Terms of use

Overview

1)Application. These terms set out the conditions for use of the Jeremy Sutton Client Portal. The Client Portal is provided by Jeremy Sutton Barrister Limited. In these terms, “we”, “our” or “us” refers to Jeremy Sutton Barrister Limited. These terms only relate to the use of the Client Portal, and are in addition to our Terms of Engagement (www.sutton.co.nz/terms-of-engagement) and the general terms of use of this website (see above). The Terms of Engagement apply to all legal services (whether delivered via the Client Portal or another way). By setting up an account on the Client Portal, you agree to be bound by these terms.

2) Updates and changes. These terms may be updated or changed at any time. If any change is required (in our sole opinion) to secure any customer information or any computer system, or to comply with any change of law, we may make such change immediately. All other changes will be effective 30 days after notifying you of the change.

Client Portal

3)Secure legal communications. The Client Portal is a secure portal for us to exchange information to provide you legal services. The Client Portal includes intelligent questionnaires and workflows to generate documents, share information and provide legal advice in a secure environment.

4)Accounts. You must be a client of Jeremy Sutton Barrister Limited and set up an account to use the Client Portal. You must complete the account sign up form honestly and using genuine information (e.g. your actual email address). You must not share your account with anyone else. We will treat any information provided using your account details as being from you.

5)Account security. It is very important that the email, password and phone number you provide are secure, are not shared with anyone else, and cannot be accessed by anyone else. We will use these account details to contact you about your case and when new information or documents are available in the Client Portal. These account details can also be used to reset your password. If you are not absolutely sure your accounts are secure, you should consider changing your existing passwords, logging out of all devices, turning on two factor authentication, and/or setting up new accounts.

6)Notification. You must tell us immediately if you suspect that your email account or phone number may not be secure, or if you suspect your email or password to the Client Portal have been disclosed to another person.

7)Availability. We will use reasonable efforts to make the Client Portal available to you. You acknowledge however that the Client Portal may always not be available. For example, the Client Portal may be unavailable for routine maintenance.

8)Managed service. The Client Portal is a managed service. This means that we make the Client Portal to available for you to use via the internet using a standard browser (we recommend the latest versions of Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox or Apple Safari). You do not need to licence or install any software.

9)Security of your devices. You are responsible for ensuring that your devices (e.g. computer and phones) and accounts (e.g. email) are secure. We recommend that you keep your operating system up-to-date and run anti-virus software.

10)No malware. You must use reasonable care not to introduce viruses or other malware to the Client Portal.

Information and data

11)Client information. We have put in place robust security measures to hold your information securely in the Client Portal. We will hold your information in accordance with the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006, the Lawyers Conduct and Client Care Rules 2008 and the Terms of Engagement. In general, this means that we will keep your information confidential, and will only disclose it:

• If permitted or instructed by you;

• To our staff, instructing solicitors and professional advisors (who are subject to similar obligations of confidentiality); or

• Where required by law.

In addition, our Privacy Policy (below) applies to the collection, use and storage of any of your personally identifiable information.

12)Information you provide. We will rely on the accuracy of the information that you provide via the Client Portal in providing legal services to you. You must take reasonable care to provide accurate and honest information to us. If you provide information or other documents via the Client Portal, you confirm to us that you either own or have the right to do so. That is, you must not provide information in breach of someone else’s intellectual property.

13)Legal advice. You should use the legal advice we provide to you with care and in accordance with the Terms of Engagement. There may be issues in maintaining legal professional privilege or confidentiality of any advice if you share legal advice with other people. You should consult us prior to sharing any information we provide you.

14)Retention of information. We will retain your client file and documents in accordance with the Terms of Engagement.

15)Ownership. We retain all ownership and other rights to the Client Portal. You do not obtain any proprietary right or licence to the Client Portal under these terms.

16)No copying or hacking. You must not:

• Copy any Client Portal code or software;

• Duplicate or reverse engineer any Client Portal functionality; nor

• Download, scrape, hack or otherwise copy any data that does not relate to you.

To avoid doubt, this prohibition extends to attempting to, or procuring or allowing others to do any of the above matters.

17)Fees. There are no separate fees payable for the Client Portal; it is provided to you as part of the legal services provided to you under the Terms of Engagement.

18)Access for legal services. You will have access to the Client Portal while we provide you legal services in accordance with the Terms of Engagement.

19)End of legal services. Your access to the Client Portal will end once we have stopped providing you legal services. We will give you reasonable notice in advance of ending your access to the Client Portal; we recommend you download copies of any important information during this period. You will still be able to ask us for your information in accordance with the Terms of Engagement and Privacy Act even if you no longer have access to the Client Portal by contacting us by telephone or email.

20)Suspension. We may suspend, disable or terminate your access to the Client Portal immediately if, in our sole opinion:

• It is necessary to secure any client information or computer system;

• It is necessary to comply with any change in law;

• Your account is being misused or has otherwise been compromised; or

• You breach these terms or the Terms of Engagement

21)Discontinuing product. We may terminate these terms and end your access to the Client Portal by notice to you if we discontinue the Client Portal for any reason. We will use reasonable endeavours to provide as much notice as practicable.

22)Change of law. We may terminate these terms by notice to you if there is any change of law that makes it illegal or impossible to provide the Client Portal or any associated services. We will use reasonable endeavours to provide as much notice as practicable, but you acknowledge that this may not be possible in the event of urgent or sudden changes of law.

This privacy policy sets out the types of personally identifiable information that we collect, why and how it is collected and used, and your rights to your access and correct your personally identifiable information. In privacy policy, “we”, “our” or “us” refers to Jeremy Sutton Barrister Limited.

We may collect several different types of personal information from you, depending on the type of interaction with you. Please note that we may collect more than one type of information from you so please read this entire privacy policy.

Contact information includes your name, physical address, telephone numbers and email addresses.

We collect contact information directly from you and use it to provide you legal and related services. We may occasionally collect contact information from another lawyer that has referred you to us. You do not have to provide this information to us, but if you do not, we will not be able to contact you about or provide legal or related services.

We may share your contact information with other professional service providers (for example, an accountant or another lawyer) if necessary to provide you the legal services you require. This also includes matters such as providing your address to a courier if we need to deliver documents to you.If you subscribe to our newsletter, online training and seminars or podcast, we will also use your contact information to send these to you or notify you when new editions are available.

You can unsubscribe from our notifications at any time.

Legal advice and sensitive information include any information about your personal circumstances for the purposes of your case or obtaining legal services from us. It also includes matters such as your date of birth and identity verification documents such as a passport or drivers’ licence, your income and financial situation, details about children and reasons for separation.

We collect this information directly from you, including via our website and IT services providers, and use it to provide you legal services. We may also collect sensitive information from:

• Another lawyer that has referred you to us;

• Another lawyer acting for another person in relation to your case (e.g. a lawyer for your children);

• Other professionals acting for you or another person in relation to your case (e.g. a psychologist, mediator or dispute resolution provider)

• Courts and the Police;

• Credit bureaus; and

• Other public sources of information (for example, the Companies Office Register for shareholding and director information).

We only use this information to provide you legal services, and to verify your identity under relevant New Zealand laws. You do not have to provide this information to us, but if you do not, we will not be able to provide you legal services.

We hold legal advice and sensitive information in accordance with the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006, the Lawyers Conduct and Client Care Rules 2008 and the Terms of Engagement. In general, this means that we will keep your legal advice and sensitive information confidential, and will only disclose or use it:

• If permitted or instructed by you;

• To our staff, instructing solicitors and professional advisors (who are subject to similar obligations of confidentiality);

• To our IT Service Providers (see below);

• For business or administrative reasons; or

• Where required by law.

Please note that some legal advice and sensitive information may need to be filed in Court; this may result in some of this information becoming publicly available. We will discuss this with you before it happens.

As outlined in our Terms of Engagement, we will hold this information electronically for at least two years after the engagement ends. Following that, we may securely archive or destroy the information, unless otherwise required by law.

More information about our IT providers and how we keep your information secure is discussed below.

Automated information includes certain computer-generated information about subscribers to our newsletter, online training, seminars and podcast, and visitors to this website. This includes information about your interactions with us and our services, such as whether or not you read a newsletter, the time you read it, your location, and how you read it (for example, from a mobile phone, tablet or computer). This information is collected automatically using of technical measures such as cookies. You can read more about cookies, how they are used, and their implications for you at https://www.allaboutcookies.org/. This automated information is usually aggregated with automated information from other people to present a high-level view of all our website visitors and subscribers’ interactions. We use this information to refine and improve the way we provide information and services (for example, the layout of our website or the types of articles in our newsletter).

We use third-party IT providers to collect and analyse this automated information – for example, Google Analytics. We only use reputable IT providers, and the tools used to collect and analyse this automated information are commonly used on the internet. In addition to providing this information to us, sometimes this information is also aggregated and used by the IT providers directly.

You are not required to provide this type of information, and some IT providers allow you to opt-out partially or entirely from these technical measures. However, this may mean that we cannot provide you the relevant service, or the quality of the service may be degraded. For example, if you disable cookies or other tracking tools, you may not be able to log in to the Client Portal, or our newsletter may not be optimised for the device on which you are reading it.

More information about our IT providers and how we keep your information secure is discussed below.

We treat the security of your personal information very seriously. Like most businesses, we use a range of IT providers to provide services. We take reasonable care to select reputable IT providers to store and manage the personal information of our clients.

We aim to ensure a reasonable balance between ease of doing business with us, and taking security measures to protect your personal information that is proportionate to the sensitivity of that information. This means that we take additional security measures for your legal and sensitive information compared to basic contact information or automated information about how you use our website.

The Client Portal is aimed at making sure your legal advice and sensitive information is kept secure by providing a secure means to transmit and receive your information and legal advice. We recommend that clients use the Client Portal to communicate sensitive and other important information with us. The Client Portal includes intelligent questionnaires and workflows to generate documents, share information and provide legal advice in a secure environment. This allows us to collect, store and share information more securely than other more traditional ways of communicating such as email. You do not have to use the Client Portal, but if you do not, please note that different security arrangements will apply to your information. For example, if you email documents to us containing legal or sensitive information, these may be held like other emails (see below) rather than legal or sensitive information.

Our key IT providers, and the type of information they store and manage are listed below.

Most IT providers will have access to your contact information so that we can communicate with you using that service – for example, we need to provide your email address to invite you to a Zoom video conference or schedule a meeting.

All IT providers may also collect automated information from you, depending on how you interact with their services. If you have an account or have installed software with some of these IT providers, you may also be subject to the IT providers’ privacy policies directly. For example, to collaborate with us on Dropbox documents, you will need to set up a Dropbox account, including accepting the Dropbox privacy policy. While we have used reasonable care to select only reputable service IT providers, you should note that some of these IT providers are based overseas and will only be subject to the New Zealand Privacy Act if they “carry on business in New Zealand”; this means that some of these IT providers may not be required to protect your personal information in a way that provides comparable safeguards to New Zealand law.

We may change or add additional IT providers from time-to-time; we will update this policy to reflect changes in key IT providers.

You have the right to ask for a copy of any personal information we hold about you, and to ask for it to be corrected if you think it is wrong. If you’d like to ask for a copy of your information, or to have it corrected, please contact us at
js@bastionchambers.co.nz or +64 9 309 4647, or by writing to us at Jeremy Sutton Barrister Limited, PO Box 1857, Shortland Street, Auckland 1140.

This privacy policy is dated 1 December 2020 and may be updated from time-to-time. If any change is required (in our sole opinion) to secure any customer information or any computer system, or to comply with any change of law, we may make such change immediately. All other changes will be effective 30 days after notifying you of the change.