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During the course of assessing your eligibility for migration to Australia or
representing you in any aspect of your case, we will need to ask you for quite
a lot of personal information about yourself and your family. You should never
give out that sort of information unless you are sure that it will be used only
for the purpose for which it is given and will be protected by adequate levels
of security and confidentiality. You will also want to have some form of
recourse if your information is misused or abused.
Because we are a law firm operating under the laws of the State of New South
Wales and the Commonwealth of Australia, you can be assured that your personal
information will be protected on two levels: firstly, any misuse of it by the
firm would be a breach of the professional conduct rules applying to legal
practitioners in this State as well as a breach of the Commonwealth Privacy Act,
both of which could lead to financial and professional sanctions being imposed
on the firm; and secondly, the principle of "legal professional privilege"
gives clients of a law firm a right to presume that any communications entered
into for the purpose of seeking or obtaining legal advice will be legally
protected, even where the law might impose requirements on non-lawyers
(including "registered migration agents" who are not lawyers) to reveal similar
information.
In addition to the normal protections applicable to a law firm in New South
Wales, we have also voluntarily "opted-in" to be treated as an organisation
subject to the Privacy Act 1988 covering the whole of Australia. This means we
are legally bound to apply the
National Privacy Principles
contained in that Act to all information collected by us.
In all of your dealings with Michael Jones, Solicitor, you can be assured that
your private information and that of your family will be treated with the
strictest confidence and privilege in accordance with law. Should you have any
queries or complaints in this regard you should direct them in the first
instance to:
The Office of the Legal Services Commissioner of New South Wales or
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Australia
Copyright © 2006 Michael Jones ~ Solicitor. All rights reserved.
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