POPIA PRIVACY MANUAL

Prepared in terms of the Protection of Personal Information Act, Act 4 of 2013 “POPIA”

Introduction

This Manual sets out the manner in which LindsayKeller Attorneys (LindsayKeller) will comply with its legal obligations and requirements in respect of POPIA concerning the collection, use and storage of personal information.

In terms of POPIA, the right to privacy of natural as well as juristic persons is balanced against other rights such as the right to access to information and the free flow of information. POPIA regulates the manner in which personal information is processed and provides data subjects with rights and remedies to ensure the protection of their personal information. POPIA also provides for the establishing of an Information Regulator to promote and enforce the rights so protected.

Definitions

Data Subject – the natural or juristic person to whom the personal information relates;
Personal Information – information relating to an identifiable, living person or an identifiable, existing juristic person;
Processing – any operation or activity, including by automatic means, concerning personal information;
Responsible Party – a public or private body or any other person which determines the purpose – and means of processing information.

Responsible Party and Information Officer

For purposes of this Privacy Manual LindsayKeller Attorneys is the party processing your personal information and is, as such the responsible party in respect of your personal information.

Should you have any questions about this Privacy Manual or how we process your personal information, please contact our Information Officer appointed in terms of POPIA:

Information Officer: Lize – Marie Joubert
Postal address: P O Box 195, Saxonwold, 2132
Telephone number: (011) 880 8980
E-mail address: lweideman@lindsaykeller.com

Which information may be collected

LindsayKeller may collect and process different types of personal information in the course of operating its business and providing services such as carrying out of the mandates of its clients in establishing, furthering, exercising and defending their rights and interests in law, complying with legislation, representing clients in legal proceedings and carrying out the judicial functions of Courts.

The information gathered includes:

basic personal details such as your name and job title;
contact information such as your telephone number and postal or email address;
financial information such as payment related information or bank account details;
demographic information such as your address, preferences or interests;
website usage and other technical information such as details of your visits to our website or information collected through cookies and other tracking technologies;
personal information provided to us by you or generated by us in the course of providing our services, which may, where relevant, include special personal information;
identification and other background verification information such as a copies of passport or Identity Documents, utility bills or evidence of beneficial ownership or the source of funds to comply with client due diligence as required in terms of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act 38 of 2001 (FICA) which has the aim of preventing financial crime such as money laundering, fraud, tax evasion, terrorist financing activities and identity theft;
employment related information such as your curriculum vitae, your education and employment history, details relating to your income, professional memberships and other information relevant to either potential recruitment to – or employment with LindsayKeller or to the quantification of any claim which we are pursuing or investigating as part of the litigation process;
information that you may provide to us in course of registering for and attending events or meetings, including access requirements; and
any other personal information relating to you that you may provide.

How is the information collected

Your personal information may be collected or received a number of different ways:

provided directly by yourself, for example by corresponding with us by post, email or telephone;
collected from or provided by third party sources for purposes of FICA, in pursuit of the mandate given to us by yourself in terms of a Power of Attorney and Consent or where we receive information about you from recruitment agencies for recruitment purposes; or
publicly available sources – we may, for example, use such sources to help us keep the contact details we already hold for you accurate and up to date or for professional networking purposes.

How is personal information used or processed

LindsayKeller will only use your personal information where it is permitted to do so by applicable law. Under POPIA and international data protection laws, the use of personal information must be justified under one of a number of legal grounds.

The principal legal grounds that justify our use of your personal information are:

contract performance: where your information is necessary to enter into or perform our contract with you;
legal obligation: where we need to use your information to comply with our legal obligations;
legitimate interests: where we use your information to achieve our or your legitimate interests and our reasons for using it outweigh any prejudice to your data protection rights;
legal claims: where your information is necessary for us to defend, prosecute or make a claim on behalf of you, us or a third party;
consent: where you have consented to our use of your information.

Your personal information may be used to:

provide our legal and other services to you and to conduct our business – to administer and perform our services, including to carry out our obligations arising from any agreements entered into between you and us;
facilitate use of our websites and to ensure content is relevant – to respond to requests for information or enquiries from visitors to our websites and to ensure that content from our websites is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your device;
to market our services to you – to provide you with details of new services, legal updates and invites to seminars and events where you have chosen to receive these;
to fulfil our legal, regulatory, or risk management obligations – to comply with our legal obligations such as FICA and to identify conflicts of interests; to enforce our legal rights, to comply with our legal or regulatory reporting obligations and/or to protect the rights of third parties;
to ensure that we are paid – to recover any payments due to us and where necessary to enforce such recovery through the engagement of tracing agents, tracing platforms, debt collection agencies or taking other legal action (including the commencement and carrying out of legal and court proceedings);
to inform you of changes – to notify you about changes to our services or our Standard Terms of Engagement for legal services or this Privacy Manual;

With whom is personal information shared

We may share your personal information with a variety of the following categories of third parties:

our professional advisers (e.g. legal, financial, business, risk management or other advisers), bankers and auditors;
our insurers and insurance brokers;
third party service providers;
any payroll system and IT operator that LindsayKeller uses;
third parties to whom payments are made on behalf of employees i.e., medical schemes, retirement funds;
financial institutions from whom payments are received on behalf of Data Subjects;
employees, contractors and temporary staff;
sub-contractors and agents;
other third party external advisers or experts engaged in the course of the services we provide to our clients and with their prior consent;
our regulators, as applicable, which may also include government, regulatory or law enforcement agencies in connection with enquiries, proceedings or investigations by such parties anywhere in the world or where compelled to do so;
other regulatory or governmental authorities such as ombudsmen and tax authorities to whom LindsayKeller has a legal duty to furnish the information;
we may also process your personal information to comply with our regulatory requirements or in the course of dialogue with our regulators as applicable, which may include disclosing your personal information to government, regulatory or law enforcement agencies in connection with enquiries, proceedings or investigations by such parties anywhere in the world or where compelled to do so. Where permitted, or unless to do so would prejudice the prevention or detection of a crime, we will direct any such request to you or notify you before responding.

Recipients of personal information

Personal Information may be transmitted by LindsayKeller outside the borders of South Africa for business purposes and may be stored in data servers in accordance with the requirements of the Legal Practice Act 28 of 2014 (LPA) and applicable international data protection laws if:

the recipient country can offer an adequate level of protection to that in terms of the conditions for lawful processing as contained in POPIA;
data Subjects consent to the transfer of their personal information; or
transfer is necessary for the performance of a contractual obligation between the Responsible Party and a third party and is in the interests of the Data Subject;
transfer is for the benefit of the Data Subject and it is not reasonably practicable to obtain the consent of the Data Subject and if it were, the Data Subject would in all likelihood provide such consent.

Retention of personal information records

LindsayKeller will retain your personal information only for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purpose for which this information was collected and any other permitted linked purpose unless:

retention of the personal information is required or authorised by law;
LindsayKeller reasonably requires the personal information for lawful purposes related to its functions and activities;
retention of the personal information is required by a contract between the parties thereto;
you have consented to the retention of the personal information.

LindsayKeller will attend to the destruction or deletion of the personal information or de-identify the personal information as soon as reasonably practicable after the information is no longer required, subject to the circumstances detailed above in clauses 1 to 4.

Protection of personal information records

We recognise that information security is an integral element of data privacy. While no data transmission (including over the Internet or any website) can be guaranteed to be secure from intrusion, we implement a range of commercially reasonable physical, technical and procedural measures to help protect personal information from unauthorised access, use, disclosure, alteration or destruction in accordance with data protection law requirements.

Information that you provide to us is stored on our secure servers and accessed and used subject to our security policies and standards, or those agreed with our service providers.

LindsayKeller maintains up-to-date data protection measures in order to ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of all personal information in its possession. These security measures include, inter alia, Firewalls; Virus protection software and update protocols; Physical and digital access control and Secure set-up of both hardware and software systems to prevent unauthorised access.

Everyone at LindsayKeller and any third party service providers we may engage that process personal information on our behalf (for the purposes listed above) are also contractually obligated to respect the confidentiality of personal information.

Your rights in relation to your personal information

Under certain circumstances and in accordance with the POPIA and other applicable international data protection laws you may have the right to require us to:

have your personal information lawfully processed;
be notified that personal information about you is being collected;
be notified that your personal information has been accessed or acquired by an unauthorised person;
establish whether a responsible party holds personal information of you and to request access to this personal information from the Information Officer;
object to the processing of your personal information by making use of the prescribed form which is to be submitted to the Information Officer;
request, where necessary, the correction, destruction or deletion of your personal information by making use of the prescribed form which is to be submitted to the Information Officer;
not have your personal information processed for purposes of direct marketing by means of unsolicited electronic communications;
not be subject, under certain circumstances, to a decision which is based solely on the basis of the automated processing of your personal information intended to provide a profile of you;
submit a complaint to the Information Regulator regarding alleged interference with the protection of the personal information of any data subject or if you are not satisfied with our use of your personal information;
institute civil proceedings regarding an alleged interference with the protection of your personal information;
instruct us not to process your personal information for marketing purposes. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing at any time by using an unsubscribe facility;
take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information remains accurate.

Please note that the above rights are subject to certain exemptions in terms of POPIA to safeguard the public interest or the interests of LindsayKeller AND Third Parties and that some of these rights may be limited by way of legislation such as the Promotion of Access to Information Act No 2 of 2000 (PAIA) where we are required or permitted by law to continue processing your personal information to defend our legal rights or to meet our legal and regulatory obligations.

Update and availability of our Privacy Manual

LindsayKeller may of necessity change and update its website and Privacy Manual. We therefore encourage you to review this privacy notice when you visit the website to stay informed of how we are using personal information.

Last Update 31 August 2021