Privacy Policy

Kia ora (Hi / Welcome / Be well),

Welcome to our Privacy Policy

Clean Break takes your privacy seriously. You have rights under the Privacy Act 2020 over your personal information. Our clients enjoy extra rights because of something called client privilege.

Website users

Through this website, we collect information that you give us, and that your computer automatically gives us through things called cookies. Information your computer gives us includes things like what region or city you live in, the pages on our website you look at (and how long you spending looking at those pages), when you visit the website, and how you found our website (was it a Google search or did you type in www.cleanbreak.co.nz?). You can prevent cookies giving websites information about your browsing by changing your own settings or asking someone good with tech for help.

We use this information to make Clean Break better for you and for other people. We can only tie you to the information, if you tie you to the information by telling us your name and your email address.

We might disclose the general information that your computer tells us to agencies who help us improve our systems. However, we only use the best organisations with great security systems.

If you found our website because we act for your ex (either now or in the future), we are obligated to give them all information that we have that is relevant to their situation – so we suggest not giving us your name and turning off those cookies ASAP if you want to keep looking at our stuff!

We are proud of our security policies and procedures and work hard to keep information safely out of hackers hands. The Privacy Act 2020 does apply, so there are the standard exemptions where we can be forced to give your private information to third parties.

If you want to see what personal information we might have about you, get in touch! We love to hear from people who are security conscious – you might just be able to teach us a few things. You can ask us to change information if you think we have it wrong.

Our Clients

Congrats! You have made such a great decision to engage us. We are stoked to be working with you. Thank you for trusting us.

As we wrote about earlier, as a client of a lawyer you get something called client privilege over the meaty and important information you give us. Privilege is the strongest protection out there – even better than that pinky promise you made with your BFF when you were playing under that tree or on that beach (we are just guessing you did that because we all did).

Clean Break is super-duper careful with privileged information. We won’t tell anybody anything unless we are literally forced to. If we break this promise and tell someone something we shouldn’t have, we will tell you. If what we did was really bad, we will even tell you to go talk to another lawyer before we can do any more work for you. That’s because it’s the right thing to do, but also because there is a lawyer rule saying we have to.

What information might Clean Break have about me?

If you are our client, you have probably told us heaps of stuff. Believe it or not…, we have remembered everything (yay tech systems), even if the human you are dealing with might have forgotten. We record all of our meetings and phone calls so we don’t have to waste time (our time = your money) after our meeting manually writing down what was said.

We also have information your computer tells us (see above), and that other people might tell us about you. Sometimes we even go digging for information about you on public databases or the internet in order to do our jobs better.

How might Clean Break use my information?

We will use it for good things we promise.

We will use it in the obvious ways, like sorting out your separation for you as quickly, fairly and easily as we can. Unless you have specifically asked us not to, we will double check you are happy for us to tell your ex’s lawyer [insert exact thing we are sharing] before we do. It’s part of our Clean Break Promise.

We may use it in less obvious ways too – like for internal trainings so our team can learn and grow (one of our key values is Excel and Improve, geeky but important). We may group your personal information with other people’s personal information to see trends and patterns within our business – again so Clean Break can be better at what we do.

A bit yuck but to be completely transparent… but if we are forced… we may use your personal information (not the privileged stuff though) to make sure we get paid. You paying us what you have agreed to pay us means we can help you and other people like you. So, unless we tell you that Clean Break has won lotto and can now do everything for free, please pay us what you have agreed to pay us.

When might Clean Break share my information?

We share your information with the systems and technology we use to do our jobs. We are really careful with selecting these tools and only use systems that can assure us they meet our high security standards. If you know stuff about tech – ask us for list of the tech we use so you can triple check our work. We will even give you a 25% discount on your first appointment to say thanks for reading this policy and being interested in this stuff!

You might be wondering how we can be forced to share your information. Well, there are exceptions to our super-duper promise about keeping your stuff secret, like:

1. a law that tries to combat money laundering – this can force us to report dodgy looking money stuff and we can’t even tell you we have done it. Worry not – if you aren’t doing anything dodgy, you have nothing to be afraid of. If you are – well, please fire us because we will realise it (we only hire really clever people and we train them really well);
2. documents that are made for a dishonest purpose don’t get protected: we can be forced to provide those by a judicial body like a court. This is when you get us to tell you stuff so you can go commit a crime or something… but as per (1) – please don’t try to do that with us, that’s yuck. We like to use our lawyer powers for good things – like Clean Breaks (see what we did there 😉)
3. a rule that says we have to report crimes that are being planned that are punishable by imprisonment for 3 years or more;
4. a rule that says we can when we are worried there is a serious risk to the health or safety of you or someone else. We know it’s serious because it’ll probably keep us up at night. We will check that we aren’t just overreacting with a smart person or three before we disclose anything;
5. some other rules that are mentioned here, but they are sort of boring.

When we tell someone something, we only do so to the right person / organisation and what we must for the reason we are reporting.

For example, if we are disclosing under (3) or (4), we might say to the Police that we are worried about Peter because Suzie has told us she will hurt Peter by doing [insert a bad and yucky thing punishable by imprisonment for 3 years or more] and she was cagey and had a weird vibe when we asked her about her not-funny ‘joke’. We don’t want Peter to get hurt!

We might also slip in here, that while we have strong duties to you, our overriding duty is to the Court. Despite what you see dodgy lawyers get up to on TV, lawyers must always uphold the rule of law and help justice get done. Clean Break want to use our magic powers for good – funny that. Please note that lawyers don’t actually have magic powers, they are only pretending. See also: stamps don’t do anything special, they are just from the stationary shop and help lawyers not have to write their own name a thousand times a year.

What other information benefits do I get?

So many! Our favourite one is that we must disclose to you as our client all information that we have that is relevant to your separation. How powerful is that!

This is why we do conflict checks before we agree to work with you – we can’t act for you if your ex is our client already, or if they have been in the past, or if we know you or your ex really well in a private capacity – because we would be conflicted. It would feel yucky for your ex and would put us in an awkward situation where we have ongoing duties to them AND you at the same time. Here at Clean Break, we don’t want anyone to feel yuck or awkward, ever. That only leads to a Messy Break (see what we did there – puns!).

If we have a conflict… well there is something we can do for you, and its completely free! We will give you some names of other awesome, smart and nice lawyers, so you can still get good help. If both people have good lawyers there is usually a strong chance that the whole experience will be emotionally easier and financially cheaper for you both. It’s also nice for us because we like dealing with other nice lawyers – it’s fun (aren’t lawyers a twisted bunch). So, just get in touch.

Can I have my information?

Of course. We will never charge you for a copy of your file, provided we can give it to you electronically (…there is always a catch with lawyers amiright?). Electronic is better for the forest and printing takes ages, so we think that’s a fair compromise.

The end

Well done, the internet told us that no one reads the privacy policy, but they were wrong and we were right to put some effort in. We hope you have enjoyed reading this. You are probably just the type of person we want to work with. We look forward to meeting with you soon.

Noho ora mai rā (Take care, Stay well, All the best),

The Clean Break team

Last updated August 2024