Privacy statement

We respect your privacy. This statement explains how we handle personal information under Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and our professional obligations to the Law Society of Ontario.

Last updated: 31 October 2026

Who we are

RoyalHill Attorneys, 1110 Finch Avenue West, Unit 405, North York, ON M3J 2T2. Our Privacy Officer is responsible for how we handle personal information and can be reached at [email protected] or +1 905 965 2448.

What we collect

When you make an enquiry

Through our online enquiry form, by phone or in person: your name, any other names you have used, date of birth (optional), email address, phone number, where you live, the type of legal matter, a description of your situation, the names of other people or organizations involved, documents you choose to upload, your preferred times for a consultation and, optionally, how you heard about us.

If we act for you

• Information about your matter, and correspondence and documents you or others provide.
• Identity verification required by the Law Society of Ontario (By-Law 7.1): your name, address, occupation, the type of identification document and its issuer, expiry date and the last digits of its number.
• Billing and trust accounting records required by the Law Society (By-Law 9): amounts received and paid, and the details needed to make or receive payments.
• If you use our client portal: your email address, the dates you sign in, and the messages and documents exchanged.
• If you sign a document electronically: the name you type, the date and time, your internet (IP) address and browser details, kept as a record of the signature.
• If someone helps you with your matter (for example a family member, an attorney under a power of attorney or a guardian), their name, contact details and authority.

When you visit our website

Like most websites, our servers and security providers record technical information such as your IP address, browser type and the pages you visit, to keep the site secure and working. We do not use advertising or analytics cookies. Our website loads fonts from Google, and the map on our contact page is provided by Google Maps; Google may receive your IP address when these load. The client portal uses a cookie only to keep you signed in.

Why we collect it

• To assess your enquiry and contact you about it.
• To check for conflicts of interest before we can advise you, as the Law Society of Ontario requires.
• To provide legal services, keep your file, and communicate with you and with others on your behalf.
• To verify your identity, keep trust and billing records, and meet our other legal and professional obligations.
• To keep our systems secure.

We do not sell, rent or trade personal information, and we do not use it for marketing without your consent.

Conflict checks

To meet our professional obligations, we keep the names of the people and organizations involved in every enquiry and matter, including enquiries we do not take on, so that we can check for conflicts of interest in the future. These names are used only for that purpose.

Consent

By submitting an enquiry, using the client portal or retaining us, you consent to our collecting, using and disclosing your personal information as described here. You may withdraw consent at any time, subject to legal and professional restrictions; if you do, we may be unable to act for you. When you give us information about other people, please make sure you are entitled to share it.

Who we share it with

We share personal information only as needed for the purposes above: with courts, tribunals and government bodies (such as Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) when acting on your matter, with other parties or their lawyers as your matter requires, with the Law Society of Ontario when required, and with service providers who help us run our practice. We may also disclose information where the law requires or permits it.

Our service providers are bound to protect your information and to use it only to provide their services to us. They include:

• Oracle Cloud — stores our client database, documents and backups in its Montréal, Québec data centre.
• Cloudflare — runs our online enquiry form and client portal and protects our website; information passes through its global network, which may include servers outside Canada.
• Resend — sends our emails (for example confirmations, sign-in links and reminders); email content is processed outside Canada.
• Our website hosting provider — hosts this website, which may be stored outside Canada.

Information processed or stored outside Canada may be accessible to courts and authorities in those countries under their laws.

How we protect it

We use safeguards suited to the sensitivity of legal information, including encrypted connections, two-step sign-in for our staff, access limited to the people working on your matter, a permanent record of who has viewed or changed client records, and regular encrypted backups kept in Canada. Lawyers and staff are bound by solicitor-client confidentiality.

Email and the internet are not completely secure. Please do not send confidential, sensitive or time-critical information through this website or by email until a solicitor-client relationship has been formally established. Once we act for you, our client portal is the most secure way to send us documents.

How long we keep it

We keep personal information only as long as needed for the purposes above and as the law and the Law Society of Ontario require. For example, identity verification records are kept for at least six years after our work for you ends, and trust accounting records for at least ten years. Names kept for conflict checking are kept for as long as the firm practises. When information is no longer needed, we securely destroy it.

Your rights

You may ask to see the personal information we hold about you and ask us to correct it. Write to our Privacy Officer at [email protected]. We will respond within 30 days. In some cases we cannot give access — for example, where the information is protected by solicitor-client privilege, contains information about someone else, or the law does not allow it — and we will explain why.

If you have a concern about how we handle your information, please contact our Privacy Officer first. You may also complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Changes to this statement

We may update this statement from time to time. The current version is always on this page, with the date it was last updated.