About Us
We at Marie-Hélène Mayer (“we” , “us” or “our”) are committed to maintaining the accuracy, security, and privacy of your personal information.
This Privacy Policy sets out how we collect, use, protect, and delete all personal information you submit to us. It forms part of the terms of use for our website, mhmayerlaw.ca (the “Website”) and, if you are a client, it forms a part of the terms of your engagement of us. By using or submitting any information through our Website or by engaging us as your lawyers, you are agreeing to the terms of this Privacy Policy. Please review it carefully before continuing to use the Website. You can always choose whether to provide us your personal information. However, if you choose to not provide certain or no personal information or you choose to withdraw your consent, this may affect our ability to represent you if you are a client.
What Is Personal Information
Under Canadian privacy laws, “personal information” means information about an identifiable individual, like your name, physical and email address and telephone number. However, this does not include the name, title, business address or telephone number of an employee of an organization, when used for business communications.
What We Collect
To provide you with legal and marketing updates (“Marketing”), we must collect and retain your name and email address. If you are a client, then to provide you with our legal services (“Legal Services”), we must also collect and retain your telephone number, home address and occupation.
We collect this information online through a webform found on our Website, through our email sign-up list, over the phone, and in person through our intake form.
To continue improving the performance of our Website and our business, we may collect and retain information related to your activity through third-party services, such as Google Analytics and MailChimp, (our “Third-Party Service Providers”) while using our Website. This information includes, but is not limited to, your Internet Protocol (IP) address, operating system, geolocation information, local preferences, ID numbers associated with your computer or mobile devices, your mobile carrier, and metadata. The terms of use and privacy policies of our Third-Party Service Providers are incorporated into our terms of use by reference.
To enhance your experience on our Website, we use cookies which may be stored on your computer or device. If you do not wish to accept cookies, you may set your browser settings to disable cookies. However, this may affect your experience and use of our Website.
We do not knowingly collect information from people under the age of 16. We are entitled to delete any personal information that is submitted to us in violation of this Privacy Policy.
How We Use
If you are a visitor to our Website, or signing up for our Marketing, we collect and use your personal information to provide you with information about our firm and its services. If you are a client, we collect and use your personal information to provide you with Marketing, our Legal Services, and to process payments.
We may disclose your personal information to our Third-Party Service Providers to assist us in providing our Marketing and Legal Services, to process your payments, to provide us with marketing services, and to provide IT support services.
Apart from our Third-Party Service Providers, we will not disclose your personal information to a third party, unless:
- you have explicitly consented to the disclosure,
- it is required to provide our Marketing or Legal Services to you, or
- it is required by law.
We will not disclose your personal information to any third party to let them market to you. Where we are permitted to disclose your personal information to third parties, we will ensure that they protect your personal information and use it only for the purposes we specify.
To improve our services and better understand our clientele, we may from time-to-time anonymize your personal information and use if for internal statistical and analytical purposes.
How We Store
We store your personal information on our local servers and on our cloud-storage system. Only our employees or contractors will have access to our local and cloud-based servers. These servers use software designed to prevent unauthorized access or improper use – however, no storage is 100% secure so we cannot guarantee that there will never be any unauthorized access. We may also store documents containing personal information in physical format at our place of business in a locked filing cabinet.
We will only keep your personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the relevant purposes set out in this Privacy Policy and to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
Third Party Links
Our Website may have links to third party sites. We do not have any control over those sites and they are governed by their own privacy policies, not ours.
Changes to the Policy
We reserve the right to amend or update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Updates to the Privacy Policy will be effective upon posting to our Website. Your continued use of our Website and, if you are a client, our Legal Services will be deemed acceptance of any amendments or updates to this Privacy Policy. If you do not consent to the amendments or updates, please stop using the Website and, if you are a client, please notify us that you do not consent to the amendments or updates although that may affect our ability to provide you with Legal Services.
In the event that any change affects the purpose or the way we collect, use, or disclose your personal information, we will obtain any additional consent required from you under applicable privacy laws.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy, wish to change your marketing preferences, or have any other questions about our handling of your personal information, please contact our privacy compliance officer, Marie-Hélène Mayer:
- By email: mhm@mhmayerlaw.ca
- By phone: 416.549.1686
- By mail: 2300 Yonge Street, Suite 1600, Toronto, Ontario M4P 1E4
Privacy Policy last update: October 2019.