Your Privacy Rights

MPLC respects the importance of privacy and the sensitivity of personal information.  As lawyers we have a professional obligation to keep confidential all information we obtain within a lawyer-client relationship.  We are committed to protecting any personal information we possess.  Our Privacy Policy outlines our practices with respect to the management of your personal information and the safeguards in place to protect your privacy.  Our Policy applies to MPLC, and explains how we collect, use and disclose personal information in Canada.

Personal Information Collected by MPLC

For the purposes of this Policy, "personal information" is any information that identifies you, or by which your identity could be deduced.  It includes:  your name, home contact information, telephone number, email address, facsimile number, billing and account information, information relevant to a client's legal matters and other information incidental to the provision of legal advice and services of our firm. Personal information may include personal information about directors, officers, and employees of a client or other party, witnesses, beneficiaries, family members, experts, investigators, decision-makers, adverse parties, other counsel, mediators and arbitrators, and information about shareholders, investors, potential investors or buyers, business partners, targets, competitors or customers of clients.

How MPLC Collects Your Information

Wherever possible, we collect your personal information directly from you at the start of a retainer and throughout the course of our representation of you, both verbally or by written correspondence, including in person, by emails and telephone inquiries.

Sometimes we may obtain information about you from other sources, for example:

• your insurance company, your financial institute, or your employer;
• a government agency or registry;
• your accountant, or other professional business adviser;
• other law firms, agents or consultants retained by you in the past where these parties have information relevant to the matter in which we are acting for you.

Consent

By providing personal information to MPLC, or its service providers and agents, you agree that we may collect, use and disclose such personal information in accordance with the Privacy Policy and as permitted or required by law.  If you do not agree with these terms, you are requested not to provide personal information to us.  Subject to legal requirements and reasonable notice, you may refuse to consent to our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information or you may withdraw your consent to our further collection, use and disclosure of information about you by contacting our Privacy Officer, Aimee Schalles.  Note that if you withdraw your consent to certain uses of your personal information, we may no longer be able to provide certain of our services.

Purpose For Which Your Information Is Collected

MPLC collects, uses, and discloses personal information in order to provide our clients with professional legal services.  In particular, we collect, use and disclose personal information for the following purposes:

• in order to provide you with legal services, fulfil legal duties and avoid conflicts of interest;
• client identification and verification;
• administrative management, to invoice you for legal services, administer accounts, collect and process payments, evaluate credit standing, fulfill contractual obligations and audit our business operations;
• for mailings such as newsletters and announcements relating to our firm;
• to establish and manage client relationships;
• to contact and communicate with clients and other individuals for the purpose of conducting market research, and evaluating client service and satisfaction;
• to meet legal requirements such as complying with court orders and subpoenas;
• to provide information to representatives and advisors to help us comply with legal, accounting or security requirements;
• to develop and manage MPLC's business and operations;
• to consider the admission of individuals or employees as members of the firm;
• for any other purpose for which we have your consent or otherwise permitted by law.

We will not collect personal information indiscriminately and we will not provide your personal information to any third party to allow them to market their products or services.

Disclosure of Your Personal Information

Under certain circumstances, MPLC may disclose your personal information:

• when we are required or authorized by law to do so, for example, if a court issues a subpoena;
• when you have consented to the disclosure;
• when the legal services we are providing to you requires us to give your information to third parties (such as expert witnesses) your consent will be implied, unless you tell us otherwise;
• where it is necessary to establish or collect fees;
• to regulatory (including self-regulatory) or governmental authorities, for example, disclosure of personal information reasonably requested or required by governing bodies of the legal profession in the course of its oversight of our practice;
• if we engage a third party to provide administrative services or eDiscovery services to us (such as computer back-up services or archival file storage) and the third party is bound by our privacy policy;
• if we retain other law firms on your behalf;
• to a person who in our reasonable opinion is providing or seeking information as your agent.

Retention and Security

You consent to your personal information and any related data collected by MPLC and any person or entity delivering services on behalf of MPLC being stored, duplicated or located on servers located outside of Canada. You also consent to your personal information and any related data being transmitted outside of Canada, even when transmitted between destinations located within Canada. Personal information and data located or transmitted outside of Canada will be subject to the laws of other jurisdictions.

MPLC has implemented reasonable physical, organizational and security measures to safeguard the personal information in our custody or control.

We will retain your personal information only as long as needed by us to provide our services and as necessary to comply with legal, accounting or regulatory requirements.

Privacy and Our Website

Cookies – When an individual visitor accesses the MPLC website, we may use a browser feature called a ‘cookie' to collect information such as the type of Internet browser and operating system the visitor uses, the domain name of the website from which the visitor came, date and duration of the visit, number of visits, average time spent on our website, pages viewed and number of cookies accumulated. A cookie is a small text file containing a unique identification number that identifies the visitor's browser, but not necessarily the visitor, to our computers each time our website is visited. Unless a visitor specifically informs us (e.g. by registering for an event or sending us correspondence from the website), we will not know who the individual visitors are. In addition to the identified purposes described in our Privacy Policy, we may use this website information and share it with other organizations with whom we have a commercial relationship to measure the use of our website, to improve the functionality and content of the website and to facilitate usage by a visitor. Visitors can reset their browsers either to notify them when they have received a cookie or refuse to accept cookies. However, if a visitor refuses to accept cookies, he or she may not be able to use some of the features available on our website.

Online Communications – In order to provide our website visitors with a service or information, visitors may voluntarily submit Personal Information to us for purposes such as asking a question, obtaining information, reviewing or downloading a publication, subscribing to a newsletter or a mail or e-mail list, participating in a seminar or other event, and participating in contests and surveys. If you are known to MPLC as a registered user of an online service, we may combine and store Personal Information about your use of our website and the online information you have provided with certain other online and offline information we may have collected.

E-mail Communications – Occasionally, we may send marketing or promotional e-mail communications to you with information that may be useful, including information about the services of MPLC and other third parties with whom we have a relationship. In this process, we may collect certain information such as the date/time you first opened our e-mail communications, the number of times you open our e-mail communications, the number of click-throughs per article, total click-through activity on the contents of our e-mail communications and compile generally the related statistics. We may combine and store any such information to manage and improve our e-mail communications to you. We will include instructions on how to unsubscribe and inform us of preferences if you decide you do not want to receive any future marketing or promotional e-mails from MPLC.

Links – Our website may contain links to other websites which are provided as a convenience only. Visitors are advised that other third party websites may have different privacy policies and practices than MPLC, and MPLC has no responsibility for such third party websites.

Accuracy

It is important that your personal information be accurate and up-to-date.  During the course of our retainer, we ask that you provide us with any changes to your personal information, and contact your lawyer to update the personal information we maintain in our client files.

Changes to the Privacy Policy

MPLC reserves the right to modify or supplement this Privacy Policy at any time.  If we make a change to this Privacy Policy, we will post the changes on our website and make the revised policy changes available upon request to our Privacy Officer.  You should review our Privacy Policy from time to time to ensure you are aware of any changes made.

Access to Your Personal Information

You may request to view your personal information by writing to the Privacy Officer, whose address and email are provided below.  Please note that under certain circumstances, you may not be permitted access, for example where solicitor-client privilege or litigation privilege applies, or where the disclosure of your records would cause security, legal or confidentiality concerns.

Inquiries

Aimee Schalles
MPLC
201-217 Mackenzie Ave
PO Box 2699
Revelstoke, BC V0E 2S0