Professional Obligation

Personal Information

For the purposes of this Policy, “Personal Information” means any information, recorded in any form, about an identified individual, or an individual whose identity may be inferred or determined from the information. This policy does not cover any information, recorded in any form, about more than one individual where the identity of a specific individual is not known and cannot be inferred from the information. Personal Information does not include the name or business address or telephone number of an employee of an organization.

Using contractual or other arrangements, ERYOU Barristers shall ensure that agents, contractors or third party service providers, who may receive Personal Information in the course of providing services to ERYOU Barristers, protect that Personal Information in a manner consistent with the principles articulated in this Policy Statement.

Professional Relationship

As a general rule, all information concerning the business and affairs of a person or organization acquired (1) for the purpose of determining whether ERYOU Barristers will enter into a professional relationship or (2) in the course of a professional relationship, shall be held in strict confidence and not revealed to anyone unless expressly or implicitly authorized by the person or organization concerned. A professional relationship develops when ERYOU Barristers agrees to be retained to provide services to a particular individual or organization. In order to protect their own interests, individuals or organizations should not submit confidential information until they have had a direct discussion with a professional at the firm regarding the retention of our firm to provide legal services.

The Collection, Use & Disclosure of Personal Information

Your provision of Personal Information to ERYOU Barristers means that you agree and consent that we may collect, use and disclose your Personal Information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with these terms, you are requested not to provide any Personal Information to us. Unfortunately, this may negatively impact on our ability to provide our services and must, therefore, be taken into consideration by you when making this decision.

ERYOU Barristers collects only such information from individuals or organizations as is required for the purposes of providing services or information to them and does not sell, trade, barter or exchange for consideration any Personal Information it has obtained. Unless permitted by law, no Personal Information is collected about an individual, without first obtaining the consent of the individual to the collection, use and dissemination of that information.

Please note that there are circumstances where the use and/or disclosure of Personal Information may be justified or permitted or where ERYOU Barristers is obliged to disclose information without consent. Such circumstances may include:

• Where the information is public;
• Where required by law or by order of requirement of a court, administrative agency or other governmental tribunal;
• Where the legal services we are providing to you require us to give your information to a third party, unless you instruct us otherwise;
• Where it is necessary in the engagement of expert witnesses on your behalf;
• Where it is necessary to retain other law firms in other jurisdictions on your behalf;
• Where it is necessary to establish or collect monies owing to ERYOU Barristers; or
• Where it is necessary to permit ERYOU Barristers to pursue available remedies or limit any damages that ERYOU Barristers may sustain.

Where obliged or permitted to disclose information without consent, ERYOU Barristers will take precautions to prevent disclosure of more information than is required.

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.

Retention of Personal Information

ERYOU Barristers keeps Personal Information only as long as it is required for the reasons it was collected. The length of time we retain information varies, depending on the product or service and the nature of the information. This period may extend beyond the end of a person’s relationship with us but it will be only for so long as it is necessary for us to have sufficient information to respond to any issues that may arise at a later date. When your Personal Information is no longer required for ERYOU Barristers’purposes, we have procedures to shred, destroy, delete, erase or convert it into an anonymous form.

Security Measures

ERYOU Barristers endeavours to maintain adequate physical, procedural and technical security with respect to its offices and information storage facilities so as to prevent any loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, or modification of Personal Information. We further protect Personal Information by restricting access to it to those employees that we have determined need to know that information in order that ERYOU Barristers may provide its services.

When communicating Personal Information to ERYOU Barristers, you may wish to note that there is no method of transmitting or storing data that is completely secure. While the physical characteristics of each are different, mail, telephone calls, faxes and transmissions over the Internet are all susceptible to possible loss, misrouting, interception and misuse of the information being communicated or transmitted. ERYOU Barristers attempts to strike a reasonable balance between security and efficiency. In communicating with clients and others, we may request the right to use a method of communication that is less secure than some of its less convenient alternatives. An example of this is e-mail. At this time, when we use e-mail, it may be sent as unencrypted plain text. We do this because we believe that many of our clients and others cannot readily process encrypted e-mail. This is done for their convenience but has the security concern that, if misrouted or intercepted, it could be read more easily than encrypted e-mail.

This Web Site

ERYOU Barristers does not track information about visitors except an aggregate count of visitors. Our web site does not presently use cookies, clear GIFs or any type of spyware. “Cookies” are files or pieces of information that may be stored in a computer’s hard drive when an individual visits a web site. If you do not wish to accept cookies, you can set your browser to refuse cookies or to alert you when cookies are being sent without impacting upon the functionality of our site.

Changes to this Policy

ERYOU Barristers will from time to time review and revise its privacy practices and this Policy Statement. In the event of any amendment, an appropriate notice will be posted on our web site. The date of the last amendment will appear at the bottom of our Privacy Page.  Policy changes will apply to the information collected from the date of posting of the revised Policy Statement as well as to existing information held by ERYOU Barristers.

Access to Your Personal Information

You may ask for access to any personal information we hold about you. Summary information is available upon request. More detailed requests that require archival or other retrieval costs may be subject to our normal professional and disbursements fees.

Inquiries or Concerns

In the event an individual has questions about (a) access to Personal Information; (b) the collection, use, management or disclosure of Personal Information; or (c) this Policy Statement, that person should contact either the lawyer in charge of the matter or with whom he or she has had contact or directly with Stephen J. Wojciechowski. Contact information for these individuals is available on our Profiles page, and our general firm contact information is available on our Home page.