Privacy Policy

McGuinty Law Offices Professional Corporation (‘McGuinty Law Offices’) is a law firm with an office in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Consistent with our obligations as professionals, we are dedicated to maintaining high standards of confidentiality regarding the information provided to us. McGuinty Law Offices adheres to certain privacy principles to ensure the confidentiality of the Personal Information entrusted to us. This Privacy Policy has been prepared to affirm our commitment to maintaining the privacy of our clients and others and to inform you of our practices concerning the collection, use and disclosure of Personal Information (as defined below) collected by McGuinty Law Offices.

For this Privacy Policy, “Personal Information” means any information provided to McGuinty Law Offices, recorded in any form, about an identifiable individual, or an individual whose identity may be inferred or determined from the information. This Privacy Policy does not cover any information, recorded in any form, about more than one individual where the identity of the individuals is not known and cannot be inferred from the information (“Aggregated Information”). McGuinty Law Offices retains the right to use Aggregated Information in any way that it reasonably determines is appropriate.

McGuinty Law Offices takes the protection of Personal Information seriously. Our obligations as legal professionals are governed, in part, by the Rules of Professional Conduct of the Law Society of Upper Canada which impose strict duties and obligations regarding the confidentiality of the information provided to McGuinty Law Offices by its clients. These obligations apply to all professionals, employees, contractors and agents who provide services in connection with our delivery of legal and other services to our clients. McGuinty Law Offices observes these requirements strictly. McGuinty Law Offices also observes other applicable laws, including privacy laws, in all jurisdictions within which McGuinty Law Offices operates.

If you ever have any questions, complaints, or concerns about the McGuinty Law Offices’ Privacy Policy or your Personal Information you may contact the McGuinty Law Offices’ professionals with whom you have a relationship.

As a general rule, all information concerning the business and affairs of a person or organization acquired (1) for the purpose of determining whether McGuinty Law Offices will enter into a professional relationship or (2) in the course of a professional relationship shall be held in strict confidence and not revealed to anyone unless expressly or implicitly authorized by the person or organization concerned. A professional relationship develops when McGuinty Law Offices agrees to be retained to provide services to an individual or organization. To protect their own interests, individuals or organizations should not send confidential information to McGuinty Law Offices until they have had a direct discussion with a professional at the firm regarding the retention of McGuinty Law Offices to provide legal services.

In the course of its relationship with you, McGuinty Law Offices will need to collect, use and sometimes, disclose various types of Personal Information for various purposes associated with the scope of the work as directed by you or your organization. Given the nature of McGuinty Law Offices’ services, it is impractical to list all of types of Personal Information that may be collected, used or disclosed. When Personal Information is requested from you, McGuinty Law Offices will always explain the purpose for which it is needed. Under no circumstances will McGuinty Law Offices sell, trade, barter or exchange for consideration any Personal Information it has obtained. You may be assured that McGuinty Law Offices will only collect Personal Information that is necessary for the following purposes:

Provision of Services/Products: which will include any Personal Information necessary to provide services requested by you or your organization. We may also analyze the Personal Information provided to us to offer you additional services or products. You may, at any time, advise us that you do not wish to receive such information from McGuinty Law Offices.

McGuinty Law Offices may collect your Personal Information in many forms (hard/soft copy, electronically, facsimile, telephone conversations/recordings, etc.), but will only do so by lawful means and only for necessary purposes that have been disclosed to you.

McGuinty Law Offices provides clients and others with general access to public web sites. Our Web servers and authorized third party providers track general information about visitors such as their domain name, IP address and time of visit. McGuinty Law Offices’ Web servers also collect and aggregate information regarding which pages are being accessed as well as information volunteered by visitors through online surveys or subscriptions to electronic newsletters. This information is used internally, only in aggregate form, to better serve visitors by helping us to:

During the course of an individual’s use of the Internet, he or she will encounter “cookies” in the normal course. Cookies are small files or pieces of information that may be stored in a computer’s hard drive when an individual visits a web site. McGuinty Law Offices uses cookies. Most Internet browsers are initially set to accept cookies. If you do not wish to accept cookies, you can set yours to refuse cookies or to alert you when cookies are being sent.

Personal Information collected in any form will only be retained by McGuinty Law Offices so long as it is required:

When your Personal Information is no longer required for these identified purposes, McGuinty Law Offices uses secure procedures to destroy, delete, erase or convert the Personal Information into an anonymous form.

Your provision of Personal Information to McGuinty Law Offices means that you agree and consent that we may collect, use and disclose your Personal Information under this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with these terms, you are requested not to provide any Personal Information to McGuinty Law Offices. Certain services can only be offered if you provide Personal Information to McGuinty Law Offices. If you choose not provide us with any required Personal Information, McGuinty Law Offices may not be able to offer you those services.

Consent may be given in different ways such as:

There may be circumstances where you have provided Personal Information for an identified purpose, and McGuinty Law Offices later needs to use that information for a different purpose. In such circumstances, McGuinty Law Offices will seek your consent to use the information for the new purpose.

Please note that there are circumstances where the use and/or disclosure of Personal Information may be justified or permitted or where McGuinty Law Offices must disclose information without consent. Such circumstances may include:

You have the right to revoke your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your Personal Information at any time. However, revocation of your consent may result in our inability to provide services to you. We will discuss with you the reason we need your Personal Information and why the revocation of your consent affects our ability to provide the service or product to you.

Currently, McGuinty Law Offices holds Personal Information principally in the city in which McGuinty Law Offices has its offices or production facilities and nearby municipalities where off-site storage facilities may be located. McGuinty Law Offices allows certain authorized third party providers to track and store certain information about visitors to McGuinty Law Offices web sites (namely domain names, IP addresses and page views as described below) and such information will be stored outside of Canada if the third party provider is located outside of Canada.  Personal Information is always subject to the local laws of the jurisdictions within which it is collected, used, disclosed and/or stored, and may be accessed by governmental authorities in those jurisdictions.

McGuinty Law Offices may disclose Personal Information to organizations that perform services for the Firm. Personal Information will only be provided to such organizations if they agree by way of contractual or other arrangements to use such information solely to provide services to McGuinty Law Offices and under the instruction of McGuinty Law Offices and, regarding that information, to act in a manner consistent with the principles articulated in this Privacy Policy.

Personal Information may also be subject to transfer to another organization in the event of a merger, change of ownership, obtaining insurance or financing. This will occur only if the parties have entered into an agreement under which the collection, use and disclosure of the information is restricted to those purposes that relate to the business transaction, including a determination whether or not to proceed with the business transaction, and is used by the parties to carry out and complete the business transaction.

McGuinty Law Offices has taken steps to maintain adequate physical, procedural and technical security regarding its offices and information storage facilities to prevent any loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, or modification of Personal Information (“Data Breach”). McGuinty Law Offices further protects Personal Information by restricting access to those individuals that the management of McGuinty Law Offices has determined need to know that information in order that McGuinty Law Offices may provide its services. All McGuinty Law Offices’ professionals, staff, contractors and agents are provided with training on maintaining the confidentiality and protection of the Personal Information provided to McGuinty Law Offices.

No method of transmitting or storing data is perfectly secure. While the physical characteristics of mail, telephone calls, faxes and transmissions over the Internet are different, each is susceptible to possible loss, misrouting, interception and misuse of the information being communicated or transmitted. In the unfortunate event of a Data Breach, McGuinty Law Offices has procedures in place to contain the loss to the greatest extent possible and will comply with applicable breach notification requirements.

McGuinty Law Offices attempts to strike a reasonable balance between security and convenience. In communicating with clients and others, McGuinty Law Offices may request the use of a communication method that is less secure than more inconvenient alternatives. For example, email may be sent as unencrypted plain text because some of our clients and others cannot readily process encrypted e-mail. This is done for their convenience, but we expect that our clients and others understand that if misrouted or intercepted, unencrypted email could be read more easily than encrypted e-mail.

McGuinty Law Offices endeavours to ensure that any Personal Information provided and in its possession is as accurate, current and complete as necessary for the purposes for which McGuinty Law Offices uses that information. In the event that you believe that your Personal Information is not accurate or you wish access to your Personal Information, you may make a request to the McGuinty Law Offices’ professionals with whom you have a relationship.

We will always endeavor to provide timely access to your Personal Information. However, there may be circumstances where access will not be granted. For example, where access would lead to the disclosure of Personal Information of another individual and that individual refuses to provide consent to disclose or information subject to privilege or other legal restrictions. You will be notified in all cases of the reason for the denial of access.

This Privacy Policy is in effect as of February 22, 2016. McGuinty Law Offices will from time to time review and revise its privacy practices and this Privacy Policy. In the event of any amendment, an appropriate notice will be posted on McGuinty Law Offices web site. Policy changes will apply to the information collected from the date of posting of the revised Privacy Policy to McGuinty Law Offices’ web site as well as to existing information held by McGuinty Law Offices.