TERMS OF USE OF THIS WEBSITE

This website is owned and maintained by Catherine O’Connell Law (“the Law Firm”). Please read these terms of use (“the Terms”) carefully. These Terms apply to your use of the website identified as catherineoconnelllaw.com (“the Website”). These Terms should be read in conjunction with the Law Firm Privacy Policy. We reserve the right to vary or alter these Terms from time to time and any change made to these Terms will take effect immediately when posted on the Website with a date of last update attached. By using this Website, you agree to be bound by these Terms. Please note that these Terms do not apply to legal or other services provided by the Law Firm to its clients. Any legal or other services are subject to the terms set forth in the Terms of Engagement and Letter of Engagement executed between clients and the Law Firm.

 

THIS WEBSITE IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE

The information on this Website is provided as general information only and is not to be considered as providing legal advice. The information on this Website may only be used for understanding factual content concerning the services and expertise offered by the Law Firm in general and is not to be used as legal advice. The Law Firm takes reasonable measures to ensure that the content of this Website is accurate as at the time of publishing. The content of this Website may be updated at any time and from time to time, and may be out of date, inaccurate and/or incomplete. The Law Firm accepts no responsibility for keeping the content of this Website up to date, accurate and/or complete, nor do we accept any liability for any failure to do so. This Website and associated services provided by it are provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis.  To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Law Firm disclaims and excludes all implied conditions, guarantees or warranties. In particular the Law Firm does not accept any liability for any of the following:

  • Any loss or damage which may arise in any way out of using the content on this Website

  • Unavailability of, and any loss that is incurred as a result of the Website due to system issues

  • Errors in, or omissions from or inaccuracy of the content on this Website

  • Any loss or damage caused to any equipment or software owing to any viruses, defects or malfunctions in connection with accessing or using this Website

 

WEBSITE PRIVACY

This Website has content and tools that you can view and access without the necessity of providing any personal information. Where you voluntarily provide personal details through the online enquiry/requests are, the Law Firm will only use that information for the purpose for which it was intended and to communicate with you. Any personal information you submit is stored securely by the Law Firm or the Law Firm’s contracted service provider and will not be disclosed to any third parties, except as required or permitted by relevant laws in Japan. Please read the Law Firm’s Privacy Policy here .

 

USE OF COOKIES

The Law Firm uses cookies to collect data about users who visit this Website. We use that data to compile statistics about how the Website is used such as what pages have been accessed, what documents are downloaded, and what tabs are opened.  Gathering this information about Website usage helps the Law Firm understand what users find useful and also helps us to update the user experience of the Website. Please read the Law Firm’s Cookies Policy here.

 

WEBSITE GOVERNING LAW

The Law Firm is based in Tokyo, Japan and practices only New Zealand law. The Law Firm does not, and does not intend or purport to, practice in any other jurisdictions. Catherine O’Connell is admitted to practice law in the New Zealand, England & Wales and is a registered foreign lawyer in Japan. These Terms are governed by and construed by the laws of Japan, exclusive of its choice of law rules. Website users agree that any disputes or proceedings between the Law Firm and you concerning these Terms and/or the Website shall be brought exclusively in a court of competent jurisdiction sitting in Tokyo, Japan, and you hereby consent to the personal jurisdiction and venue of such court.

 

WEBSITE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

This Website and content are subject to copyright © 2018 by Catherine O’Connell Law. All rights are reserved except as expressly stated. By using this Website, you agree not to copy, amend, reproduce, republish or distribute any of its content without permission in writing from Catherine O’Connell Law. Permission may be requested by contacting the Law Firm via email to: admin@catherineoconnelllaw.com.

 

Last Updated: May 25, 2018

CATHERINE O’CONNELL LAW PRIVACY POLICY

 

HOW WE USE YOUR DATA

General

Catherine O’Connell Law (“COL” or “We/Our”) and trusted partners acting on our behalf, uses your personal data:

- to provide services to you;

- to make a tailored website available to you (subject to our Terms of Use here);

- to verify your identity;

- for crime and fraud prevention, detection and related purposes;

- with your agreement, to contact you electronically about promotional offers and services which we think may interest you;

- for market research purposes - to better understand your needs;

- to enable us to manage customer service interactions with you; and

- where we have a legal right or duty to use or disclose your information (for example in relation to an investigation by a public authority or in a legal dispute)

 

Newsletter & Marketing

Promotional communications

COL uses your personal data for electronic marketing purposes (with your consent) and may send you postal mail to update you on legal topics of interest in general, specific to your industry.  COL aims to update you about services which are of interest and relevance to you as an individual. You have the right to opt out of receiving promotional communications at any time, by:

1. changing marketing preferences via email to admin@catherineoconnelllaw.com;

2. making use of the simple “unsubscribe” link in emails; and/or

3. contacting COL via the contact channels set out in this Policy.

Newsletter

Where you have signed up for COL’s newsletter, we may collect data directly from you, as well as analysing your browsing activity, on-line, and your responses to marketing communications.  The results of this analysis, together with other demographic data, allows us to ensure that we contact you with information on services that are relevant to you.  To do so, we use software and other technology.

Web Banner Advertising

We do not use web banner advertising. We may use ‘cookies’ placed on your computer or other devices (see further information on the use of cookies in our Cookie Policy).  You can remove or disable cookies at any time - see below for further information.

 

Sharing data with third parties

Our service providers and suppliers

In order to make certain services available to you, we may need to share your personal data with some of our service partners.  These include administration support personnel, IT, IP attorneys, accountants and other legal service providers who are trusted partners of COL (“service providers”).

COL only allows its service providers to handle your personal data when we have confirmed that they apply appropriate data protection and security controls.  We also impose contractual obligations on service providers relating to data protection and security, which mean they can only use your data to provide services to COL and to you, and for no other purposes.

Other third parties

Aside from our service providers, COL will not disclose your personal data to any third party, except as set out below.  We will never sell or rent our customer data to other organisations for marketing purposes.

We may share your data with:

- our carefully selected partners who provide COL branded services, if we have your consent to do so;

- credit reference agencies where necessary for payments;

- governmental bodies, regulators, law enforcement agencies, courts/tribunals and insurers where we are required to do so: -

- to comply with our legal obligations;

- to exercise our legal rights (for example in court cases);

- for the prevention, detection, investigation of crime or prosecution of offenders; and

- for the protection of our employees and customers.

 

International transfers

As COL is located outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), in order to deliver services to you, it will be necessary for COL to share your data outside of the EEA.  This will typically occur when service providers are located outside the EEA or if you are based outside the EEA, for example in Japan or New Zealand.  These transfers are subject to special rules under data protection laws.

If this happens, we will ensure that the transfer will be compliant with data protection law and all personal data will be secure.  Our standard practice is to use ‘standard data protection clauses’ which have been approved by the European Commission for such transfers.

 

HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR DATA?

We will not retain your data for longer than necessary for the purposes set out in this Policy. Different retention periods apply for different types of data, however the longest we will normally hold any personal data is ten (10) years.

 

WHAT PERSONAL DATA DO WE COLLECT?

COL may collect the following information about you:

- your name, age/date of birth and gender;

- your contact details: postal address including billing and delivery addresses, telephone numbers (including mobile numbers) and e-mail address;

- services purchased made by you;

- your on-line browsing activities on the COL website;

- when you make a purchase, your payment details;

- your communication and marketing preferences;

- your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses;

- your location;

- your correspondence and communications with COL; and

- other publicly available personal data, including any which you have shared via a public platform (such as a Twitter feed, LinkedIn page or public Facebook page, or other social media).

Our website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

This list is not exhaustive and, in specific instances, we may need to collect additional data for the purposes set out in this Policy. Some of the above personal data is collected directly, for example when you request legal services and we send you our Letter of Engagement and Standard Terms and Conditions, or you send an email to the Principal of COL or our administrative support personnel at admin@catherineoconnelllaw.com. Other personal data is collected indirectly, for example your web browsing activity. We may also collect personal data from third parties who have your consent to pass your details to us, or from publicly available sources.

We also receive personal data from trusted third parties who provide services to our customers under the COL brand, such as COL’s Bank (Mitsui Sumitomo Banking Corporation) and COL’s tax and accountancy service provider (name available upon request to admin@catherineoconnellaw.com). COL’s Bank will share with us details of payments made using your bank account, which we may use to analyse client behaviour and improve our services.

 

HOW WE PROTECT YOUR DATA

Our controls

COL is committed to keeping your personal data safe and secure. 

Our security measures include: -

- regular cyber security assessments of all service providers who may handle your personal data;

- regular scenario planning and crisis management exercises to ensure we are ready to respond to cyber security attacks and data security incidents;

- security controls which protect the entire COL IT infrastructure from external attack and unauthorised access; and

- internal policies setting out our data security approach and training for employees.

 

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP PROTECT YOUR DATA

COL will never ask you to confirm any bank account or credit card details via email.  If you receive an email claiming to be from COL asking you to do so, please ignore it and do not respond. If you are using a computing device in a public location, we recommend that you always log out and close the website browser when you complete an online session.

 

YOUR RIGHTS

You have the following rights:

- the right to ask for a copy of personal data that we hold about you (the right of access);

- the right (in certain circumstances) to request that we delete personal data held on you; where we no longer have any legal reason to retain it (“the right of erasure or to be forgotten”);

- the right to ask us to update and correct any out-of-date or incorrect personal data that we hold about you (“the right of rectification”);

- the right to opt out of any marketing communications that we may send you and to object to us using / holding your personal data if we have no legitimate reasons to do so (“the right to object”);

- the right (in certain circumstances) to ask us to ‘restrict processing of data’; which means that we would need to secure and retain the data for your benefit but not otherwise use it (“the right to restrict processing”); and

- the right (in certain circumstances) to ask us to supply you with some of the personal data we hold about you in a structured machine-readable format and/or to provide a copy of the data in such a format to another organisation (“the right to data portability”).

If you wish to exercise any of the above rights, please contact us via admin@catherineoconnelllaw.com.

 

LEGAL BASIS FOR USING DATA

We are required to set out the legal basis for our ‘processing’ of personal data.


GENERAL

COL collects and uses customers’ personal data because is it necessary for:

- the pursuit of our legitimate interests (as set out below);

- the purposes of complying with our duties and exercising our rights under a contract for the sale of services to a customer; or

- complying with our legal obligations.

 

In general, we only rely on consent as a legal basis for processing personal data in relation to sending direct marketing communications to customers via email or text message.

Customers have the right to withdraw consent at any time.  Where consent is the only legal basis for processing, we will cease to process data after consent is withdrawn.

 

Our legitimate interests

The normal legal basis for processing customer data, is that it is necessary for the legitimate interests of COL, including:-

- selling and supplying services to our customers;

- protecting customers, employees and other individuals and maintaining their safety, health and welfare;

- promoting, marketing and advertising our services;

- sending promotional communications which are relevant and tailored to individual customers;

- improving services and developing new services;

- complying with our legal and regulatory obligations in Japan and in New Zealand;

- preventing, investigating and detecting crime, fraud or anti-social behaviour and prosecuting offenders, including working with law enforcement agencies;

- handling customer contacts, queries, complaints or disputes;

- managing insurance claims by customers;

- protecting COL, its employees and customers, by taking appropriate legal action against third parties who have committed criminal acts or are in breach of legal obligations to COL;

- effectively handling any legal claims or regulatory enforcement actions taken against COL; and

- fulfilling our duties to our customers, colleagues, shareholders and other stakeholders.

 

COOKIES

Our website uses cookies to collect information.  This includes information about browsing behaviour by people who access our website.  This includes information about pages viewed and the general customer journey around our website. Detailed information is set out in our Cookies Policy here

DATA PROTECTION OFFICER

COL has appointed a Data Protection Officer to ensure we protect the personal data of our customers (and others) and comply with data protection legislation.

If you have any questions about how COL uses your personal data that are not answered here, or if you want to exercise your rights regarding your personal data, please contact our Data Protection Officer’s team by

- phone: +81 (090) 9310 1327;

- e-mail: catherine@catherineoconnelllaw.com; or

- write to: Data Protection Officer, Catherine O’Connell Law, Azabu Kingdom #102, 1-4-20 Nishi Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0031, Japan

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. Further information, including contact details, is available at https://ico.org.uk.

UPDATES

This policy was last updated on May 25, 2018.

COOKIES POLICY

 

WHAT ARE COOKIES?

Like most websites, COL’s website use cookies to collect information.  Cookies are small data files which are placed on your computer or other devices (such as smart ‘phones or ‘tablets’) as you browse this website.  They are used to ‘remember’ when your computer or device accesses our websites.  Cookies are essential for the effective operation of our website.  They are also used to tailor services offered to you, both on our website and elsewhere.

 

INFORMATION COLLECTED

Some cookies collect information about browsing behaviour when you access this website via the same computer or device.  This includes information about pages viewed and your journey around a website.  We do not use cookies to collect or record information on your name, address or other contact details.  COL can use cookies to monitor your browsing behaviour.

 

HOW ARE COOKIES MANAGED?

The cookies stored on your computer or other device when you access our websites are designed by:

- COLS, or on behalf of COL; and

- third parties who participate with us in marketing programmes; and

 

WHAT ARE COOKIES USED FOR?

The main purposes for which cookies are used are: -

1. For technical purposes essential to effective operation of our website, particularly in relation to site navigation.

2. For COL to market to you, particularly targeted updates.

3. To enable COL to collect information about your browsing patterns, including to monitor the success of newsletter campaigns etc.

 

HOW DO I DISABLE COOKIES?

If you want to disable cookies you need to change your website browser settings to reject cookies.  How you can do this will depend on the browser you use so please check your browser settings to reconfigure.

 

WHAT HAPPENS IF I DISABLE COOKIES?

This depends on which cookies you disable, but in general the website may not operate properly if cookies are switched off.

 

Last updated: May 25, 2018