Privacy Policy
14 July 2026
Our privacy policy
1. Introduction
Hobson Legal Pty Ltd is referred to in this Privacy Policy as we, us or our.
This Privacy Policy explains how we manage personal information. It also describes your rights to access and correct personal information we hold about you, and how you can make a complaint about our management of that information. This is in addition to our obligations of confidentiality to clients and other parties arising from sources other than the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (the Privacy Act).
1.1. Application of this Policy
This Privacy Policy only applies to some of the personal information we manage. It only applies to personal information we manage for the purposes of or in connection with our obligations under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (the AML/CTF Act)
Other personal information we manage remains excluded by applicable exemptions in the Privacy Act.
1.2. Policy Updates
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. The current version will be available on our website at hobsonlegal.com.au/privacy
2. Personal information: what we collect
2.1. Types of personal information
We collect your contact and identity details, financial information and case related information about you and any relevant entity or person. This may include sensitive information.
The types of personal information we may collect includes:
Identity information: name, date of birth, gender, signature, photographic identification, offices or directorships held;
Contact information: residential and postal addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers;
Professional and business information: occupation, employer, job title, professional qualifications, business holdings and structures;
Financial information: bank account details, billing information, payment card details;
Matter-related information: information relevant to your legal matter or the legal matter of our client;
Transaction information: details of services provided to you or your organisation;
Communication records: records of correspondence and communications with you;
Website and technical data: IP address, browser type, device information, pages visited, cookies (see section 8); and
Recruitment information: employment history, qualifications, references, right to work status, background check results.
2.2. Identity Verification and the AML/CTF Act
We may be required to verify your identity and collect certain information under the AML/CTF Act when we provide designated services. Identity documents might also be required for other services such as court matters, real property transactions and asset dealings.
This includes collecting identification documents and information about the source of funds and beneficial ownership of entities.
3. How we collect personal information
3.1. Sources of information
We collect information directly from our clients, from other lawyers, government sources or public sources such as registers or the internet.
Direct Collection
Where reasonable and practicable, we collect personal information directly from you.
This may occur when you:
engage us to provide legal services;
respond to communication with us or engage a solicitor or agent to do so;
contact us by telephone, email, post or in person;
complete forms or provide documents to us;
visit our website or use our online services; or
apply for employment with us.
Indirect Collection
We may also collect personal information about you from third parties, including:
our client(s), where we collect information in the course of providing legal services;
other parties to legal proceedings or transactions and their lawyers;
witnesses of fact, expert witnesses, health care providers and hospitals;
courts, tribunals, law enforcement and government agencies;
publicly available sources, including public registers, websites and social media;
referrers who introduce you to us or lead agencies and advertising sites;
recruitment agencies and previous employers (for job applicants); and
identity verification, commercial data brokers and background check service providers, including InfoTrack.
Where you are a director, beneficial owner, controller, trustee or guarantor connected with an entity we act for, we may be required to collect information about you even though you are not our client and may have no dealings with us. Where that occurs, we take reasonable steps to notify you, unless the AML/CTF Act prevents us from doing so.
3.2. Anonymity and Pseudonymity
If you are a client, you have the option of requesting to deal with us anonymously or by using a pseudonym. However, in most cases this is not lawful nor practical for legal services. Where we provide a designated service, the AML/CTF Act requires us to identify and verify you. If you do not provide us with the personal information we request, we may not be able to provide you with legal services or respond to your enquiry.
4. Why we collect personal information and how we use it
We collect, hold, use and disclose personal information for the primary purpose of providing legal services to our clients, complying with regulatory and insurance obligations and operating our legal practice.
Secondary purposes include financial management, system improvement, enforcement of our right to payment and managing the relationship between our firm and former clients once the retainer has concluded.
4.1. Primary Purposes
This includes:
providing legal advice and representation to you or to our client(s);
managing client matters and files;
conducting legal research and investigations;
preparing and reviewing legal documents;
communicating with you and other parties;
billing and collecting fees, including pursuit of our rights under a Costs Agreement or retainer;
complying with our legal, professional and insurance obligations; and
administering and managing our firm.
4.2. Secondary Purposes
We may also use and disclose personal information for secondary purposes that are related to our primary purposes, including:
maintaining and developing our relationship with you;
quality assurance and improvement of our services;
training and professional development;
ongoing Customer Due Diligence as required by the AML/CTF Act;
enforcement of our right to payment of fees;
internal reporting and analysis; and
risk management and insurance purposes.
5. Disclosure of Personal Information
We may disclose personal information to third parties to facilitate the purposes of collection noted in section 4 . These purposes include disclosure to parties to proceedings or transactions and their representatives, to Courts, government and regulatory agencies as may be necessary or appropriate to establish legal rights and to progress transactions in which we are instructed. We also disclose information to third parties (such as data storage or archiving companies, our regulators or our insurers) who hold or process information for us.
Your personal information and confidential data is held by us subject to our duty of confidentiality under the Australian Solicitor’s Conduct Rules (“ASCR”) and any applicable undertakings or court rules. We may disclose personal information to third parties subject to those obligations and for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including:
to discharge our professional obligations to you or to our clients or in the reasonable execution of our instructions;
to comply with our legal obligations or in answer to a compulsory notice such as a subpoena or warrant, or to disclose information under the AML/CTF Act, Criminal Code(s), Legal Profession Act or other relevant legislation;
to barristers, mediators, expert witnesses, investigators and consultants and other legal practitioners engaged to act for you (and/or our client) or in relation to the matter;
other parties to legal proceedings or transactions as instructed, reasonably necessary or required by law;
courts, tribunals, government agencies and regulators;
our professional indemnity insurers;
a Costs Assessor in the event that an assessment is ordered or reasonably necessary.
service providers who assist us to operate our business (including IT providers, AI providers, document management providers, and marketing service providers);
related entities;
as permitted under the ASCR confidentiality exceptions; and
any person you expressly or impliedly authorise us to disclose information to.
6. Overseas Disclosure
We may disclose personal information to recipients located outside Australia where reasonably necessary to facilitate the purposes set out in sections 2 and 5. Common examples include:
where a matter involves overseas parties or overseas proceedings;
to overseas law firms or legal practitioners engaged in a matter;
to service providers whose systems or servers are located overseas, including cloud storage, IT and identity verification providers; and
where you instruct or authorise us to do so.
Where we disclose personal information to an overseas recipient, we take reasonable steps to ensure the recipient does not breach the Australian Privacy Principles.
7. Security of Personal Information
7.1. Security Measures
We hold your personal information using a system designed to protect against data breaches, however like all data security systems, risks may only be mitigated but not eliminated. It is our practice to require our storage service providers to be reputable.
7.2. Retention and Destruction
We retain personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, to comply with our legal and professional obligations and to ensure that pertinent evidence remains available if reasonably required.
8. Third party websites
Our website may contain links to third party websites, such as payment processors. We are not
responsible for the privacy practices of those websites, and we encourage you to read their privacy
policies.
9. Access and Correction
9.1. Access to and correction of your Personal Information
You have the right to request access to, or correction of, the personal information we hold about you. To make a request, please contact our Privacy Officer (see section 10).
We will respond within a reasonable period, generally within 30 days.
Fees
We may charge a reasonable fee to cover the costs of locating, retrieving and providing information. If you are a client or former client, we do not charge for the recovery or storage of records that are your property, but may charge for costs incurred in retrieving other records, or where urgent timelines or remote delivery incur additional outlays. We will inform you of any fee before processing your request.
9.2. Refusal of access.
The Privacy Act permits us to refuse access in some circumstances. The most common in a practice such as ours are:
the information is subject to legal professional privilege;
the information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings;
giving access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of others; or
the AML/CTF Act prohibits us from disclosing the information.
If we refuse, we will provide written reasons and information about how you may complain, unless it is unreasonable to do so, or we are prohibited by law from doing so.
If you are not a client or former client, our confidentiality obligations to our clients, and other exemptions under the Privacy Act, may prevent us from giving you the information you have requested. A request for search or recovery costs in advance does not mean that information will necessarily be released.
9.3. Correction
We take reasonable steps to ensure the personal information we hold during the currency of a matter is accurate, up to date, complete and relevant. Records held after the completion of our work will not be monitored or updated unless further instructions are given.
If you believe information we hold about you is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, you may request that we correct it. If we correct information we have previously disclosed to a third party, we will notify that third party of the correction if you ask us to.
If we refuse to correct your personal information, we will provide written reasons and information about how you may complain. You may ask us to associate with the information a statement recording your view.
You have the right to request access to or correction of the personal information we hold about you. To make an access request, please contact our Privacy Officer (see Section 10).
If we refuse to correct your personal information, we will provide written reasons for the refusal and information about how you may complain.
The Privacy Act permits us to refuse access in some circumstances. If we refuse your access request, we will provide you with written reasons for the refusal (unless unreasonable to do so or we are prohibited from doing so by law) and information about how you may complain.
10. Complaints and questions
If you have a question about this policy or complaint about how we have handled your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer. We ask that you provide details of your complaint in writing. We will acknowledge your complaint within 10 business days and investigate it promptly. We aim to resolve complaints within 30 days. If we need more time, we will keep you informed of our progress.
Privacy Officer
Hobson Legal Pty Ltd
Level 7, 167 Eagle Street, Brisbane Qld 4000
GPO Box 179, Brisbane Qld 4001
P: +61 7 3012 6755
If you are not satisfied with our response, you may escalate your complaint to:
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
www.oaic.gov.au | 1300 363 992 | enquiries@oaic.gov.au | GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001