There are three types of privacy which you will need to know about when dealing with our firm:

• The privacy you are entitled to as a client of this firm;
• The privacy you are entitled to as a client of another firm of lawyers dealing with this firm;
• The privacy you are entitled to when you visit this website.

As a client of this firm

All information which you, as a client, deliver to this firm will be held with the utmost care and will be dealt with confidentially and not released to any other person without your specific instructions or by force of law, upon which we will advise you.

As a client of another firm

Privacy of information exchanged with another legal firm is governed by legal and ethical rules which relate to your position as a client, and rules called Privacy Principles, which have effect through legislation of the Commonwealth and State governments.

For example, a person who has a claim for personal injury damages, makes a claim against a client of this firm. Information may be exchanged for the purposes of the claim such as personal details, date of birth, address, or medical information relating to the claim for damages made.

As a firm of lawyers, we do not routinely collect information in the same way as public authorities do. However, for current proceedings, all such information is collected and used solely for the purposes of the claim made and is dealt with subject to any orders of a Court and otherwise in accordance with the Privacy Principles, which may be found at:

http://www.privacy.gov.au/publications/npps01.html

Examples of privacy policies and application of the Privacy Principles which may affect a client seeking personal injury damages may be found at:

http://www.privacy.qld.gov.au/about.htm for the Queensland Government

http://www.workcoverqld.com.au/privacy.html for WorkCover Queensland

http://www.qcomp.com.au/misc-information/privacy for Q-Comp

http://www.maic.treasury.qld.gov.au/privacy.shtml for the Motor Accident Insurance Commission Queensland

When you visit our website

Automatic Information

When you visit our website, our web server automatically recognizes and stores the name of the domain from which you access the Internet, the date and time you access our site, and the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the website which you used. This information enables us to run site usage tools and create statistics about our site. These statistics help us to better understand how our site is being used and what we can do to make it more useful to visitors. This information is not stored in a personally-identifiable format.

Information You Provide Us

We use the information that you provide for responding to your requests, customizing the material presented to you based on your past visits to our website, to communicate with you, and to improve the content of our web site. The primary goal in collecting personal information is to provide you with customized services, features and content and give you an efficient personalized experience that best meets your needs.

If you choose to identify yourself by sending us an email or completing an online form, Bruce Thomas Lawyers employees and business partners will have access to such information in order to contact you for customer service purposes. We also aggregate information on what pages you access. Information submitted by you, such as survey information and/or comments or feedback, may be stored in a personally-identifiable format and is used only for internal purposes and is not shared with people or organizations outside of Bruce Thomas Lawyers. If we want to share your name outside this group or otherwise publicize the fact that you submitted materials or other information to us, then we will we ask your permission to use your name with the materials or other information you submitted to a particular part of this site.

Links

This site may contain links to other sites not owned or managed by Bruce Thomas Lawyers. Bruce Thomas Lawyers is not responsible for the privacy practices of such websites.

Use of “Cookies”

“Cookies” are small files that are placed on your hard drive that assist us in providing customized services. We may use cookies to allow you to let enter your password less frequently during a session. No other personal information is stored in this cookie.

From time to time, Bruce Thomas Lawyers may send a “cookie” to your computer. A cookie is a small piece of data that is sent to your browser from a web server and stored on your computer’s hard drive. A cookie can’t read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. Cookies do not damage your system. We use cookies to identify which areas of the Bruce Thomas Lawyers website you have visited or customized, so the next time you visit; those pages may be readily accessible. This information may be used to personalize our services to you.

You can choose whether to accept cookies by changing the settings of your browser. You can reset your browser to refuse all cookies, or allow your browser to show you when a cookie is being sent. If you choose not to accept these cookies, your experience at our site and other web sites may be diminished and some features may not work as intended.

Release of Information

Bruce Thomas Lawyers will release any information that is required to be released by law or court order.

If you send us an email or complete the Contact Us Form, you should know that email is not necessarily secure against interception unless you are using a security-enabled web browser.