Hunter Legal Services (Newcastle) Pty Limited ABN 15 081 454 248 trading as Mullane & Lindsay (we, us, our) is a law firm operating from offices in Newcastle and Tea Gardens. We provide quality legal services to a wide variety of clients throughout New South Wales, and particularly in the Hunter.
Like most other organisations, the Privacy Act 1988 (the Act) applies to us. The Act was recently amended to include Australian Privacy Principles and we comply with these principles, along with the remainder of the Act.
Under the Act, personal information is information or an opinion about an identified individual or an individual who is reasonably identifiable.
Personal information is a very broad notion and includes general information such as contact details and sensitive information such as information about an individual’s race, ethnicity, political opinions or memberships, religious beliefs or affiliations, philosophical beliefs, professions or trade associations, memberships of trade unions, sexual orientation, health information and genetic and biometric information.
Generally, the types of personal information which we collect include:
Depending on the services we provide to you it will also be necessary for us to collect various other forms of personal information.
We collect some of your personal information when you first contact us regarding your matter. Often we will collect further personal information when we meet with you and during the course of providing legal services to you.
We will often collect your personal information directly from you. Sometimes we will collect information from a third party who you have authorised to provide your personal information to us, for example your accountant. We may also collect your personal information from third parties where it is unreasonable or impractical to collect that information from you.
We store your personal information either in our electronic databases or in our physical files. We use a range of security systems to protect the personal information which we hold, including physical security systems at our offices and security software on our computer systems.
Primarily we use your personal information to provide legal services to you. We may also use your personal information to tell you about the legal services we offer, or about legal issues or developments, for example through our online newsletter.
During the course of your matter we may need to disclose some of your personal information to third parties to allow us to provide you with legal services. In the event we need to disclose your personal information to a third party who is overseas, we will endeavour to ensure that the third party complies with the Australian Privacy Principles when dealing with your personal information.
Where reasonable, we will take steps to notify you that we hold your personal information in the event we collect your personal information from someone other than you.
You are able to request that we provide to you any personal information we hold about you at any time. We may however deny your request in certain circumstances, including where the information is subject to legal privilege.
You may also request that we correct or update your personal information at any time.
If you would like to contact us regarding your personal information or to make a complaint about how we have handled your personal information please contact us using one of the following methods:
By post:
The Privacy Officer
Mullane and Lindsay
PO Box 758
Newcastle NSW 2300
By email:
By phone:
(02) 4928 7300
Mullane and Lindsay acknowledges the Traditional Indigenous Custodians of the land on which we work and we pay respects to Elders; past, present and emerging.