Privacy Policy

Cowan Law respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your information. This policy sets out our obligations to you, including how we collect, use and safeguard your information however you engage with us.

PERSONAL INFORMATION​

When you engage with us as a potential or actual client or employee, your personal information we may collect includes:

• your general information, such as your name, contact details and billing information;
• email communications with us and your written and verbal interactions with us;
• any details you provide to us as part of the Anti-Money Laundering legislation;
• your business interests and areas of interest and expertise (if you provide these to us or they are publicly available);
• your credit history; and
• ​if you are applying for a job with us, we may collect information about you relating to recruitment including your work history, academic record and any relevant records or information such as criminal records, visa information, and practising certificates. We may collect such information from third parties such as your previous employers, referees, recruitment agencies, government departments or educational institutions.

We may use your personal information:

• to provide you with our services and information and to maintain and develop our business relationship with you;
• for employment purposes, such as considering you for a role;
• to carry out conflict checks and client due diligence and monitor our relationship with you for compliance with applicable laws;
• for promotional and marketing purposes;
• to improve or update our services or business;
• for internal purposes (such as staff training);
• to contact you in relation to any enquiries you make; and
• to confirm or update your contact details.

We will only disclose your personal information to a third party:

• where you have authorised us to do so;
• where those third parties help us provide our services to you (for example, another consultancy firm, law firm, expert witness or barrister you have engaged,

or your bank during the process of billing);

• on a confidential basis and only to the extent required in the case of promoting the firm's and our people's expertise in publications and directories;
• where your personal information is not identifiable or in aggregate form, for example, for the purposes of reporting or responding to surveys;
• if we are required to or permitted by law to disclose such information; or
• if we are required to or permitted to by the Law Society's Rules of Professional Conduct.

OUR WEBSITE USES COOKIES

Cookies are small text files placed on your computer's hard drive to allow us and/or the host of our website to record how many times a user or computers within a user's network of computers visit the website, the number of times various pages of the website have been accessed and other similar information. You may disable receipt of cookies using features of your web browser that disable or turn off cookies. We will not use cookies to retrieve information that is unrelated to your visit or your interaction with the website.

We can collect your IP address. An IP address is a number that is assigned to your computer when you use the internet. The IP address data that we collect does not contain any personally identifiable information about you and is used to administer our site, to determine the numbers of different visitors to the site and to gather broad data.

We do not provide any personal information collected via our public website or the non-public areas maintained on our website to any third parties without the consent of those who provided the information.

When you visit the public areas of our website, you remain anonymous, however, if you use email links via the website, access password protected areas, or otherwise provide us with personally identifiable information on the website, you will not remain anonymous.

GENERAL PRIVACY ACT MATTERS

We take all reasonable steps to protect your personal information from unauthorised access, use, disclosure, alteration or destruction. Further, we will only retain your personal information for as long as it is required for the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy.

Under the Privacy Act 2020, you have the right to request to obtain, or have corrected, any personal information that we hold about you. If you want to make a request, please contact any Partner of Cowan Law.

From time to time, Cowan Law may update this Privacy Policy. All revisions will be made available on our website and will take effect from the date that the revision is made available.

This Policy was last updated on 26 May 2023.

More information is available at the Privacy Commissioner's website at https://www.privacy.org.nz