Hiring a Privacy Lawyer

Does the thought of making your organization privacy complaint seem like the last item on your priority list?

Becoming privacy compliant is not an option for most organizations — it’s the law.

Not being prepared with the appropriate policies and procedures to handle your customers’ and clients’ personal information can cost your organization dearly later on in the form of legal services, deteriorating company image, and loss of business revenue.

One of the quickest and most surest ways of becoming privacy complaint is by hiring a privacy lawyer.

The Benefits of Hiring a Privacy Lawyer

Your organization has other options for ensuring privacy compliance. For example, you can hire a privacy officer. However, there are numerous immediate benefits by hiring the services of an experienced legal professional.

Get it Done Right — Right Away

Hiring a privacy lawyer means expertise immediately within your reach. Sure, they may cost more initially, but your organization will benefit by having results that you can count on now.

Developing Policies and Procedures

A privacy lawyer is able to create policies and procedures for the collection, usage, disclosure, and management of personal information that is consistent with your organization’s business processes.

You can rest assured that your organization’s policies and procedures are developed using best practices and backed by a professional.

Understanding Tricky, Cross-Border Issues

Many organizations are large, diverse, and have offices scattered throughout the globe.

For example, your organization may collect personal information from people in Canada, process that information in India where labour is cheap, and finally store the information in a data warehouse in the US.

When personal information crosses borders and is subject to difference privacy legislation, it is vital to have a privacy lawyer review your situation to ensure you are aware of your risks and responsibilities and are compliant in each area.

Responding to Access Requests and Complaints

What happens when you receive a nightmare access request?

A customer who seemingly knows privacy legislation better than the back of his hand is demanding volumes of records containing personal information and is demanding information about how his data is collected, used, stored, and deleted.

On top of that, he’s also threatening to make a complaint with the privacy commissioner if you do not provide a satisfactory response within thirty days.

Are you prepared to handle difficult privacy access requests and complaints?

Mitigating a Privacy Breach

Everyone knows about the financial damage that TJX corporation suffered when it failed to provide adequate security measures to protect the personal information it had collected.

A privacy lawyer can mitigate the chances of a privacy breach which has the power to cripple your organization. If your organization has already suffered a privacy breach, a privacy lawyer can help minimize its impact.

Privacy Training

For larger and more specialized organizations, training privacy officers, employees, and creating educational materials needs to be done properly. Some organizations can simply not afford to make mistakes.

Privacy training done properly will create knowledgeable, trained employees and reduce the risks of an employee making a careless mistake with your organization’s sensitive information.

Contracts

Perhaps the most important, a privacy lawyer can assess, create, or modify your legal contracts to ensure that your organization is legally covered in its business activities when collecting, using, and disclosing personal information.

Finding a Privacy Lawyer

PrivacySense offers a free Privacy Lawyer Directory where you can search for law firms practicing privacy law in Canada. Take a look at the law firms in your area and see what services they have to offer.

Conclusion

Privacy law is relatively young and not fully understood by a majority of businesses. Although hiring a privacy lawyer can seem expensive on the onset, your organization will save valuable time and costs in the long-run and will get started on the right foot by having dependable professional resources from an experienced law firm.

Once your organization has employed the use of a privacy lawyer, continuing to use one can be an ongoing, costly expense. Consider using the resources of a privacy lawyer to properly train a privacy officer you hire to handle the management of personal information in your organization.