PRIVACY POLICY

Thompson Dymond recognizes the importance of privacy and the sensitivity of personal information. As lawyers we have a professional obligation to keep confidential all information we receive within a lawyer-client relationship. We are committed to protecting any personal information we hold. This Privacy Policy outlines how we manage your personal information and safeguard your privacy.

YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS: From January 1, 2004, all businesses engaged in commercial activities must comply with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, and the Canadian Standards Association Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information, which it incorporates. These obligations extend to lawyers and law firms, including Thompson Dymond. The Act gives you rights concerning the privacy of your personal information.
Thompson Dymond is responsible for the personal information we collect and hold. To ensure this accountability, we have developed this policy, and trained our lawyers and support staff about our policies and practices.

WHY DOES THOMPSON DYMOND NEED PERSONAL INFORMATION? Thompson Dymond provides legal services and products to a wide range of clients. In doing so it requires personal information for a variety of purposes including identify who its client is, satisfying Law Society of Upper Canada “Know Your Client” requirements, verifying conflicts of interest, providing opinions to third parties on client related matters, maintaining communications with clients, managing client trust funds, and maintaining client records.

WHAT PERSONAL INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT? Personal information is any information that identifies you, or by which your identity could be deduced. The type of information we collect depends on what we are doing for a client but it can include client names, birth dates, places of birth, addresses, phone numbers, email address, social insurance numbers, corporate associations and positions held, employment and business information and bank account information.

HOW DO WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION? We collect information only by lawful and fair means and not in an unreasonably intrusive way. Wherever possible we collect your personal information directly from you, at the start of a retainer and in the course of our representation. Sometimes we may obtain information about you from other sources: for example, your insurance company; your real estate agent in a property transaction; from a government agency or registry; your employer, if we are acting for you, at its request; your previous or other lawyer; your accountant and your banker.

CONSENT: In many cases we shall ask you to specifically consent, if we collect, use, or disclose your personal information. Normally, we ask for your consent in writing, but in some circumstances, in many cases accept your oral consent. Sometimes, your consent may be implied through your conduct with us. If you are a client of our firm you are deemed to consent to our collecting and maintaining personal information about you as required for us to complete our retainer.

USE OF YOUR INFORMATION: We use your personal information to provide legal advice and services to you, to administer our client (time and billing databases) and to include you in any direct marketing activities. If you tell us that you no longer wish to receive information about our services or about new developments in the law, we will not send any further material.
Thompson Dymond does not disclose your personal information to any third party to enable them to market their products and services. For example, we do not provide our client mailing lists to other law firms.
However, we are sometimes required to disclose your personal information for the purpose of completing our retainer on your behalf, including to banks, other lawyers, other parties to your transactions and government agencies. If you are a client of our firm you are deemed to consent to our disclosing personal information about you as required for us to complete our retainer.
Other circumstances where Thompson Dymond may disclose your personal information include: when we are required or authorized by law to do so, for example if a court issues a subpoena; when you have consented to the disclosure; when the legal services we are providing to you requires us give your information to third parties (for example a lender in a real estate mortgage transaction) your consent will be implied, unless you tell us otherwise; where it is necessary to establish or collect fees; if we engage a third party to provide administrative services to us (like computer back-up services or archival file storage) and the third party is bound by our privacy policy; if we engage expert witnesses on your behalf; if we retain other law firms in other jurisdictions, on your behalf; if the information is already publicly known.

UPDATING YOUR INFORMATION: Since we use your personal information to provide legal services to you, it is important that the information be accurate and up-to-date. If during the course of the retainer, any of your information changes, please inform us so that we can make any necessary changes.

IS MY PERSONAL INFORMATION SECURE? Thompson Dymond takes all reasonable precautions to ensure that your personal information is kept safe from loss, unauthorized access, modification or disclosure. Among the steps taken to protect your information are: premises security; restricted file access to personal information; deploying technological safeguards like security software and firewalls to prevent hacking or unauthorized computer access; internal password and security policies.

ACCESS TO YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION: You may ask for access to any personal information we hold about you. Summary information is available on request. More detailed requests which require archive or other retrieval costs may be subject to our normal professional and disbursement fees.
CORRECTING ERRORS: If Thompson Dymond holds information about you and you can establish that it is not accurate, complete and up-to-date, Thompson Dymond will take reasonable steps to correct it.

CAN I BE DENIED ACCESS TO MY PERSONAL INFORMATION? Your rights to access your personal information are not absolute.
We may deny access when: denial of access is required or authorized by law (for example, when a record containing personal information about you is subject to a claim of legal professional privilege by one of our clients); information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings against you by us; when granting you access would have an unreasonable impact on other people's privacy; when to do so would prejudice negotiations with you; to protect our firm's rights and property; where the request is frivolous or vexatious.
If we deny your request for access to, or refuse a request to correct information, we shall explain why.
Thompson Dymond does not use your Social Insurance Number as a way of identifying or organizing the information we hold upon you.

CAN I REQUEST ANONYMITY? Whenever it is legal and practicable, we may offer the opportunity to deal with general inquiries without providing your name (for example, by accessing general information on our website). The Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act requires us to confirm the identity of all new clients. It may also require us disclose information to FINTRAC in relation to certain large cash transactions.

CREDIT BUREAUS: To help us make credit decisions about clients, prevent fraud, check the identity of new clients and prevent money-laundering, we may on occasion, request information about you from the files of consumer reporting agencies. If you are a client of our firm or ask to become a client of our firm you are deemed to consent to our collecting credit information about you from consumer reporting agencies.

COMMUNICATING WITH US: You should be aware that e-mail is not a 100% secure medium, and you should be aware of this when contacting us to send personal or confidential information.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY: Since Thompson Dymond regularly reviews all of its policies and procedures, we may change our Privacy Policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this website. You should check back from time to time to verify if there have been any changes.

REQUESTS FOR ACCESS: If you have any questions, or wish to access your personal information, please write to the Associate you are dealing with or our Privacy Contact at

1595 Sixteenth Avenue, Suite 301
Richmond Hill, ON
L4B 3N9.

If you are not satisfied with our response, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada can be reached at

112 Kent Street,
Ottawa Ontario, K1A 1H3
1.800.282.1376.

EMPLOYMENT INQUIRIES: If you apply to Thompson Dymond for a job, we need to consider your personal information, as part of our review process. We normally retain information from candidates after a decision has been made, unless you ask us not to retain the information. If we offer you a job, which you accept, the information will be retained in accordance with our privacy procedures for employee records.

WEB SITE: Our website contains links to other sites, which are not governed by this privacy policy. On our website, like most other commercial websites, we may monitor traffic patterns, site usage and related site information in order to optimize our web service. We may provide aggregated information to third parties, but these statistics do not include any identifiable personal information.

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