not necessarily limited to, circumstances where access would reveal personal information about another individual, where access would reveal confidential commercial information, where access may affect the security of another individual or is related to the detection and prevention of fraud and / or where the information is protected by solicitor client privilege or some other legal privilege or restriction.
  
  
• Questions and Concerns: We will address any questions or concerns that you have about this privacy policy or your personal information. Our privacy officer, Alexander Neaves, can be contacted at:
  
  Alexander Neaves
  Shillington McCall LLP
  148 Fullarton Street Suite 1500
  London, ON N6A 5P3
  Phone: 519-645-7330
  Fax: 519-645-6955
  Email:aneaves@shillingtonmccall.ca
  
  If you wish to make a formal complaint about our privacy practices, it must be made in writing to our privacy officer. He will acknowledge the complaint, investigate it and advise you of our formal decision in relation to the complaint in writing.
  
  If you are not satisfied with our response to any question, concern or complaint that you raise, or if you have any general inquires about privacy issues or about PIPEDA, you may also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, which oversees Canadian privacy legislation and which addresses privacy disputes. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada may be contacted at:
  
  Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
  112 Kent Street
  Ottawa, Ontario K1A 1H3
  1-800-282-1376
  (Fax) 613-947-6850
  (TTY) 613-992-9190
  web site address: www.privcom.gc.ca
  
  This privacy policy is made pursuant to the provisions and principles identified in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. That legislation is complex and provides a number of additional exceptions to the general privacy principles in that Act and this policy. Those exceptions are too detailed to set out in this policy and we encourage you to review the legislation, which can be found at the web site of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada identified above.