Effective Date: January 1, 2004
Last Updated: September
2024
Table of Contents
- About this privacy policy
- Type of personal information we collect
- how we use the personal information
- When we share personal information
- Grounds for Processing
- Data Retention
- Locations of Processing
- Data Security
- Children’s Privacy
- Your Communications Preferences
- Accessing and Updating Your Information
- Changes
- Contact
- Supplementary Notices
- First Reference Fair Processing Statement
At First Reference Inc., we take your privacy and your trust in us very seriously. This privacy policy provides you with information about how we collect, use and disclose your personal information.
1. About this privacy policy
This privacy policy applies when you visit or use or navigate our websites, apps, products, and other services, including marketing campaigns, conferences, events, surveys, guides, whitepapers, Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, that refer or link to this privacy policy (each referred hereafter as a “Service”). This privacy policy may be supplemented by additional privacy statements, terms, end user licence or notices provided to you.
First Reference owns or administers the Service, as identified therein, is the primary controller of your personal information provide to, or collected by or for, the Service.
We will indicate within the registration processes of our services and other registration forms what types of personal information are required and those that are requested. You may choose not to submit the requested information, but that may limit or prohibit the services that First Reference is able to provide to you.
2. Type of Personal Information We Collect
We collect information about you in four ways: directly from your input, from your company, from third-party sources, and through automated technologies.
2.1 Data You Provide to Us
The types of personal information that we collect directly from you depends on how you interact with us and the Service, which may include:
- Contact details, such as your name, email address, postal address, social media handle, and phone number;
- Account login credentials, such as usernames and passwords, password hints and similar security information;
- Other account registration and profile information, such as job title, educational and professional background and qualifications, and photo;
- Payment information, such as a credit or debit card number;
- Comments, feedback and other information you provide to us, including search query data and questions or information you send to customer support, sales department or the editors; and/or Interests and communication and account preferences.
2.2 Data from Your Organisation
We may obtain personal information about you from the organisation with which you are employed or affiliated in order to activate and manage your access to and use of the organisation’s subscription to the Service, including:
- Contact details, such as your name and organisational email address, postal address, and phone number;
- Other account registration information such as job title; and/or Organisational user ID;
- Payment information, such as a credit or debit card number.
2.3 Data from Other Sources
We also may obtain contact details and other information about you from our affiliates and from other third parties, including:
- Social networks when you grant permission to the Service to access your data on one or more networks;
- Service providers that help us determine a location in order to customise certain products to your location;
- Businesses with which we offer co-branded services or engage in joint marketing activities; and/or
- Publicly-available sources and data suppliers from which we obtain data to validate or supplement the information we hold.
2.4 Data From Service Use, Including Cookies, Log Files, Web Beacons, Tags, Or Pixels
The Service may automatically collect information about how you and your device interact with the Service, including:
- Computer, device and connection information, such as IP address, browser type and version, operating system and other software installed on your device, mobile platform and unique device identifier and other technical identifiers, time zone, cookie information, what sites or products you view, search terms, and how you interact with the sites, error reports and performance data;
- Usage data, such as the features you used, the settings you selected, your URL click stream data, including date and time stamp and referring and exit pages, search terms you used, and pages you visited or searched for on the Service;
- For training Services, the course modules and test questions you view, answer or complete; and/or
- For location-aware Services, the region, city or town where your device is located in order to provide you with more relevant content for where you are in the world.
We collect this data through our servers and the use of cookies and other technologies. Cookies are small text files that can be read by a web server in the domain that put the cookie on your hard drive. We may use cookies and other technologies to store your preferences and settings, help you with signing in, provide targeted ads and analyse site operations. You can control cookies through your browser’s settings and other tools. However, if you block certain cookies, you may not be able to register, login, or access certain parts or make full use of the Service.
We will not use or disclose your personal information for any other purpose which is not related (or in the case of sensitive information, directly related) to the above purposes without your consent, unless otherwise authorized, required or permitted under the laws of Canada.
3. How We Use Your information
Depending on how you interact with us and the Service, we use your personal information. to:
- Where you have given us consent to process your personal information for specified purposes, such as to provide our Service and other items requested by you.
- Provide, activate and manage your access to and use of the Service;
- Process and fulfil a request, order, download, subscription or other transaction;
- Provide technical, product and other support and to help keep the Service working, safe and secure;
- Enhance and improve the Service and our other products, services, events, marketing, ads, and to develop new products, services and benefits;
- Offer you customised content and other personalisation to make the Service more relevant to your interests and geography;
- Respond to your requests, inquiries, comments and concerns;
- Notify you about changes, updates and other announcements related to the Service and our other products and services;
- Deliver targeted marketing campaigns, advertisements, promotional messages, notices and other information related to the Service and your interests;
- Provide you with promotional messages and other information about products, events and services of ours, our affiliates and third parties such as sponsors;
- Invite you to participate in user testing and surveys as well as drawings and similar promotions;
- Identify usage trends and develop data analysis, including for purposes of research, audit, reporting and other business operations, including determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns and evaluating our business performance, or in other ways pursuant to a customer agreement; and/or
- To load the Site accurately for you, and to perform analytics on Site usage to optimize our Site.
- Comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.
- Share with our processor Al, PayPal, Stripe and other payment gateways, sales channels.
If you are an administrator of an organisation with a subscription to the Service, we will use your details to communicate with you about your organisation’s subscription and related services. If you supply us contact information of your colleagues, we may contact those individuals with communications about the Service that may include reference to you.
4. When we share personal information
We share personal information for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy and with the following categories of recipients:
4.1 Within First Reference
We may share your personal information amongst the staff at First Reference who need to now and with the First Reference group of companies.
4.2 Your Organisation
If you access the Service through a subscription administered by your organisation, your personal information and certain usage data gathered through the Service may be accessed by or shared with the administrators authorised by your organisation for the purposes of usage analysis, subscription management and compliance, training course progress, performance and remediation, cost attribution and departmental budgeting.
4.3 Application Licensor
If you access a third-party application on the Service through a license agreement with the licensor of that application, personal information relevant that third-party application may be shared with the licensor so that it can provide you access to the application, subject to the terms of its license agreement and privacy policy.
4.4 Our Group Companies, Service Providers and Third Parties
Dependent upon the Services provided, we share information with:
- Our affiliates, trading names and divisions within the First Reference group of companies and certain companies that provide technology, customer service and other shared services functions; and/or
- Our service providers, suppliers, agents and representatives, including but not limited to, payment processors, customer support, email service providers, event venues and service providers, IT service providers, marketing service providers, research providers, mailing houses and shipping agents;
- to process the information as necessary to provide the Service, complete a transaction or fulfil your request or otherwise on our behalf based on our instructions and in compliance with this privacy policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
- to jointly offer, provide, deliver, analyze, administer, improve, and personalize products or services (including these Services) or to host events. We may also pass certain requests from you or your organization to these business providers.
- to perform tasks on our behalf and to assist us in providing, delivering, analyzing, administering, improving, and personalizing content that are delivered as part of our Services. We may also pass certain requests from you or your organization to these content providers.
4.5 Your Choices
We may share your personal information with our affiliates and with sponsors, joint venture entities and other third parties, including entities for which we are acting as an agent, licensee, application host or publisher, that wish to send you information about their products and services that may be of interest to you, as determined by your choices in managing your communications preferences and other settings.
The Service may let you post and share personal information, comments, materials and other content. Any such contributions that you disclose publicly may be collected and used by others. Please be careful when disclosing personal information in these public areas.
4.6 For Legal Reasons
We also will disclose your personal information if we have a good faith belief that such disclosure is necessary to:
- meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or other legal obligation;
- detect, investigate and help prevent security, fraud or technical issues; and/or
- protect the rights, property or safety of First Reference, our users, employees or others; and
- as part of a corporate transaction, such as a transfer of assets to or an acquisition by or merger with another company.
4.7 For Behavioural Advertising
We use your Personal Information to provide you with targeted advertisements or marketing communications we believe may be of interest to you. For example:
- We use Google Analytics to help us understand how our customers use our sites and services. Google Analytics sets a cookie in order to evaluate your use of the websites and services and compile reports for us on activity on the websites and services. Google stores the information collected by the cookie on servers in the United States. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. You can read more about how Google uses your Personal Information here: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en. You can also opt-out of Google Analytics here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
- We share information about your use of the Site, your purchases, and your interaction with our ads on other websites with our advertising partners. We collect and share some of this information directly with our advertising partners, and in some cases through the use of cookies or other similar technologies (as already stated in 2. Type of Personal Information We Collect, which you may consent to, depending on your location).
4.8 Advertisers
We may share your personal information with advertisers, advertising exchanges, and marketing agencies that we engage for advertising services, to deliver advertising on some of our Services, and to assist us in advertising our brand and products and services. Those advertising services may also target advertisements on third party websites based on cookies or other information indicating previous interaction with us and/or our Services.
4.9 Social Media Services
We may work with certain third party social media providers to offer you their social networking services through our Services. These social networking services may be able to collect information about you, including your activity on our Services. These third party social networking services also may notify your friends, both on our Services and on the social networking services themselves, that you are a user of our Services or about your use of our Services, in accordance with applicable law and their own privacy policies.
4.10 In the Event of Merger, Sale, or Change of Control
We may transfer this Privacy Policy and your personal information to a third party entity that acquires or is merged with us as part of a merger, acquisition, sale, or other change of control (such as the result of a bankruptcy proceeding).
4.11 Users
For some of our Services, we aggregate information from public records, phone books, social networks, marketing surveys, business websites, and other sources made available to us to create listings and profiles that become a part of our content in these Services, such as directories and resources. These listings and profiles may be made available to all users of these Services. As described above, we may also share your personal information with other users who are your contacts if you are in the same organization or to facilitate the exchange of information between you and the contact(s). Additionally, if you choose to include your personal information in any reviews, comments, or other posts that you create, then that personal information may be displayed other users as part of your posting.
5. Grounds for Processing
When we collect or otherwise process any personal information within the scope of data protection laws, we do so:
- where necessary to provide the Service, fulfil a transaction or otherwise perform a contract with you or at your request prior to entering into a contract;
- where necessary for our compliance with applicable law or other legal obligation;
- where necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest;
- where necessary to enable our customers to comply with their legal obligations;
- where applicable, with your consent; and/or
- where necessary to operate our business, protect the security of our systems, customers and users, detect or prevent fraud, or fulfil our other legitimate interests as described in sections 2-4 above, except where our interests are overridden by your privacy rights.
Where we rely on your consent to process personal information, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, and where we rely on legitimate interests, you may have the right to object to our processing.
6. Data Retention
We retain your personal information for as long as necessary to provide the Service and fulfil the transactions you have requested, or for other essential purposes such as complying with our legal obligations, maintaining business and financial records, resolving disputes, maintaining security, detecting and preventing fraud and abuse, and enforcing our agreements. If you access the Service through a subscription administered or sponsored by your organisation, we retain your organisational contact details after the termination of your organisation’s subscription to continue to communicate with you.
7. Locations of Processing
Your personal information may be stored and processed in your region or another country where First Reference, its affiliates and their service providers maintain servers and facilities. We take steps, including through contracts, intended to ensure that the information continues to be protected wherever it is located in a manner consistent with the standards of protection required under applicable law.
At the time of publishing this privacy policy, First Reference is located in Canada. Your personal information collected by First Reference and used on our Services and Cloud Services is stored and processed in Canada.
The Google Analytics service providers are based in the United States of America (USA), which means that the personal information collected is transmitted outside of Canada and may be subject to USA laws, including the USA PATRIOT Act. In addition, Google operate servers in other countries on which the web analytics data may be processed. Consequently, the data may be subject to the governing legislation of the country where it is processed.
8. Data Security
We implement technical and organisational measures to seek to ensure a level of security appropriate to the risk to the personal information we process. These measures are aimed at ensuring the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of personal information.
For example (not exhaustive)
Policies and procedures
- We have measures in place to protect against accidental loss and unauthorized access, use, destruction, or disclosure of data
- We have a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery strategy that is designed to safeguard the continuity of our service to our clients and to protect our people and assets
- We place appropriate restrictions on access to personal information
- We implement appropriate measures and controls, including monitoring and physical measures, to store and transfer data securely
- We conduct Privacy Impact Assessments in accordance with legal requirements and our business policies
Training for employees and contractors
- We require privacy, information security, and other applicable training on a regular basis for our employees and contractors who have access to personal information and other sensitive data
- We take steps to ensure that our employees and contractors operate in accordance with our information security policies and procedures and any applicable contractual conditions
Vendor risk management
- We require, through the use of contracts and security reviews, our third-party vendors and providers to protect any personal information with which they are entrusted in accordance with our security policies and procedures
9. Children’s Privacy
Our Services is not intended for individuals under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect information from children under the age of 18 or target the Service to children under 18.
10. Your Communications Preferences
You can customise and manage your communications preferences and other settings when you register with the Service, by updating your account features and preferences, by using the “opt-out” mechanisms such as “unsubscribe” or other means provided within the communications that you receive, or by contacting us.
We reserve the right to notify you of changes or updates to the Service whenever necessary.
11. Accessing and Updating Your Information
11.1 Your Account
The Service may allow registered users to directly access and review their account information and make corrections or updates upon login at any time. Keeping such information up to date is the responsibility of the user. Registered users may also close their account directly through the Service or by contacting the Service’s customer support.
11.2 Your Rights
You have the right under privacy and data protection laws, as may be applicable, to request free of charge:
- access to your personal information: You may have the right to obtain confirmation from us that we process your personal information and, if so, you may have the right to request access to your personal information. Please note that, to the extent permitted by law, we may charge a reasonable fee based on administrative costs for the first or further copies of your personal information requested by you.
- rectification or erasure/deletion of your personal information: You may have the right to request that we rectify inaccurate personal information concerning you and, depending on the purposes of the processing, you may have the right to have incomplete personal information completed. You may have the right to require us to erase some or all of the personal information concerning you.
- restriction of our processing of your personal information, or to object to our processing: You may have the right to require us to restrict the further processing your personal information. In such cases, the respective information will be marked as restricted, and may only be processed by us for certain purposes. You may have the right to object, on grounds relating to your particular situation, to the processing of your personal information by us, and we may be required to no longer process some or all of your personal information.
- portability of your personal information: You may have the right to receive a copy of your personal information which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format, and you may have the right to transmit that personal information to another entity without hindrance from us.
- Withdraw consent. You may have the right to withdraw consent you have provided to us where we rely solely on your consent to process your personal information. You can always provide your consent to us again at a later time. If you no longer wish to receive information about our services, you can also advise us of such.
If you wish to exercise these rights, please submit your request in writing via our Customer Service team using our contact form at https://www.firstreference.com/contactus/. We will respond to your request consistent with applicable laws. To protect your privacy and security, we may require you to verify your identity.
12. Changes
We will update this privacy policy from time to time. Any changes will be posted on this page with an updated revision date. If we make any material changes, we will provide notice through the Service or by other means.
13. Contact
If you have any questions, comments, complaints or requests regarding this privacy policy or our processing of your information, please contact us via our Privacy Officer using our contact form at https://www.firstreference.com/contactus/.
You may also lodge a complaint with the data protection authority in the applicable jurisdiction.
14. Supplementary Notices
14.1 Authors / Contributors
Where we contract with you to produce content for any of our services, such as to write manuscripts, update releases, articles, case commentaries, newsletters, blogs, guidance for dissemination to our subscribers, we will process some personal information about you.
Such information includes:
- name, organisation, and contact details;
- professional experience, role, practice area, affiliations and subject expertise;
- professional biography or profile produced or approved by you, including your image, likeness or voice, which may be published within our services and made available to our subscribers alongside any content produced by you for First Reference;
- financial information in order to facilitate payments for works produced;
- editorial and reviewer commentary and feedback as part of peer review; and
- administration information such as author work progress updates.
The above information is processed in order to facilitate the publication of the work and to administer, manage and fulfil our contract with you.
You may choose not to be contacted by First Reference to produce content for us by contacting us via the managing editor at editor@firstreference.com.
Please refer to the main section of this privacy policy for details on your rights, retention, locations of processing, and contact details for any privacy and data protection enquiries.
15. First Reference Fair Processing Statement
First Reference publishes various types of content, such as statutes, laws, regulations, rules, court cases, opinions, expert analysis, articles, forms, public records, treatise, dictionaries, and many other types of information, that we believe have professional and jurisprudential value for our subscribers or the general public. This fair processing statement provides details about the personal information contained in our service content.
First Reference obtains informational content in a number of ways – sometimes we purchase or license the content from others, sometimes we receive the content pursuant to a contract where we are required to curate and distribute the content, sometimes we commission the content ourselves, and sometimes the content is collected from a number of public sources, like public records, journalistic sources, and information in the public domain.
Some of the content that we provide within our database services, by its very nature, includes personal information. Any personal information contained in informational content that is subsequently distributed by First Reference originates from the original text of the informational content.
Except for clerical/typographical errors and format changes in compliance with editorial policies and except as directed by source of the original information content, First Reference does not edit or change the substance of the original information content in most cases.
In many cases, we are not the source of the information content and First Reference is not obliged to change or delete the substance of the original content including any personal information unless we receive a verified request from the source of the information content, such as, for example, a court order from the court that issued the court case in the first place.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the substance of any informational content or your personal information as contained in that information content, please contact the source of the informational content and work with them directly to resolve your questions or concerns.
15.1 Case law commentaries and analysis
Save for where local legislation or court embargos apply, the case law articles, commentaries and analysis which we provide as part of our Services may include personal information.
It should be stressed that such personal information is a matter of official court / public record. Whilst the authors of the case commentary article or analysis that we provide via our Services may refer to such records, we have no power over what is reported within the court records themselves. It is for the court to decide what personal information is to remain within the records that they disclose, and the balance to be struck between the public interests in disclosure and the privacy rights of individuals.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the substance of any informational content or your personal information as contained in the case law commentaries and analysis, please contact the source of the informational content and work with them directly to resolve your questions or concerns