Denham Bramwell Privacy Policy

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Privacy Policy Version control: 03

Denham Bramwell is a law firm providing services in commercial, property, litigation, trusts, personal client services, family law and employment law.  We have offices in Manukau, Albany and Whangaparaoa.  This document sets out our policy for handling the personal information of our clients (former, current and prospective) including collection, use, disclosure, security, retention, access and correction.

Section 7 of the Privacy Act 2020 (the Act) defines “personal information” to include “information about an identifiable individual” – that is a natural person.  

What is personal information?

1. Personal information is information about you that identifies you, or by which your identity can reasonably be ascertained.

2. The type of information we may collect from you includes but is not limited to the following:

• Name, date of birth, residential address, contact details, nationality.

• Identification documents (e.g. passport, driver’s licence).

• Proof of address (e.g. letters from banks, utility providers, government departments).

• Employment details (e.g. employment agreements, job description, references).

• Financial Information (e.g. bank statements, credit card details for fee payments, source of funds information).

• Any other information relevant to the conduct of our business (e.g. for marketing purposes and compliance with our legal and statutory obligations including but not limited to anti money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism, health and safety matters and obligations under the rules of conduct and client care).

Collection

3. You may provide personal information directly to us, including via the website and any related service, through our on-boarding process, or through contact and communication with us.

4. We may collect information from third parties when you have authorised us to do so, or where the information is in the public domain.

Use

5. We will use your personal information in various circumstances, not limited to and including the following:

• to verify your identity, including performing customer due diligence.

• to deliver and provide services to you.

• to market our services to you.

• to invoice you and to collect money that you owe us.

• to authorise and process transactions.

• to communicate with you.

• to comply with our legal obligations under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006, the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009.

• for any other purpose authorised by you or the Privacy Act 2020.

6. With respect to our website, automated technology such as cookies may be used to collect and store information about your visit to the website.

7. We may use or disclose personal information that you have provided to us, or which we have obtained about you, to our third parties providers, including technology providers who assist us in providing services or who perform functions on our behalf, such as providers that provide generative AI technologies to assist us in legal research, document review, document drafting and other legal tasks.

8. Our technology providers (including generative AI providers) may use your personal information to provide services to us, to administer, maintain, analyse, improve, and/or develop their services, to undertake their business processes, to comply with their legal obligations and to conduct research.  Unless we state otherwise, our technology providers will not use your personal information to improve AI training models, train, retrain or improve foundation models, improve third party products or services, conduct user profiling, advertising, or similar commercial purposes, or to market products and services to you.

9. Our technology providers may rely on and make your personal information available to their third party providers (which may be located in countries other than New Zealand) in the course of delivering their services to us, including for hosting, cloud storage, email communication and web analytics purposes, such as the Azure OpenAI Service operated by Microsoft. Our technology providers may share your IP address and other information about your device to Microsoft for security reasons.  Our technology providers may also share your personal information with their affiliates, any other entity that they merge with or sell their business or assets to, and other third parties (such as government agencies) if legally required to do so.

Disclosure

10. To carry out the activities or to achieve the purposes specified above, we may disclose your personal information to:

• People and organisations to whom you have authorised us to disclose your personal information.

• Parties involved in a matter for which you (or your employer) have engaged our services.

• Service providers that enable us to store, manage, audit, and analyse the information we hold.

• Third party service providers that we engage to help us provide services to you.

• Courts or tribunals, or government or regulatory agencies if required by law to do so.

11. If you do not wish to provide personal information to us, we may be unable to provide the services requested or accept instruction from you as a client if that personal information is necessary to comply with our obligations as legal practitioners and a law firm.

Use of Generative AI

12. While providing our legal services to you (such as conveyancing services), we may use generative AI tools and technology to assist in legal research, document review, document drafting and other legal tasks.  This technology enables us to provide more efficient and cost-effective legal services.  We recognise the inherent limitations of generative AI tools.  While generative AI can enhance our work, it is not a substitute for our independent expertise and judgment.  We will exercise professional independent judgment in using AI-generated content and ensure its accuracy and appropriateness in each specific case.

Security and Retention

13. We are obliged to protect the privacy, confidentiality, and security of your personal information.  We will endeavour to take all reasonable steps necessary to do so.

14. When we no longer need to hold your personal information to provide ongoing services to you or because our legal obligations to maintain a record of you information has expired, we will securely destroy your information.

Access and Correction

15. You have the right to request access to your personal information held by us.  You can make this request by contacting our Privacy Officer Anna Fuiava, Partner at anna.fuiava@denhambramwell.co.nz.

16. We will respond to your request within 20 working days after the day on which the request is received by us, unless an extension to that time is reasonably necessary.

17. We may charge a fee for providing you with access to the information requested depending on the volume of documents, method of delivery and/or the storage location.  We will advise you in advance of any likely cost.

18. There are various grounds on which we can refuse you request, including:

• To avoid prejudice to the maintenance of law;

• To preserve our legal professional privilege;

• To prevent the unwarranted disclosure of the affairs of another individual (alive or deceased); or

• If the information requested is material that was provided to us in confidence.

19. You also have the right to request the correction of your personal information.  You can make this request by contacting the Privacy Officer in writing.

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