Medicine Hat Legal Help Centre works with Calgary Legal Guidance (CLG) to collect, secure and maintain the privacy of our client’s information as per CLG’s privacy policies.
Please see these below:
Calgary Legal Guidance (CLG) is a client-centered organization that provides assistance, information, and advocacy
to individuals experiencing financial hardship who need legal services and other representation. CLG exists to
provide legal assistance and information to economically and socially disadvantaged persons who would not
otherwise have access to such services.
CLG respects your privacy and recognizes the importance of protecting and securing your personal information.
Our staff lawyers and volunteer lawyers have a professional obligation to keep confidential all information they
receive within a lawyer-client relationship. CLG staff and volunteers are committed to protecting all personal
information under our control. This Privacy Policy outlines how we manage your personal information and
safeguard your privacy.
What is Personal Information?
Personal information is any information about an identifiable individual.
What Personal Information Do We Collect?
We collect your name, address and personal contact information, information about your finances including your
sources and amount of income, your date of birth, and other information about you and your dependents.
In the course of providing you with legal or other services we may collect or obtain additional personal information
about you through other parties involved in your matter or through court documents. The information we collect
when providing legal or other services will vary from case to case.
How Do We Use Your Personal Information?
We use your personal information to see if you qualify for our services, to help ensure we are avoiding conflicts of interest as far as possible, and to provide you with any referrals, or legal and other services.
We also use your personal information to create reports for the organizations that fund our services and to evaluate our programs. All our funding reports use non-identifiable information. We do not disclose any information that could be used to identify you.
We will never sell or otherwise provide any of your personal information to any other parties for marketing purposes.
Collecting Your Personal Information
Wherever possible, we collect your personal information directly from you. Sometimes, however, we may receive information about you from other sources such as your landlord, a government agency, your doctor or employer. We will obtain your consent to collect your personal information from other sources.
Your Consent
In most cases we will ask you for your consent to collect, use or disclose your personal information. Normally we ask for your consent in writing but in some circumstances we may accept your verbal consent.
Sometimes your consent will be implied through your relationship or actions. For example, if you have asked us for legal assistance with a matter concerning your landlord, your conduct implies that we are authorized to contact your landlord on your behalf to discuss your case.
Disclosure of Your Personal Information
In some certain situations, CLG may disclose your personal information to individuals outside of our organization:
- When you have consented to the disclosure
- When we are required by law, court order or professional regulatory body to do so
- If we engage a third party to provide support services to us such as computer back-up services or file storage
Keeping our Records Accurate
We aim to keep our information about you as accurate as possible while you are an active client. If you would like to review or change the personal information you have supplied us with, please contact us at [email protected].
Security of Your Personal Information
We use technology and policies to protect your personal information from unauthorized access and improper use and will update these measures as new technology becomes available, as appropriate.
CLG takes reasonable precautions to ensure that your personal information is kept safe from loss, unauthorized access or disclosure. For example, some of the steps we take to protect your personal information include:
- Securing our office space and physical premises against unauthorized entry
- Restricting file access on a need to know basis only
- Using technical safeguards such as security software and firewalls to prevent unauthorized computer access
- Use of internal passwords to restrict access to computer files
- “Blocked caller” function on external calls
The Use of Cookies
We may store some information (commonly known as a “cookie”) on your computer when you look at our Website. We are able to read these cookies for information purposes when you revisit our Website.
The type of information may we collect as a result of a cookie being accepted by you is specific to your PC and includes the IP address, the date and time the PC visited the Website, what parts of our Website were looked at and whether the web pages requested were delivered successfully. This information is anonymous; it represents a computer rather than a person.
We may use the cookie information to improve our knowledge of the use of our Website and to enable us to be able to ascertain whether the Website is operating at an optimal level. This allows us to enhance our web offerings to you.
You can erase or block this information by changing the settings on your computer (please refer to your help screens or manuals). If you do erase or block this information you may not be able to utilize some features of the Website.
Access Your Personal Information
You may ask for access to any record containing your personal information we hold about you. Your right of access to your personal information is not absolute and CLG may deny access in some limited circumstances such as when disclosure:
- Could reveal confidential information about others, and the personal information cannot be separated from the record;
- Could reasonably be expected to threaten the life or security of another person
- Where the information was created in the course of a formal dispute resolution process such as a negotiation with the lawyer for an opposing party
If we deny your access request, or refuse a request to correct information, we will explain why.
If you wish to access a record containing your personal information, please complete this form (click here for PDF) or (click here for online version) and send it to our Privacy Officer at [email protected].
Retention and Destruction of Personal Information
CLG will only retain your personal information for as long as it is reasonable to do so for business or legal purposes, or as required by legislation or regulatory bodies. Once the retention period for records containing personal information has expired, CLG will destroy those records.
Communicating With Us
Please be aware that email is not a secure way of communicating with us. CLG does not guarantee the confidentiality of any email transmissions and you should consider this when sending us personal or confidential information by email.
Also, please be aware that viewing this website or contacting any staff, students or volunteers of CLG through this website, by email, telephone and/or fax does not create a lawyer-client relationship and does not mean that we are going to act for you. Persons do not become CLG clients unless and until we agree to act for you.
Employment and/or Volunteer Inquiries
If you apply to CLG for employment or volunteer opportunities we need to consider your personal information as part of our review process. We normally retain information of candidates after a decision has been made, for one
year unless you ask us not to retain the information. If we offer you the job and you accept it, or if you are successful at securing a volunteer position, the information will be retained in accordance with our procedure for employee and volunteer records.
Use of Your Personal Information Submitted to Other Websites
We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other websites even if:
- You accessed the third party website using links from our Website; or
- You linked to our Website from a third party website
We recommend that you check the privacy policy of each site you visit and contact the owner or operator of such website if you have any concerns or questions.
Will This Policy Change?
From time to time we may make changes to this Privacy Policy. If we make any substantial changes to this Privacy Policy and the way in which we use your personal information we will post these changes on this page. Please check our Privacy Policy on a regular basis.
How You Can Contact Us
If you would like to contact us about our Privacy Policy you can do so by emailing our Privacy Officer at [email protected].