Protecting your privacy matters to us. This document discloses our information gathering and usage practices in relation to the LawSpot website (the Website). For additional information about the Website please review our Terms of Use. We reserve the right to change our privacy policy from time to time but will notify our users about any such changes on the Website.
We will only use personal information about you:
We do not sell or rent your personal information to third parties. Users of the Website can contact us at support@lawspot.org.nz to ask about their personal information.
Before you can submit a question on LawSpot, we require your email address so that we can notify you when your question has been answered. This will never be published online or shared with our lawyer volunteers - your identity will be protected at all times. We also need to know which region you live in so that we can connect you to community legal services convenient to you.
As part of the lawyer registration process, we require you to provide us with your name and work email address so that we can verify that you hold a current practising certificate. Your identity will never be disclosed to users of the Website. Your answer will be supervised by a Community Law Wellington & Hutt Valley (CLWHV) supervisor and published under the name of the CLWHV.
We provide you with ways to update your personal account information, including changing your email address and password. We store previous email addresses against your profile to ensure compliance with our Terms and Conditions.
If you are registered with LawSpot, we may send you emails about LawSpot, in addition to our customary question and answer-related communications. We will remove you from our mailing list at your request.
We may also email you to invite you to complete a feedback survey for us once you have had a question answered on LawSpot. The survey may ask you for personal and demographic information on a confidential basis, to be used to improve the LawSpot service. Survey responses will be processed by LawSpot administrative staff and individual responses will not be seen by any of LawSpot’s lawyer volunteers. Data compiled through the survey may be shared by LawSpot with the Ministry of Justice for statistical and budgetary purposes.
Will my question be anonymous?
Yes, your question will be anonymous. When your question is submitted, your email is removed
and LawSpot’s administrators will delete any part of your question that contains identifying
features about you. At no point will a public
user of the Website or a LawSpot lawyer volunteer have access to identifying details about you
such as your email address. Only LawSpot administrators will be able to view the question
directly as submitted by you online and any personal information about you may only be used by
LawSpot for the limited purposes outlined above, in the “Use of your information” section of
this policy.
Will my question be published online?
Yes, your question will be published online. When you submit a question on the Website, you
will be asked to tick a box that asks if you agree to the Website’s Terms of
Use. By ticking this box, you understand that your question and the answer will be
published on the Website for public view. Accordingly, you waive your right to claim
confidentiality over the content of your question and the answer provided. No liability
whatsoever is accepted by the authors or the publishers, for loss, damage or inconvenience
consequent upon the question and answer being made public.
When you register to answer questions on LawSpot, you will be asked to tick a box that asks if you agree to LawSpot’s Policy for Lawyer Volunteers. By ticking this box, you understand that your answer will be published online under the name of the CLWHV, and that supervisors from the CLWHV reserve the right to modify or rewrite your answer before it is published online. Accordingly, you waive any rights over the content of the answer you submit. The Important Notice attached to every answer makes clear that no liability whatsoever is accepted by the authors or the publishers, for loss, damage or inconvenience consequent upon the question or answer being made public. Your identity will not be linked to the answer or shared with the public.
You are responsible for all actions taken with your LawSpot account, email address and password.
It is important for you to protect against unauthorized access to your password and to your computer. Ensure you logout when you have finished visiting the Website, especially if you access the Website from a shared computer.
Cookies are small pieces of information that are stored by your web browser in a file on your computer's hard drive when you use our Website. We use cookies to improve the experience of using our site. Cookies are widely used on most major websites.
We use "session" cookies to temporarily store information to help you use the Website. This information is used to deliver the right content to you as you use the Website and avoids unnecessarily asking you to log in. Session cookies expire immediately when you close your web browser.
We also use "persistent" cookies to personalise the user experience, to help protect our members and to provide us with research information (such as how often users visit LawSpot each month). Persistent cookies allow us to track users on LawSpot and help us identify users abusing the LawSpot service. A persistent auto-login cookie is also stored when LawSpot users select the "remember me" option when logging in. The auto-login cookie is removed when the LawSpot user logs out.
The LawSpot website may contain links to third party sites to enhance the user experience. We have no control of either the content or privacy policies of such sites, nor should such links be considered an endorsement of these sites except where otherwise noted. In some cases, third party advertisers may also use cookies in certain advertisements or links that appear on the Website for advertising purposes.
We use additional information to do internal research on our users' demographics, interests, and behaviour to better understand and serve you and our community. This information may include the URL that you just came from (whether this URL is on our site or not), which URL you next go to (whether this URL is on our site or not), what browser you are using, and your IP address.
Users who login may have their IP addresses recorded. LawSpot will only use this for the limited purposes outlined above, in the “Use of your information” section of this policy.
If you send us personal correspondence, such as emails, or if members of the LawSpot administrative staff send us correspondence about your activities on the Website, we may collect such information into a file specific to you.
If you wish to have your registration removed from our directory for any reason, you may send us an email requesting this.
From time to time, we make changes to our information practices or alter the functionality of our Website. We always update this statement accordingly, so we encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices.
If you have any questions about our privacy policies or any other matter, please contact us at support@lawspot.org.nz.
Last Updated: 17 June 2012.