Privacy

How we handle your information

What this website collects, what happens to your information once you contact us about a building matter, and how to see it, correct it or complain about it.

Last updated: 23 September 2026

A building dispute is a paper dispute. To advise you properly we usually need the contract, the correspondence, the invoices, the reports and sometimes your financial position, and much of that includes personal information about you and about other people. This page explains what happens to it.

Sydney Building Lawyers is an informational website about building and construction law in New South Wales. Legal services on this website are provided by Jameson Law. In this policy we, us and our mean that firm. Personal information is handled in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. We are also bound by the duty of confidentiality a solicitor owes a client, which is stricter than privacy law and is dealt with further down this page.

What this website collects

You can read every page of this site without telling us who you are. Information is collected only when you send an enquiry, or automatically by the server that hosts the site.

The enquiry form is deliberately short. It asks for enough to let us come back to you and work out whether we can help, and no more. Please do not use it to send the detail of your matter and do not attach documents to it. It is a contact form, not a secure way to transfer files.

Exactly four things are asked for: your name, your email address, a message and a tick to confirm you have read this policy. A phone number is optional and the form says so. There is also a hidden field that people never see and never fill in — automated submissions do, which is how they are discarded, and it records nothing about you. The only thing the form is set up to do with your message is send it to the firm by email. It is not configured to store submissions in the website’s database.

The server that hosts this site also keeps standard access logs, as web servers ordinarily do. They exist to keep the site working and secure and to investigate faults or abuse, and they are not used to build a profile of you.

Enquiry form: your name and your email address, which the form requires
Enquiry form: your phone number, which is optional
Enquiry form: your message, which is whatever you choose to tell us
Enquiry form: the tick confirming you have read this policy
Server logs: your IP address, the browser and device type you are using, the date and time of each request, the pages requested and the response given
Cookies and analytics: any cookie set by this site, and any measurement data collected by an analytics service the site uses

If you would rather not use the form, the contact details for the firm are at the foot of this page. You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings, and this site will still work.

Why we collect it

We ask for personal information only where it is reasonably necessary for something we actually do. That is a short list.

To answer your enquiry and tell you whether we can help
To run a conflict check before we act, which means checking whether the firm already acts for someone whose interests are opposed to yours
To advise you, and to prepare, serve and run a claim, a defence or an application on your instructions
To meet the obligations a law practice has under the Legal Profession Uniform Law, including costs disclosure, billing and keeping proper records
To keep this website available and secure

Conflict checks matter more in construction than in most areas, because a single project can involve an owner, a head contractor, several subcontractors, a certifier and a developer. If you do not engage us we still keep a record of your enquiry so that a later conflict check picks it up. That is how you stay protected, not how you end up on a list. Making an enquiry does not put you on a marketing list.

Information about other people

A building file is rarely about one person. The contract names other parties, the correspondence involves site managers and subcontractors, an expert report may describe a neighbouring property, and a strata file can involve every lot owner in the building.

When you send us documents you are usually giving us personal information about other people as well as about yourself. We handle it under the same obligations, and we ask you to send only what is relevant to the matter rather than everything you hold.

This is also why a file is not always released in full when someone asks for access to it. Giving access would sometimes have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of another person, which is one of the grounds on which access can be refused under the Australian Privacy Principles.

Please do not send documents at all until a conflict check has been done and you have been told where to send them and in what form.

Who we give it to

Most disclosures in a building matter are ones you ask for or ones the process requires. If a claim is brought, the material supporting it goes to the other parties and to the tribunal or court that decides it. If a complaint is made to Building Commission NSW, the material goes to that agency and, in the ordinary course, to the contractor complained about.

Everyone else receives your information only on your instructions or where the law requires it.

We do not sell personal information. We do not give it to data brokers and we do not pass it to other businesses for their marketing.

The other parties to the dispute and their lawyers, where a claim, a defence or an application is made
NCAT, a court, or an adjudicator and the authorised nominating authority in an adjudication
Building Commission NSW or NSW Fair Trading, where a complaint or a referral is made
Experts we brief — building consultants, engineers, quantity surveyors, programmers — and counsel
An insurer, where a home building compensation claim or an indemnity is involved
The firm's insurer and auditors, where the law or the policy requires it
The technology and document storage providers that host the systems your file sits in

Where a disclosure is required by an Australian law or by a court or tribunal order we may have to make it without your instructions. If that happens and we are permitted to tell you, we will.

How it is stored and kept secure

We take reasonable steps to protect personal information from misuse, interference and loss, and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. In practice that means access controls on the systems holding client files, limiting access to the people working on your matter, and secure destruction of material that is no longer needed.

A law practice keeps client files for a period after a matter ends, because obligations to produce them can outlive the matter. A building file may also be relevant for years afterwards, since for contracts signed on or after 1 February 2012 a statutory warranty claim can be brought up to six years after completion for a major defect, and longer where an extension applies, so keeping the file is often in your interest as well as ours.

If a data breach occurs that is likely to result in serious harm, the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme in the Privacy Act requires notification to the people affected and to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. We would also tell you plainly what had happened and what you should do about it.

If you want to know what we still hold from a matter that has finished, you can ask. See Seeing your information, and correcting it below.

Information held or sent overseas

Building matters are generally local, so the usual reason information leaves Australia is the technology rather than the dispute.

Email, document storage and practice management systems are often provided by companies that store or back up data outside Australia. Before personal information is disclosed to an overseas recipient, the Australian Privacy Principles require reasonable steps to be taken to ensure the recipient does not breach those principles, which is normally done through the contract with the provider.

Occasionally a matter itself reaches overseas — a supplier, a manufacturer of a product said to have failed, or an expert engaged from another country. Where that happens we will tell you before information is sent.

Seeing your information, and correcting it

You can ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and you can ask us to correct it if it is wrong, out of date, incomplete or misleading. Ask in writing using the details below, and tell us what you are after. A whole file, or a particular document, is much easier to find than everything.

There is no charge for making a request. If a request is large enough that gathering it involves real work, we will tell you what the charge will be before we start, and it will not be more than a reasonable cost of doing it. We will respond within a reasonable period; the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner treats 30 days as reasonable.

Access can be refused only on the limited grounds set out in the Australian Privacy Principles. The ones most likely to come up here are these.

Giving access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of another person
The information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings between you and us, and would not be available through discovery
Giving access would be unlawful, or refusing access is required or authorised by an Australian law or by a court or tribunal order
Giving access would pose a serious threat to the life, health or safety of any person

If we refuse access, or refuse to make a correction, we will tell you why in writing and how to complain about it. If we do not agree that something is wrong, you can ask us to attach a statement to the record saying that you disagree.

Confidentiality and legal professional privilege

Privacy law is not the strongest protection your information has here. Two others sit above it.

The first is confidentiality. A solicitor must not disclose a client’s confidential information, and that duty continues after your matter has finished and after the file is closed.

The second is client legal privilege, usually called legal professional privilege. Confidential communications between you and us made for the dominant purpose of giving you legal advice, or for use in litigation, are privileged. The privilege belongs to you rather than to us, and it generally means the communication cannot be compelled out of us.

Privilege can be lost by sharing. Forwarding our advice to a builder, a strata manager, a committee, an insurer or another owner may waive privilege in it. That is worth knowing before an advice is circulated to a committee meeting. Ask us first if you are not sure.

Nothing in this policy reduces that privilege, and a request made under privacy law is not a route by which anyone else can obtain privileged material about you.

If you have a complaint

Tell us first. Put it in writing using the details below, say what happened and say what you would like done about it. A privacy complaint is dealt with by the practice rather than by the person you were dealing with, and making one does not change how your matter is run.

If we have not responded within 30 days, or you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. The OAIC generally expects you to have complained to us first and to have given us those 30 days. It can be reached on 1300 363 992 or through its website.

A complaint about our legal service, our costs or our conduct as solicitors is a different thing and takes a different path. That is set out on our complaints page, and the external body for it is the Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner, not the OAIC.

This policy covers this website and the building and construction work done through it. If we change it, the current version will always be on this page and the date at the top will change. See also our terms of use and our accessibility statement.

Privacy requests and complaints

Write to the firm by email or by post, and say that it is a privacy request or a privacy complaint so that it reaches the right person rather than being treated as a general enquiry. If you would rather talk it through first, call.

[email protected]

Phone

(02) 8806 0866

Post

Jameson Law, Suite 301, 67-69 Philip Street, Parramatta NSW 2150

Who you are contacting

Sydney Building Lawyers is an informational website about building and construction law in New South Wales. Legal services are provided by Jameson Law. Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner

1300 363 992, or lodge a complaint at oaic.gov.au