Privacy policy.

What is this policy?

When you use our services or contact us (online or in “the real world”), you trust us with your personal information. We collect and store this information about you to help us deliver the best possible online service.

Here we will explain what information we collect, how we collect it, and what we do with it.

By giving us your information, you are agreeing for us to process it in the ways described here.

Who are we?

visalaw.nz is a website owned and operated by Visalaw Limited. To look us up, search here for our New Zealand Business Number: 9429048404679.

What information do we collect?

We collect personal information that helps us contact you, solve your legal problem and personalise our content for you. We will only ask for, use or share sensitive information with your consent and only for the reason we collected it (unless we need to by law).

We collect contact details like your name, phone number, email and address. The information we collect to personalise content for you includes job titles, images, opinions and how you use our site. We also ask about your work, relationship status and credit card details. If we don’t need your information anymore, we will anonymise or delete it.

If you are giving us others’ personal information, please do so only if they agree to this policy.

When you access any website including ours, you may be providing it with information about your location, Internet provider, computer hardware, browser type and operating system.

How do we collect information?

When you reach out to us through the phone, use our website or open our emails, you are telling us about yourself.

This can be through online enquiry forms or questionnaires when you download our free resources.

We also use software like cookies to tell us how you use our website and how we can help you. As well as being delicious sweets, cookies are tiny digital identifiers that are automatically stored on your computer. These help us personalise our service to you, and can be turned off or deleted at any time through your browser settings.

What do we do with this information?

Using your information:

We use all personal information legally, fairly and transparently and on this page we explain everything that we do with it. We will only use your information to give you the best online service, which comes down to categorising your case, communicating with you and marketing our services to you. This includes

  • Referring you to a legal expert,

  • Asking you for feedback, and

  • Marketing

We do these through:

  • Government database searches,

  • Phone calls,

  • Emails, and

  • Snail mail (occasionally)

Storing your information:

We store your information securely in data centres in New Zealand, Australia and the US. Only our staff and businesses we work with can access it. We use physical, electronic and management processes to keep your information safe. For example:

  • Access to your information is protected by strict user logins

  • Our servers are located in the cloud with multiple safeguards

  • All our staff are trained in information security, and

  • We limit access to your information according to the strict client confidentiality laws that apply to lawyers and law firms

  • Sharing your information:

We regularly share your information with a core few organisations that we work with to collect, process and use your information. These include:

  • Data collection (TypeForm)

  • Data analysis (Squarespace & Google Analytics)

  • Targeted Ads (Facebook & LinkedIn)

  • Marketing content (MailChimp)

  • Payment services (Stripe & PayPal)

Aside from these, we might also occasionally share your information with other contractors and groups like marketers, advisors, data storage and payment service providers, and only on a need-to-know basis. This includes providers of IT, data storage, webhosting, servers, debt collection, maintenance, marketing, advertising, professional advisory, credit reporting and payment systems services.

To find out how other groups use your information from our website, see their privacy policies (Google’s is here).

It’s possible that these groups store some of your information overseas (including the US) under different information privacy laws and disclosure obligations to New Zealand.

We will only disclose your personal information to countries with laws which protect your personal information in a way which is substantially like the New Zealand Privacy Principles, or we will take such steps as are reasonable in the circumstances to protect your personal information in accordance with the New Zealand Privacy Principles.

We will never sell your information. However, the government might ask for your information - for example through certain laws or a court order. This might include the police investigating a crime, or a court hearing for failure to pay. If this happens, we’ll comply. If visalaw.nz is ever sold, your personal information will also be shared with the new owner.

Remember, when reaching out to us online, we can’t guarantee that your information hasn’t been intercepted by someone else before reaching us. That’s your responsibility!

What if you have a special relationship with us?

Some relationships are ‘special’ because of the different data requirements they have. We’ve outlined some examples here.

When we refer you to a legal expert, we might ask you for important documents like employment agreements to pass on who may then legally need to keep your data for a certain length of time.

When you apply for a job with us, we might ask for personal data like your work history.

If you are under 16, we can only let you use our site and submit your data to us if you have your parents’ or guardians’ permission.

How to contact us?

We will do our best to keep your data up to date. You can view - and ask us to correct - any data we have about you. You can also ask us at any time to stop communicating with you.

If you’re unhappy with something we’ve done or you think we’re not following privacy laws, let us know and we’ll get back to you promptly to try and fix that. Just reach out here.

You can also make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner.

If this policy ever changes, we’ll update it here.