Privacy Policy

1.       Acceptance of Privacy Polcy

a.          Stace Hammond (“SHLaw”) complies with the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 (“the Act”) when dealing with Personal Information.  Personal Information is information about an identifiable individual (a natural person).

b.          This Privacy Policy forms part of the Terms of Conditions that is found on the Website.

c.          By using the Website you are acknowledging that you accept the Privacy Policy and confirm that you understand them. If you do not accept this Privacy Policy, you must refrain from accessing the Website.

d.          On your use of the Website, a legally binding Agreement is formed between you and SHLaw based on these Terms and Conditions. This Agreement governs your use of the SHLaw Website.

e.          Any reference to the singular also means a reference to the plural, and vice versa.

f.           Any reference to Website will include the Stace Hammond website, and any website provided by any part of Stace Hammond including, but not limited to, Migration Partners.

g.          Services means legal services and legal advice.

2.       Purpose of Privacy Policy

a.          This policy sets out how we will collect, use, disclose and protect your Personal Information.

b.          This policy does not limit or exclude any of your rights under the Act.  If you wish to seek further information on the Act, see www.privacy.org.nz.

3.       This Privacy Policy was last updated 29 January 2021.

4.       Changes to this policy

a.          We may change this policy by uploading a revised policy onto the website.  The change will apply from the date that we upload the revised policy. However, the policy that applies to any Personal Information we hold will be the policy that was in place when that Personal Information from provided.

5.       Who do we collect your Personal Information from

a.          We collect Personal Information about you from:

• you, when you provide that Personal Information to us, including via the website and any related service, through any registration or subscription process, through any contact with us (e.g. telephone call or email); and 
• third parties where you have authorised this or the information is publicly available. 

b.          If possible, we will collect Personal Information from you directly. 

6.       How we use your Personal Information

a.          We will use your Personal Information:

• to verify your identity;
• to answer any enquiry you may have;
• to provide legal services and legal advice to you;
• to market our services to you, including contacting you electronically (e.g. by text or email for this purpose);
• to bill you and to collect money that you owe us, including authorising and processing credit card transactions;
• to respond to communications from you;
• to protect and/or enforce our legal rights and interests, including defending any claim;
• following any legal requirement under legislation;
• for any purpose that you, as a client, may request us to do; or
• for any other purpose authorised by you or the Act.

7.       Disclosing your Personal Information

a.          We may disclose your Personal Information to:  

• our employees or contractors, for the purpose of them performing the work they do for us;
• any business that supports our Services, including any person that hosts or maintains any underlying IT system or data centre that we use to provide our Services and products, including any legal support;
• an agency for the purpose of checking you i.e. as required for AML checks;
• a person who can require us to supply your Personal Information (e.g. a regulatory authority);
• any other person authorised by the Act or another law (e.g. a law enforcement agency); and
• any other person authorised by you.

b.          A business that supports our provision of services may be located outside New Zealand.  This may mean your Personal Information is held and processed outside New Zealand. If that is the case, it is possible that your Personal Information will be stored in a jurisdiction where the Privacy legislation, if any such legislation exists, will not provide safeguards that are comparable to those in the Act. You acknowledge and agree that you permit for your Personal Information to be disclosed to this third party outside of New Zealand

8.       Protecting your Personal Information

a.          We will take reasonable steps to keep your Personal Information safe from loss, unauthorised activity, or other misuse.

b. We utilise a professional IT support service to assist us in securing your Personal Information.

9.       Accessing and correcting your Personal Information

a.          Subject to certain grounds for refusal set out in the Act, you have the right to access your readily retrievable Personal Information that we hold and to request a correction to your Personal Information.  Before you exercise this right, we will need evidence to confirm that you are the individual to whom the Personal Information relates.

b.          In respect of a request for correction, if we think the correction is reasonable and we are reasonably able to change the Personal Information, we will make the correction.  If we do not make the correction, we will take reasonable steps to note on the Personal Information that you requested the correction. You agree that we may retain a copy of the uncorrected Personal Information if we believe that we may have a legal duty to do so.

c.          If you want to exercise either of the above rights, email us at enquiries@shlaw.co.nz.  Your email should provide evidence of who you are and set out the details of your request (e.g. the Personal Information, or the correction, that you are requesting). We may ask for further information to verify your identity if we do

d.          We may charge you our reasonable costs of providing to you copies of your Personal Information or correcting that information.

10.       How long we hold Personal Information

a.          The length of time we hold your Personal Information will be dictated by our engagement with you. As required by the Act, we will endeavour to delete Personal Information when it is no longer required.

b.          If you send us an enquiry, but you do not formally engage us, then we will delete those enquiries after six months. We hold the enquiries for that period as people will often come back to us after several months to engage us based on an earlier enquiry. By sending us an enquiry you acknowledge and agree with this time frame being reasonable.

c.          If we are engaged then we have a legal obligation to hold such Personal Information for at least seven years after the matter has come to an end. Some matters, where there may be an ongoing factor, such as a trust, will, or some form of active contract, we may retain the Personal Information indefinitely if we believe that it may be called on at some point. We believe that this falls within the purposes and allowances of the Act.

11.       Who has access to your Personal Information

a.          For enquiries sent through the Website, these go to a central email system which is accessible to several of our staff. Enquiries will then be forwarded to one of the experts in the most relevant area. Such enquiries may also be saved into our document management system if we are subsequently engaged.

b.          For any Personal Information received after being engaged, this will be saved into our document management system and may also be saved to our server file system. We have security in place to help prevent these systems from being accessible by only our staff and our IT support providers.

c.          When required, we may provide some of your Personal Information to third parties where it is necessary for us to provide the services requested. For example, this could be when we contact a government department or a council, or utilise a translation service or courier service. The Personal Information given will be limited to just what is required for them to provide their service.

12.    Internet use

a.          While we take reasonable steps to maintain secure internet connections, if you provide us with Personal Information over the internet, the provision of that information is at your own risk. This includes any email enquiries, or enquiries sent through our Website, as these are not encrypted.

b.          If you follow a link on our website to another site, the owner of that site will have its own privacy policy relating to your Personal Information.  We suggest you review that site’s privacy policy before you provide Personal Information.

c.          We may use cookies (an alphanumeric identifier that we transfer to your computer’s hard drive so that we can recognise your browser) to monitor your use of the website.  You may disable cookies by changing the settings on your browser. Your disabling of cookies should not impact our ability to provide services to you, but you agree that you will not hold us liable if it does.