Privacy notice

HILEX LAW, a law firm in British Columbia operating as HiLex Law, is responsible for the personal information described in this notice. We handle it under the Personal Information Protection Act of British Columbia and under the confidentiality rules that bind lawyers.

When you send the request form: your name, email address, phone number if you give one, the service you ask about, your preferred language, your message, and, for a divorce, the answers to a few optional questions.

If you give us the name of another person, such as your spouse, we use it only to check for conflicts of interest.

When you become a client: the identification details that lawyers must record, the information needed for your documents, and the documents you send us. If you tell us in the portal that you have paid, we keep what you tell us: the way, the amount, the day, the reference number and the receipt you attach.

For security, our systems keep technical records of access: the date and time, the internet address and the type of browser. When you sign an agreement in the client portal we also keep, as part of the record of your signature, by which way the code we sent you went and what your browser says about the device: its language, time zone, screen size and platform.

To reply to your request; to check that we are able to act for you; to do the legal work you ask for; to meet our professional and legal obligations; and to keep our systems secure. We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not sell it.

We ask for your consent on the request form and keep a record of it, with the version of this notice that applied. You may withdraw consent at any time by contacting us; we will tell you what that means for the work we are doing for you.

The people at the firm who work on your matter. The companies that run our systems, named in the next section, who act on our instructions. Courts, registries and other parties, where your matter requires it. Otherwise only where the law requires or permits it.

Our database and the files of our clients are stored in Canada, with Supabase.

The server that runs this website and the client portal is operated by Hostinger in the United States. Pages you request pass through it. Client documents do not: they travel directly between your browser and the storage in Canada.

Email is delivered by Resend in the United States. Our emails contain a notice and a link, not the details of your matter.

Where we send you a code by text message, the message is delivered by Twilio in the United States. It holds our name and the code, and Twilio receives the mobile number it goes to.

Where we offer payment by card, you pay on a page of Stripe, a payment company, which may process the payment in the United States. Your card number is typed there and never reaches our systems; we give Stripe the amount and our own reference of the payment, not your name, and we receive only the fact that the payment was made.

Errors of the system are recorded in our own database in Canada and are sent to no outside service. Addresses, numbers and quoted values are removed from a record of an error before it is kept.

The file of a client is kept for at least ten years after the matter is closed, following the guidance of the Law Society of British Columbia. A request that does not become a matter is kept for 24 months and then made anonymous.

The names needed to check for conflicts of interest in future are kept, because that check protects clients.

Information is encrypted in transit and at rest. Each member of staff signs in with a password of their own, is signed out after a period without activity and sees only the files they work on; every access to a client record or document is recorded. Documents cannot be deleted through the system.

This website uses only the cookies it needs in order to work: to protect forms, and to keep you signed in to the client portal. It uses no advertising or tracking cookies.

You may ask to see the personal information we hold about you, how it has been used and to whom it has been given, and ask us to correct it. We answer within 30 days. Some information may be withheld where the law allows or requires it, for example information about another person or information protected by privilege; we tell you when that is so.

If you are not satisfied with our answer, you may complain to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia.

If personal information we hold about you is lost, or is seen or taken by somebody who should not have it, and that puts you at a real risk of significant harm, we tell you without delay: what happened, which information, what we have done and what you can do. As lawyers we also report such an event to the Law Society of British Columbia.

Questions and requests about privacy go to the firm's privacy officer. You can reach us by email at info@hilex.law or by phone at 833-877-9797.

When this notice changes, the new version is published here with its date. The version that applied when you gave your consent is kept with your record.