Privacy

How we handle your information

What this website collects, what happens to your information once you make contact about a dispute, and how to see it, correct it or complain about it.

Last updated: 23 September 2026

A civil dispute is made of documents about your life or your business: contracts, invoices, bank records, correspondence, sometimes medical or financial material. To advise you at all we have to read them. This page explains what happens to them.

My Civil Lawyer is an informational website about civil disputes in New South Wales. Legal services are provided by Jameson Law, and in this policy we, us and our mean that firm. We handle personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. We are also bound by the duty of confidentiality a solicitor owes a client, which is stricter than privacy law and is dealt with further down this page.

What this website collects

You can read every page of this site without telling us who you are. Information is collected only when you send an enquiry, or automatically by the service that hosts the site.

The enquiry form is deliberately short. It asks for enough to let us come back to you and work out whether we can help, and no more. Please do not use it to send the detail of your matter and do not attach documents to it. It is a contact form, not a secure way to transfer files.

Four things are asked for: your name, your email address, a message, and a tick to confirm you have read this policy. A phone number is optional and the form says so. There is also a hidden field that people never see and never fill in — automated submissions do, which is how they are discarded, and it records nothing about you.

Enquiry form: your name and your email address, which the form requires
Enquiry form: your phone number, which is optional
Enquiry form: your message, which is whatever you choose to tell us
Enquiry form: the tick confirming you have read this policy
Hosting records: your IP address, the date and time of each request, the pages requested, the response given, and the type of browser and device you used
Cookies and analytics: any cookie set by this site, and any measurement data collected by an analytics service the site uses

If you would rather not use the form, say so and we will tell you another way to make contact. You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings, and this site will still work.

Why we collect it

Personal information is collected only where it is reasonably necessary for one of the activities below, which is the test the Australian Privacy Principles apply.

To answer your enquiry and tell you whether we can help
To run a conflict check before we act, which means checking whether the firm already acts for someone whose interests are opposed to yours
To advise you, and to prepare, send, file and conduct a claim or a defence on your instructions
To meet the obligations a law practice has under the Legal Profession Uniform Law, including costs disclosure, billing and keeping proper records
To keep this website available and secure

If you do not engage us we still keep a record of your enquiry, so that a later conflict check picks it up. That is how you stay protected, not how you end up on a list. Making an enquiry does not put you on a marketing list.

Civil disputes can involve sensitive information

Sensitive information is a category the Privacy Act treats more carefully than ordinary personal information. Civil disputes do not always involve it, but several kinds do.

A negligence claim can turn on health information. A defamation matter can involve information about a person’s reputation, beliefs or private life. A property or family business dispute can involve financial information about people who are not parties at all.

Sensitive information can generally be collected only with your consent and only where it is reasonably necessary. We ask for it when the claim or the defence actually requires it, we tell you why at the time, and we do not ask for more than the matter needs.

Please do not send sensitive information through the enquiry form. Wait until we have confirmed that we can act and have told you how to send documents.

Who we give it to

In a civil dispute, some disclosure is unavoidable, because a claim is made by telling the other side and the court what it is.

If proceedings are commenced, the material relied on goes to the court or tribunal and to the other party. Court files are subject to the court’s own rules about access, and hearings in the courts of New South Wales are generally open to the public. That is a feature of the system rather than a decision we make, and it is one of the things to weigh before commencing anything.

Everyone else receives your information only on your instructions or where the law requires it.

We do not sell personal information. We do not give it to data brokers and we do not pass it to other businesses for their marketing.

The other party and their lawyers, through pleadings, evidence, correspondence and discovery
A court, tribunal or mediator dealing with the matter
Counsel we brief, and experts retained to give an opinion in your matter
The firm's insurer and auditors, where the law or the policy requires it
The technology and document storage providers that host the systems your file sits in

Where a disclosure is required by an Australian law, or by a court or tribunal order, we may have to make it without your instructions. If that happens and we are permitted to tell you, we will.

How it is stored and kept secure

We take reasonable steps to protect personal information from misuse, interference and loss, and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. In practice that means access controls on the systems holding client files, limiting access to the people working on your matter, and secure destruction of material that is no longer needed.

A law practice keeps client files for a period after a matter ends, because obligations to produce them can outlive the matter, and because a civil file can be relevant to a later dispute or to enforcing a judgment.

If a data breach occurs that is likely to result in serious harm, the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme in the Privacy Act requires notification to the people affected and to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. We would also tell you plainly what had happened and what you should do about it.

If you want to know what we still hold from a matter that has finished, you can ask. See Seeing your information, and correcting it below.

Information sent or held overseas

Email, document storage and practice management systems are often provided by companies that store or back up data outside Australia.

Before personal information is disclosed to an overseas recipient, the Australian Privacy Principles require reasonable steps to be taken to ensure the recipient does not breach those principles, which is normally done through the contract with the provider.

A dispute itself can also reach overseas, where a party, a witness or a document is in another country. Where that is going to happen in your matter, we will tell you before it does.

If you would prefer that a particular document is not sent overseas, tell us. We cannot change what a court requires, but we can explain what a disclosure involves before it is made.

Seeing your information, and correcting it

You can ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and you can ask us to correct it if it is wrong, out of date, incomplete or misleading. Ask in writing and tell us what you are after. A whole file, or a particular document, is much easier to find than everything.

There is no charge for making a request. If a request is large enough that gathering it involves real work, we will tell you what the charge will be before we start, and it will not be excessive. We will respond within a reasonable period; the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner treats 30 days as reasonable.

Access can be refused only on the limited grounds set out in the Australian Privacy Principles. The ones most likely to come up in a civil matter are these.

Giving access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of another person
The information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings between you and us, and would not be available through discovery
Giving access would be unlawful, or refusing access is required or authorised by an Australian law or by a court or tribunal order
Giving access would reveal information relating to a commercially sensitive decision-making process

A civil file often contains information about other people — a former business partner, a co-owner, a witness — so a file is not always released in full. If we refuse access, or refuse to make a correction, we will tell you why in writing and how to complain about it. If we do not agree that something is wrong, you can ask us to attach a statement to the record saying that you disagree.

Confidentiality and legal professional privilege

Privacy law is not the strongest protection your information has here. Two others sit above it.

The first is confidentiality. A solicitor must not disclose a client’s confidential information, and that duty continues after your matter has finished and after the file is closed.

The second is client legal privilege, usually called legal professional privilege. Confidential communications between you and us made for the dominant purpose of giving you legal advice, or for use in litigation, are privileged. The privilege belongs to you rather than to us, and it generally means the communication cannot be compelled out of us.

Privilege can be lost by sharing. In a civil dispute that matters a great deal: forwarding our advice to a business partner, an accountant, a family member or the other side may waive privilege in it, and the other side may then be entitled to see it. Ask us before you send advice on.

Posting about your dispute, or sending our advice to somebody who is not a party, is the most common way clients damage their own position. If you are not sure, ask first.

If you have a complaint

Tell us first. Put it in writing, say what happened and say what you would like done about it. A privacy complaint is dealt with by the practice rather than by the person you were dealing with, and making one does not change how your matter is run.

If we have not responded within 30 days, or you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. The OAIC asks you to complain to the organisation first, and it can be reached on 1300 363 992 or through its website.

A complaint about our legal service, our costs or our conduct as solicitors is a different thing and takes a different path. That is set out on our complaints page, and the external body for it is the Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner, not the OAIC.

This policy covers this website and the civil dispute work offered through it. Parts of it describe what the law requires and cite the source; the rest is a commitment about how your information is handled. If we change it, the current version will always be on this page and the date at the top will change. See also our terms of use and our accessibility statement.

Privacy requests and complaints

Make a privacy request or a privacy complaint through the contact page, and say plainly which it is so that it reaches the right person rather than being treated as a general enquiry.

Enquiries and requests

Through the form on our contact page. Say plainly what kind of request it is so that it reaches the right person.

Who you are contacting

My Civil Lawyer is an informational website about civil disputes in New South Wales. Legal services are provided by Jameson Law. Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner

1300 363 992, or lodge a complaint at oaic.gov.au