Privacy Policy

Gilbert + Tobin (G+T) understands that privacy and how we collect, use, disclose and protect your information is important to you. We are committed to ensuring the privacy of your information and to complying with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), which are contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act).

In summary, personal information is information or an opinion (whether true or not) about an identified, or reasonably identifiable, individual.

What Personal Information does G+T collect and hold?

G+T is a leading corporate Australian law firm. The types of personal information that G+T collects will depend on the nature of your dealings with us. We may collect personal information from you when you:

• instruct G+T to provide you with legal advice;
• purchase or subscribe to a G+T online service;
• subscribe to a G+T newsletter;
• subscribe to any of our websites (or sub-domains such as our Careers page or Smart Counsel app for desktop) or to one of our mailing lists;
• attend a G+T seminar;
• have business dealings with us (whether as one of our suppliers, or as a regulator we deal with, or in the context of a transaction), or
• apply, or register your interest for, employment with G+T.

For detailed information as to how we collect, use and disclose the personal information of job applicants, please refer to the section "How does G+T use Personal Information?" of this policy.  

The personal information we will collect from you will usually include your name, title, address and e-mail address and contact numbers (telephone, fax, mobile). If necessary for the purposes of providing advice to you, or for providing you with other information (such as email updates) sometimes we may collect other personal information from you, such as the areas of our practice which you are interested in.  However, we do not collect personal information that we do not need.

Please note that, while we seek to minimise the personal information we collect, if you do not provide us with the personal information we request, we may not be able to provide you with the services and other assistance you seek.

Generally, we endeavour to collect personal information directly from the individuals concerned.  However, if this is not practicable, we may collect personal information about individuals from third parties, including from publicly available sources.  If we do, we will take reasonable steps to ensure that the individuals concerned are made aware of the collection of their information. 

If you are one of G+T’s ‘business contacts’ (e.g. a contact person in one of our suppliers, or in a government agency or company with which we deal), we may collect basic business contact information from you (e.g. your name, title and work contact details) automatically using the details in your email signature.

G+T will not ask to collect sensitive information about you (such as details of your racial or ethnic origin, political affiliation, religious beliefs, sexual preferences, criminal convictions or health information) unless it is needed for the purposes of providing legal advice. 

How does G+T use Personal Information?

G+T’s policy is only to use personal information collected from business contacts for the business purpose for which it was collected. 

Gilbert+ Tobin need to collect personal information so that we can provide our products and services and conduct our business. We also collect personal information so that we can communicate new legal or firm developments, including advertising new products or services that we offer, to our clients and to those people who have subscribed to our website, alert services or mailing lists.

If, at any time, you do not wish to receive these kinds of communications, please let us know using the contact details set out below.

Will Your Personal Information be given to anyone else?

G+T does not sell, rent or trade personal information about you to or with third parties. Personal information may be disclosed outside of G+T in the circumstances described below:

(a) Disclosures to external service providers

Gilbert + Tobin may disclose personal information to external service providers who provide services to you and help us operate our business. Examples of our external service providers include: third party data storage providers; IT and other software and systems providers; companies who provide photocopying and archiving services; advertising and marketing agencies who assist us with our campaigns and programs, and research organisations and consultants who conduct research on our behalf. If Gilbert + Tobin engages external service providers, Gilbert + Tobin takes steps to ensure that those external service providers: comply with the APPs when they handle personal information about you; and are authorised only to use personal information that we provide to them for the limited purposes specified in our agreement with them.

Upskill LMS/Smart Skills

Users of the Smart Skills platform hereby acknowledge and agree that Gilbert + Tobin may disclose your personal information to Upskill Learning Management System Pty Ltd (Upskill LMS) for the purpose of Upskill LMS providing to Gilbert + Tobin, and Gilbert + Tobin providing to you, a learning management system (LMS) and associated services via a hosted platform. Upskill LMS is required to handle your personal information at all times in accordance with its company privacy policy, which can be viewed at: https://upskilllms.com/privacy-policy and may use and disclose your personal information in accordance with such policy.

(b) Disclosures overseas 

Where G+T engages external information technology service providers, we ensure that wherever possible, our data is stored within Australia. Some of our vendors do however store data in overseas locations, including but not limited to UK, New Zealand, USA, and South Africa.

(c) Disclosures required or permitted by law

Otherwise, G+T will only disclose personal information if this is required by law or permitted under the Privacy Act. G+T is also bound by professional obligations of confidentiality, including in relation to personal information. 

Security of Personal Information

G+T takes reasonable steps to ensure the security of your personal information. Our premises are in secure buildings with access restricted to pass card holders. Our IT systems are password protected and we conduct regular audit and data integrity checks. We frequently update our anti-virus software in order to protect our systems (and the data contained in those systems) from computer viruses. In addition, all G+T employees are required, as a condition of employment, to treat personal information held by G+T as confidential

Access and Correction

Under the Privacy Act, you have the right to:

• seek access to your personal information handled by G+T;
• ask us to update or correct your personal information when it is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date; and
• opt-out of receiving direct marketing communications from us.

If you wish to access the personal information that G+T holds about you, please set out your request in writing, and forward this to our Privacy Officer, using the contact details set out at the end of this Privacy Policy.

To provide you with access to your personal information held by us on our current records, G+T can provide you with a copy of the relevant personal information (ordinarily, an electronic print-out or a photocopy). G+T will not charge you for the cost of providing this type of access to these current records.

For legal and administrative reasons, G+T may also archive non-current records containing personal information, such as back up data files and offsite storage. Please note that if we do provide access to old records, we may charge you for the cost of providing such access.

If you are of the view that personal information about you is inaccurate or out of date, or if you have any other queries about access and correction, please contact our Privacy Officer using the contact details set out below. 

Online Privacy Issues

Use of cookies

When you visit our website, a small data file called a "cookie" is stored on your internet enabled device. We use cookies or similar digital markers to maintain user sessions and track the behaviour of website visitors. This enables us to keep our site relevant and useful. However, generally this information will not identify you. We do not link this information back to your identity or other information that you have provided to us.

We and our service providers also use cookies and other digital markers (eg. Clear GIFs’) to assist us with our online marketing services and advertise to our website visitors on other third-party websites or platforms (eg. Google Ads Services or LinkedIn). Cookies placed on third party websites help us to monitor the efficacy of our business relationships with third parties, improve performance as well as personalise your experience when you visit our and our service providers’ websites. When you visit other websites or platforms, you may see an advertisement for Gilbert + Tobin’s products or services because you have previously visited our website. Gilbert + Tobin may disclose the information collected via use of cookies on our websites to third parties for marketing purposes.

By using our website(s) and not opting-out of cookies, you consent to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy.

Most web browsers are set by default to accept cookies. However, if you do not wish to receive cookies you may set your browser to either prompt or refuse cookies (including Gilbert + Tobin’s cookies).   If you use your browser settings to block all cookies, you may not be able to access and/or use all or parts of our website.

Access to other websites

Sometimes our website contains links to other websites, for your convenience and information. When you access a website other than www.gtlaw.com.au, please understand that G+T is not responsible for the privacy practices of that site. We suggest that you review the privacy policies of each site you visit.

Making a complaint

If you wish to make a complaint about how G+T handles your personal information, please contact us setting out your complaint in writing, and forward it to our Privacy Officer, using the contact details below. 

We will deal with all requests for access to personal information or complaints as quickly as possible and will endeavour to get back to you within a reasonable timeframe.

How do we handle the personal information of job applicants?

G+T collects personal information about and from individuals who apply for employment with G+T. The information we collect includes the job applicant’s:

• personal contact details and gender;
• educational and employment history, and relevant qualifications and employment history;
• eligibility to work in Australia; and
• referees’ contact details. 

We may collect this information directly from the job applicant or indirectly from a third party, including from a recruitment agency.  If necessary, we will also collect information about applicants from referees and from professional social networking sites like LinkedIn. 

If the applicant proceeds to the interview stage, we will collect information about the applicant’s performance during interview.   

G+T is committed to a policy of diversity and inclusion. For this reason, we also collect information as to whether a job applicant identifies as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. We collect this information for the sole purpose of monitoring the implementation of our equal employment opportunities policy. G+T will not use this information for any other purpose.   

If you do not provide with us the information we request, we may not be able to process or assess your job application.

G+T uses the personal information we collect about job applicants to assess their eligibility and suitability for employment with the firm. Generally, our assessment of applicants’ personal information will relate to a particular role.  However, we may also retain and use applicants’ personal information to assess their suitability for other roles with the firm. We may disclose personal information to service providers that conduct background and eligibility checks on our behalf.   

For information as to how an applicant may access and correct the personal information we hold about them, or complain about a breach of the APPs, please see the Policy below respectively.   

As a matter of policy, G+T stores all personal information relating to our job applicants is stored in Australia and is not accessible to third parties located outside Australia.

Additional Privacy Information and How to Contact G+T

This G+T Privacy Policy may change from time to time. The G+T Privacy Policy will be made available to anyone who requests it, whether at our offices or by use of our website.

If you have any questions or comments about the G+T Privacy Policy, please set out your request in writing, and forward this to our Privacy Officer, using the contact details below.

Email:  GTPrivacy@gtlaw.com.au

Post: Gilbert + Tobin, GPO Box 3810, Sydney NSW 2001 

Telephone: +61 2 9263 4000 

Fax: +61 2 9263 4111

 

This Privacy Policy applies to:

• The Gilbert + Tobin partnership
• The G+T Services Company Pty Limited.
   

Our Privacy Policy was last updated on 30 June 2019.