Your Privacy Rights
On January 1, 2004, all businesses engaged in commercial activities must comply with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/P-8.6/index.html. These obligations extend to lawyers and law firms, including Howard Yegendorf & Associates. The Act gives all Canadians rights concerning the privacy of their personal information.

Howard Yegendorf & Associates is responsible for the personal information we collect and hold. To ensure this accountability, we have developed this policy. Howard Yegendorf & Associates' Chief Privacy Officer ensures that proper personal information procedures and policies are in place, and that all firm members abide by the procedures that are established to protect our clients' personal information.

Why Does Howard Yegendorf & Associates Need Personal Information?
The lawyers and other staff members at Howard Yegendorf & Associates must collect personal information from our clients to fully understand and address their legal issues and to provide them with legal services. Normally, personal information is collected during the initial client contact and on an ongoing basis as we work with our clients. In most cases, the personal information is collected directly from our clients. However at times, we may obtain personal information about our clients from other sources, with our clients permission: for example, from insurance companies, a real estate agent in a property transaction, a government agency or registry, and financial, accounting or other advisors that work with our clients.

Use of Your Personal Information
We limit our collection of personal information to what is required to provide legal services to you, for billing purposes, and to provide legal and firm updates. If you tell us that you no longer wish to receive legal or firm updates, we will not send any further information to you. We do not sell, trade or exchange any personal information that we receive from our clients with third parties to market their products.

Disclosure of Your Personal Information
Any personal information we receive is held in strict confidence. However, we may need to disclose personal information to provide you with the legal services you have requested, or if we are required to do so by law. Circumstances that may require disclosure include:

	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 (for example a lender in a real estate mortgage transaction) your consent will be implied, unless you tell us otherwise;
	where it is necessary to establish or collect fees;
	if we engage a third party to provide administrative services to us (like computer back-up services or archival file storage) and the third party is bound by our privacy policy;
	if we engage expert witnesses on your behalf;
	if we retain other law firms in other jurisdictions, on your behalf;
	if the information is already publicly known.

Updating Information and Correcting Errors
Since we use our clients' contact and other personal information to provide legal services to them, it is important that the information be accurate and up-to-date. While a file is active, we ask our clients to inform us of any changes in their personal information so that we can update our files and records. When a client advises us that the personal information we hold is not accurate, complete or up-to-date, Howard Yegendorf & Associates will take all reasonable steps to correct it.

Is My Personal Information Secure?
Howard Yegendorf & Associates endeavours to take all reasonable precautions to ensure that your personal information is kept safe from loss, unauthorized access, modification or disclosure. Further we will retain your file only so long as is necessary in the circumstances. Safeguards in place to protect your personal information include premises security, restricted file access, proper destruction procedures, and technological safeguards like security software, firewalls, internal password procedures and security policies.

Access to Your Personal Information
You may ask for access to your personal information that we hold at any time.
Summary information is available upon request. More detailed requests that require archive or other retrieval costs may be subject to our normal professional and disbursement fees.
Howard Yegendorf & Associates, in limited circumstances, may deny access when:

	denial of access is required or authorized by law (for example, when a record containing personal information about the requester is subject to a claim of legal professional privilege by one of our other clients) ;
	information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings against a client;
	granting access to a client would have an unreasonable impact on other people's privacy;
	to do so would prejudice negotiations with a client;
	protecting Howard Yegendorf & Associates' rights and property; or
	the request is frivolous or vexatious.

If we refuse your request for access, or refuse a request to correct information, we will send a letter to you outlining why your request has been denied.

Requests for Access or other Privacy Questions or Concerns
If you have any questions or concerns about Howard Yegendorf & Associates' personal information practices, or if you wish to request access to the personal information we hold, or wish to file a complaint, please write to our Chief

Privacy Officer at:
Chief Privacy Officer
Howard Yegendorf & Associates.
55 Metcalfe Street, Suite 750
Ottawa, ON

If you are not satisfied with our response, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada can be reached at:
112 Kent Street,
Ottawa Ontario, K1A 1H3
1.800.282.1376.

Changes to this Privacy Policy
Since Howard Yegendorf & Associates regularly reviews all of its policies and procedures, we may change our Privacy Policy from time to time.

Employment Inquiries
When someone applies to Howard Yegendorf & Associates for a job, we need to consider each applicant's personal information, as part of our review process. We normally retain personal information from candidates after a decision has been made, unless they ask us not to retain such information. If we offer a person a job, which is accepted, the information will be retained in accordance with our privacy procedures for employee records.

For More Information
To find out more about federal privacy laws, contact the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at:

112 Kent Street,
Ottawa Ontario, K1A 1H3
1-800-282-1376
or visit their website at www.privcom.gc.ca.