Clark Wilson LLP is committed to protecting personal information that we collect, use and disclose in the course of providing legal services and to complying with all applicable privacy laws, regulatory requirements and our professional obligations.  Our lawyers have professional and ethical obligations to maintain client information in confidence.  This privacy policy (“Policy”) supplements our professional and ethical obligations by setting out how we collect, use, disclose and manage personal information of clients and potential clients, whether that information is collected via our website www.cwilson.com (“Website”) and through our provision of legal services (“the “Services”).  In this Policy, the terms “you”, “user” and “your” refer to a visitor of our Website or user of the Services and the terms “we”, “us” and “our” refer to Clark Wilson LLP.

In this Policy, “personal information” means information about an identifiable individual, such as your name, home address or contact information (including home telephone number and personal e-mail address).  Please note that not all information that you share with us is considered personal information: for example, business contact information is not considered personal information.

Collection and Use of Personal Information

In the course of providing Services and through our Website, we may collect your personal information. Personal information collected by us is used only for the purposes described in this Policy, or for other purposes which are disclosed to you and to which you consent.

We collect and use personal information from clients and potential clients based on the information and services requested. Examples of the types of personal information collected are set out below:

• name, address, contact details (including phone numbers and email addresses), bank account or other financial details for our accounts and other incidental information relating to the Services we provide;
• details regarding legal issues, which will vary based on the type of issue for which you seek advice and may include financial, employment, or tax information (as examples), and any other information that we may request or that you may provide when we act on your behalf;
• while acting for clients, we may collect information about employees of clients, and other parties, such as adverse parties, other counsel, witnesses and potential witnesses, advisors and consultants; and
• other information that we may collect with your consent or as permitted or required by law.

We use this information:

• to establish and manage our business relationship with you, including:
  • to offer and provide legal services or legal information to you (including with respect to general areas of legal interest, such as when we invite you to attend one of our seminars or events or send you newsletters or other communications regarding general legal issues);
  • to issue and collect accounts; and
  • to fulfill our ethical and professional obligations;
• for potential clients, to confirm whether we can act for you, having regard to our professional and ethical obligations regarding conflicts of interest;
• as allowed or required by law; and
• for other purposes where you have provided consent.

Further, we collect and use personal information (or other information) from users of our Website in a variety of ways.  Specifically, we may collect and use personal information collected through our Website:

• to share information about us, our Website and other products and services with you;
• to communicate with you regarding inquiries for information or other requests submitted through our Website;
• to distribute newsletters and other information that you have requested, including through third party marketing and email platforms; and
• for other purposes for which you have provided your consent.

We may also collect aggregate information which tells us about visitors to our Website, but not the identity of those visitors. For example, we may collect information about the date, time and duration of visits and which pages of our Website are most commonly accessed. The purpose of collecting this aggregate information is to help us administer and improve our Website. We reserve the right to provide our analyses based on such anonymous and aggregated data to third parties.

Additionally, if you apply or inquire about an employment opportunity with us, we may use personal information you provide to process and respond to your application or inquiry.

By submitting personal information to us, you consent to us collecting your personal information.

How We Disclose and Share Your Personal Information

We disclose personal information only as described in this Policy, with your consent, or as otherwise permitted or required by law. To provide legal services, we may sometimes disclose our clients’ personal information to third parties, including foreign agents and government or regulatory agencies. We may disclose personal information:

• to third parties, where disclosure is necessary to provide legal services to you, including foreign agents or law firms retained to act on your behalf, experts, consultants or as part of a proposed or actual transaction, such as a financing or other business transaction;
• to our service providers, inside or outside Canada, who assist us with marketing or other services, including mailing or payment processing services. We use reasonable measures to require our service providers to use your personal information only to perform the applicable services.  For example, we use MailChimp to manage and distribute our newsletters to subscribers.  More information on what personal information MailChimp processes and how it uses it, please refer to MailChimp’s Privacy Policy;
• where we are required or authorized by law to do so, for example, where the rules of court require us to provide personal information to the opposite side and the court in a litigation matter or where a court issues a subpoena or order;
• to third parties, where it is necessary to collect fees, for instance, to a financial institution or collection agent;
• to anyone who we reasonably believe is your agent;
• to third parties where you have instructed us to disclose your personal information to such parties;
• to our insurers or regulatory agencies (including our governing law societies) to comply with our professional and ethical obligations related to the practice of law; and
• where you consent or as permitted or required by law.

Consent

It is important to us that we collect, use or disclose your personal information only where we have your consent to do so or as provided in this Policy. Depending on the sensitivity of the personal information, your consent may be express, implied or deemed. Express consent can be given orally, electronically or in writing. Implied consent is consent that can reasonably be inferred from your action or inaction. Deemed consent is consent we assume in the event that you do not exercise an opt-out mechanism offered to you.  If you choose to provide any personal information to us, we assume that you consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as outlined in this Policy

Consent to the collection, use and disclosure of personal information by us may be implied by the fact that you have engaged us to provide legal services, where the collection, use and disclosure of personal information relates to the performance of those services.  If you provide personal information about another person to us, we assume you have the consent of that individual to enable us to collect, use or disclose their information as described in this Policy.

If you do not consent, please do not provide your personal information or, where applicable, exercise the opt-in or opt-out options offered. You may change or withdraw your consent at any time, subject to legal or contractual restrictions and reasonable notice, by contacting our Privacy Officer by email or one of the other means listed below under the heading “Contacting Us” set out below.  Note that if you withdraw your consent to certain uses of your personal information, we may no longer be able to provide some or all of our Services.

We may also collect, use or disclose your personal information without your consent, for example, to collect a debt you owe to us or to comply with applicable laws or court orders.

We assume, unless you advise us otherwise, that by receiving a copy of this Policy or by continuing to deal with us, you have consented to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as explained in this Policy.

Legal Basis – EEA

For our commercial activities in the European Economic Area (EEA), the legal basis for processing your personal information depends on the circumstances for which it was collected.

In many circumstances, we will seek consent to process your personal information for specific purposes.  In those instances, we will not process your personal information other than for those identified purposes without your prior consent or as otherwise permitted by law.  However, we may also rely on one or more of the following legal bases (as applicable) to process your personal information:

• to enter into contracts and comply with our contractual commitments to you;
• to pursue our legitimate business interests, including to provide our Services to you and to manage our business relationship; and
• to protect our legal rights and interests and comply with our legal obligations.

Where We Keep Your Personal Information

Personal information we collect is stored and processed by us primarily in Canada, regardless of your country of residence. We also use third party service providers, including payment processors and technology partners, to provide the infrastructure required to provide our Services.  Those service providers may store and process personal information in Canada, the United States and other jurisdictions.  Personal information provided to third parties outside of Canada is subject to the laws of those jurisdictions and may not be afforded the same legal protections that are available in Canada.  In those cases, we will put appropriate contractual and other controls to protect your personal information, as required by applicable laws.

If you are located in the EEA, we take steps to ensure that adequate protections and appropriate safeguards are in place for your personal information that is processed or stored outside of the EEA. This may include reliance on the adequacy status of the country’s data protection laws (in the case of personal information processed in Canada), the incorporation of standard data protection clauses in our agreements with third parties or reliance on an EU-US or Swiss-US Privacy Shield registration.

By providing us with your personal information, you consent to the transmission, processing and storage of your personal information in these countries.

Security

We have implemented reasonable physical, organization and technological security processes designed to protect the personal information in our control.  Technological and operational policies and procedures are in place to protect personal information from misuse, loss and unauthorized modification or disclosure. We will dispose of personal information where it is no longer necessary to fulfil the purposes for which the information was collected, in accordance with our documented retention policy or as required by law.

Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed as completely secure. While we strive to protect such information, including using a third party provider (with encryption technology) to process account payments on our Website, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information transmitted to us over our Website.

Cookies and similar technologies

When you visit our Website, a cookie may be placed within the memory of your internet access device. We may use permanent cookies or server-side artifacts to help us track use of our Website by users, including casual visitors to our Website—such as the number and frequency of visits to our pages and which parts of our Website are visited.  This information provides us with constructive feedback about our Website so that we can identify the most effective areas and improve the less popular ones.

Cookies cannot determine the identity of individual users. It is a feature of your internet browser which you can disable at any time. However, if you refuse or disable cookies, you may be limited in some areas of our Website.

Similarly, we may also collect information regarding the type of device, your operating system, the browser you use, your internet service provider, your domain name, your internet protocol (IP) address, the date and time that you accessed our service, the website that referred you to our Website, the web pages you requested and the subject of the ads you click or scroll over, and use such information to evaluate service performance and service quality and to optimize the user’s experience of our Website. To collect this information, we use cookies, web beacons and similar technologies.  MailChimp uses these technologies to allow us to track whether you have opened our newsletter emails and clicked on any of the links, which helps us better understand the level of interest in our newsletters and plan future content.

For more information, see our Cookies Policy.

Direct Communications

We are committed to complying with Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation.

Where we have your consent or it is lawful to do so, we may provide you with direct communications about general legal issues which may be of interest to you. Such information may be sent to you by email or post.

If you do not wish to receive further materials about our Services and legal developments or if you do not wish to receive further invitations to seminars and functions, you may unsubscribe or ask us not to contact you for these purposes by contacting our Privacy Officer by email or by one of the other means listed below under the heading “Contacting Us”.

Access, Corrections and Other Rights

You have the right to know what personal information we have about you and to correct any inaccuracies. We also take reasonable steps to ensure your personal information is accurate for the purposes for which we use it, including to provide you with Services.  If there has been a change in your personal information, please inform us as soon as possible to ensure our records are up-to-date.

In certain circumstances, you may have additional rights, including under applicable data protection laws, to:

• request a copy of your personal information;
• request further information about how we use your personal information;
• request us to restrict our use or disclosure of your personal information;
• object to our use or disclosure of your personal information; and
• request us to delete the personal information we hold about you.

Please direct any such requests by email to our Privacy Officer or by one of the other means listed below under the heading “Contacting Us”.

Your request will be investigated as soon as possible and you will be provided with a written response.

Data Retention

We may retain your personal information as long as is necessary in order to manage our relationship with you (or fulfill the purposes for which it was collected), in accordance with our documented retention policy or as otherwise permitted by law. The length of time we retain personal information varies and may extend beyond the end of your relationship with us.

Links to other Websites

Our Website may contain links to the websites of other organizations which may be of interest to you. Similarly, you may be directed to the websites of other organizations to perform certain functions provided on our Website. Linked websites are responsible for their own privacy practices and you should check those websites for their respective privacy policies.

Changes to the Policy

We reserve the right to change this Policy at any time and will take reasonable steps to advise affected individuals of any material changes, if necessary.  You should review this Policy from time to time to ensure that you are aware of and accept any changes made.

Contacting Us

If you have any questions or comments about this Policy, your information, our third-party disclosure practices or your consent choices, please contact our Privacy Officer at PrivacyOfficer@cwilson.com. You may also contact us at:

Clark Wilson LLP
900-885 West Georgia Street
Vancouver, BC V6C 3H1
(T) (604) 687-5700

Last Revised:  May, 2021