Privacy Policy | Mainelli Consulting

1. Introduction

Mainelli Consulting Pty Ltd ABN 91 697 428 907 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 your personal information. This is in addition to our obligations of confidentiality to clients and other parties arising from sources other than the Privacy Act.

2. Application of this Policy

This Privacy Policy applies to the personal information we manage for the purposes of or in connection with our obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act) and the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (AML Act) if providing a designated service to you.

3. 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.

4. Personal information: what we collect

Types of personal information

We collect certain information about you which may include:

Identity information: name, date of birth, gender, signature, photographic identification, offices or directorships held, director identification number;
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;
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 further below);
Sensitive information: including sexual orientation, racial and ethnic origin, political beliefs, religious affiliation, criminal record, and health information as reasonably required to handle your matter.

5. Identity verification and the AML Act

We may be required to verify your identity and collect certain information under the AML Act when we provide designated services to you, such as company incorporation, changes to company ownership, real property transactions and asset dealings.

This includes collecting identification documents and information about the source of funds and beneficial ownership of entities.

6. How we collect personal information

Sources of information

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.

We may also collect personal information about you from third parties, including:

other parties to legal proceedings or transactions and their lawyers;
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; and
identity verification, commercial data brokers and background check service providers.

7. 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. 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.

8. 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.

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, including training our AI models or those of our AI providers (subject to our obligations of confidentiality to you);
training and professional development;
ongoing Customer Due Diligence as required by the AML Act;
training AI or automated systems including AI development by our vendors with appropriate confidentiality safeguards in place;
enforcement of our right to payment of fees;
internal reporting and analysis; and
insurance purposes.

9. Disclosure of personal information

Disclosure to third parties

We may disclose personal information to third parties to facilitate the purposes of collection. 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.

Duty of confidentiality

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 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 Act, Criminal Code(s), Legal Profession Act or other relevant legislation;
to barristers, mediators, expert witnesses, investigators and consultants and other legal practitioners engaged by you;
other parties to legal proceedings or transactions as instructed, reasonably necessary or required by law;
courts, tribunals, government agencies and regulators;
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.

Overseas disclosure

We will disclose information to overseas recipients where this is reasonably necessary to progress your matter. The following circumstances are common examples when that may apply:

where your matter involves overseas parties or overseas proceedings; and
to service providers whose systems or servers are located overseas (including cloud storage, AI and IT service providers) if we consider that the confidentiality arrangements that will apply to such information is sufficient.

10. Security of personal information

Security measures

We hold your personal information using systems and software 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.

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.

11. 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.

12. Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

We may use AI tools to enhance efficiency, accuracy and service to you including:

document organisation and categorisation;
summarisation of large documents or datasets;
email or communication drafting;
research support and information retrieval;
website analytics and performance analysis;
internal knowledge management and search.

13. Website and cookies

When you visit our website, we may collect information such as:

your IP address;
browser type;
device type;
pages viewed and links clicked;
access times and dates;
referring websites or sources.

Our website may use cookies and similar technologies for functionality, analytics, security and to improve user experience. Cookies are small data files stored on your device. You can disable cookies through your browser settings, although this may affect some website features or functionality.

14. Direct marketing

If you subscribe, engage with us or we otherwise reasonably believe you may be interested, we may use your contact information to send:

legal updates, articles or newsletters;
invitations to seminars, webinars or events;
other marketing communications related to our services.

You can opt out of receiving marketing communications at any time by contacting us, with “Unsubscribe” in the subject line.

Opting out of marketing will not affect our communications with you about an existing legal matter, engagement or essential service messages.

15. Access and correction

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 further below).

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.

16. Complaints and questions

If you have a question about this policy or complaint about how we have handled your personal information, please contact us, addressed to the Privacy Officer, using our enquiry form or by post to PO Box 691, BUDDINA QLD 4575. We will investigate and respond within a reasonable timeframe. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may escalate the complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC):

Version 1.0 · Effective Date July 2026