Privacy policy.

Personal information

If you choose to engage me, I will collect and hold personal information about you. I will use that information to carry out my services to you and to contact you about issues I believe may be of interest to you.

Provision of personal information is voluntary but if you do not provide full information this may impact on my ability to provide a quality service to you.

Subject to the paragraph above, you authorise me to disclose your personal information to third parties for the purpose of providing legal services to you. I may disclose your name and address to third parties such as credit agencies to perform a credit reference or to undertake credit management or collection processes if it is reasonable to do so.

The information I collect and hold about you will be kept in a secure electronic file storage site and/or at my offices at 40 Walker Street, Christchurch 8011. If you are an individual, you have the right to access and correct this information. If you require access, please contact me.

Documents, records and information

I will keep a record of documents which I receive or create on your behalf on the following basis:

  • I may keep a record electronically and destroy originals (except where the existence of an original is legally important such as in the case of wills and deeds, which I will return to you).

  • At any time, I may dispose of documents which are duplicates, or which are trivial (such as emails which do not contain substantive information), or documents which belong to me.

  • I am not obliged to retain documents or copies when you have requested that I provide them to you or to another person and I have done so, although I am entitled to retain copies for my own records.

  • I will provide to you on request copies or originals (at my option) of all documents to which you are entitled under the Privacy Act 1993 or any other law. I may charge you my reasonable costs for doing this.

  • Where I hold documents that belong to a third party you will need to provide me with that party’s written authority to uplift or obtain a copy of that document.

Unless you instruct me in writing otherwise, you authorise me and consent to me (without further reference to you) to destroy (or delete in the case of electronic records) all files and documents seven years after my engagement ends (other than any documents that I am obliged by law to retain for longer). I may retain documents for longer at my option.

I may, at my option, return documents (either in hard or electronic form) to you rather than retain them. If I choose to do this, I will do so at my expense.

I own copyright in all documents or work I create in the course of my services to you but grant you a non-exclusive licence to use and copy the documents as you see fit for your own personal or commercial use. However, you may not permit any third party to copy, adapt or use the documents without my written permission.

Use of Website

My website uses analytics to gather information about your visit to my website but not information that identifies you.  For example, my website collects information about:

  • the name of the domain in which you accessed the internet

  • the date and time you accessed my website

  • the internet address of the website from which you linked directly to my website, and

  • the pages you accessed while visiting my website.

I use cookies on my site but I do not collect any personal information from you in the use of cookies.  

I am not responsible for the privacy practices or content of any other website that is linked to this website. It is your responsibility to investigate the privacy policies of those other sites.