Privacy Policy

Zangeneh Law Firm Professional Corporation
Effective date: October 17, 2026

Zangeneh Law Firm Professional Corporation (“Zangeneh Law Firm”, “we”, “us” or “our”) is a law firm in Thornhill, Ontario. We take your privacy seriously. This Privacy Policy explains, in plain language, what personal information we collect, how we collect it, why we use it, who we share it with, how we protect it, and the choices and rights you have.

We handle personal information in accordance with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), Canada’s federal private-sector privacy law, and with our professional duties as lawyers licensed by the Law Society of Ontario, including the duty of confidentiality under the Law Society’s Rules of Professional Conduct, the client identification and verification requirements of By-Law 7.1, and the record-keeping requirements of By-Law 9.

This policy applies to clients, prospective clients, other people involved in our clients’ matters, and visitors to our website at zangenehlaw.ca. If you have signed a retainer agreement with us, the privacy terms in that agreement also apply to your matter.

1. What Personal Information Is

“Personal information” means information about an identifiable individual. It includes things like your name, address, date of birth, identification documents and financial information. It does not include business contact information (such as your name, title and work address, email or telephone number) when it is used only to communicate with you about your work or business.

2. The Personal Information We Collect

We collect only the personal information we need to provide legal services to you, verify your identity, complete your matter and meet our legal, regulatory and insurance obligations. Depending on your matter, this may include:

  • Identity information and identification documents: your full legal name, date of birth, occupation, citizenship and residency status, and copies or images of government-issued photo identification (such as a passport or driver’s licence) and other documents we use to verify your identity. When we verify your identity remotely, this may include a photograph or video image of your face that is compared to your identification document.
  • Contact information: your home address, mailing address, telephone numbers and email address.
  • Personal and family information relevant to your matter, such as marital or spousal status, information about your children or beneficiaries, and other details needed to prepare a will, power of attorney, family agreement or other document.
  • Financial and transaction details: banking information, source of funds, mortgage and lender information, property and purchase details, corporate and shareholding information, tax-related information (for example, for land transfer tax purposes), and payment and billing records.
  • Information about other parties: personal information about people connected to your matter, such as co-purchasers, sellers, spouses, beneficiaries, executors, attorneys, shareholders, guarantors, witnesses and the other side of a transaction or agreement, and their lawyers, agents or representatives.
  • Communications and documents: the emails, messages, notes of meetings and calls, and documents you or others give us in connection with your matter.
  • Website information: if you use our website, information you enter into our online forms and limited technical information described in section 12 (Our Website, Cookies and Analytics).

Please give us information about other people only when it is needed for your matter, and, where appropriate, let them know that you have shared it with us.

3. How We Collect Personal Information

We collect most personal information directly from you, for example through:

  • online intake forms and appointment or contact requests on our website;
  • email and other electronic messages;
  • telephone calls;
  • video meetings, including meetings used to verify your identity, review documents or sign documents remotely; and
  • in person, at our office or another meeting place.

With your consent, or where the law permits, we may also collect personal information from other sources, such as public registries (including land title, execution and corporate registries), your lender or mortgage broker, real estate agents and brokerages, the lawyer for another party, financial institutions, government bodies and identity verification service providers.

4. Why We Use Personal Information

We use personal information to:

  • provide legal services to you and complete your matter, including preparing, signing and registering documents and completing transactions;
  • verify your identity and the identity of others as required by Law Society of Ontario By-Law 7.1, and help prevent fraud;
  • check for conflicts of interest before we accept or continue a matter;
  • communicate with you and with other people involved in your matter;
  • receive, hold and pay out money in trust, and issue and collect our accounts;
  • meet our professional, regulatory, insurance, tax and other legal obligations, including record-keeping, audits and Law Society requirements;
  • respond to inquiries and appointment requests made through our website, by email or by phone; and
  • operate, maintain and improve our website and our services.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for purposes unrelated to the reasons we collected it unless you agree or the law requires or permits it.

5. Your Consent and How to Withdraw It

We collect, use and disclose personal information with your knowledge and consent, except where the law allows or requires otherwise. Your consent may be:

  • express, for example when you sign a retainer agreement, complete an intake form or tell us that you agree; or
  • implied, for example when you contact us and give us your information so that we can respond, or when you retain us for a matter that requires us to share information with others in order to complete it.

You may withdraw your consent at any time, subject to legal or contractual restrictions and reasonable notice, by contacting our Privacy Officer (section 13). We will explain the likely consequences of withdrawing consent. If you withdraw consent to information we need to act for you, we may not be able to continue to act. Withdrawing consent does not affect information we must keep or disclose to meet our legal and professional obligations.

6. When We Share Personal Information

Our duty of confidentiality means we keep information about your matter confidential and share it only as needed to provide our services, with your consent, or where the law or our professional obligations require or permit. Depending on your matter, we may share personal information with:

  • title insurers, to obtain title insurance for you or your lender;
  • lenders and mortgage brokers, to arrange, register, discharge or report on a mortgage;
  • other lawyers and paralegals, such as the lawyer for the other party to a transaction or agreement, and real estate agents and brokerages;
  • the Ontario land registration system, including electronic registration and searches through Teraview, where information in registered documents becomes part of the public record;
  • government bodies, courts and tribunals, such as the Ontario Ministry of Finance (for example, for land transfer tax), municipalities, corporate registries, and courts (for example, for probate applications), and condominium corporations or their property managers;
  • the Law Society of Ontario, our professional liability insurer, auditors and others, where required or permitted by law or by our professional obligations;
  • banks, payment processors and couriers used to move funds and documents; and
  • service providers who help us run our practice, including electronic signature, identity verification, secure file storage and document sharing, practice management, billing and accounting, email and communications, and website hosting providers.

We share only the information that is reasonably needed for the purpose. We choose service providers that we believe provide appropriate protection for personal information, and we expect them to use it only to provide services to us, to keep it confidential and secure, and not to use it for their own purposes.

We may also disclose personal information where the law requires or permits it, for example in response to a valid court order, or to protect against fraud or a risk of serious harm, always consistent with our professional obligations.

7. Storage Outside Ontario and Canada

Some of our service providers, including cloud-based storage, electronic signature, identity verification and communication services, may store or process personal information on servers located outside Ontario or outside Canada, including in the United States or other countries. When information is stored or processed in another jurisdiction, it is subject to the laws of that jurisdiction and may be accessible to courts, law enforcement and national security authorities there.

We remain responsible for personal information that we transfer to our service providers, and we use contractual and other measures to require them to protect it to a standard comparable to that required in Canada.

8. How We Protect Personal Information

We protect personal information with safeguards appropriate to its sensitivity, including:

  • physical safeguards, such as secured premises and restricted access to paper files;
  • administrative safeguards, such as confidentiality obligations for everyone who works with us, limiting access to people who need it for their work, and careful verification of payment and wire instructions; and
  • technical safeguards, such as password protection, multi-factor authentication where available, encryption where appropriate, secure file-sharing tools, and keeping our systems up to date.

No method of transmitting or storing information is completely secure. Regular email and text messages may not be encrypted. If you prefer that we communicate with you in a particular way for sensitive information, please let us know. To protect against fraud, we will never change our trust account or payment instructions by email alone; always confirm payment instructions with us by telephone at a number you know to be ours.

If a privacy breach involving your personal information creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will notify you and report it to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, as PIPEDA requires, and we will keep a record of the breach.

9. How Long We Keep Personal Information

We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purposes described in this policy and to meet our legal, professional and insurance obligations. In particular:

  • client identification and verification records are kept for at least six years after we complete our work for the client, as required by Law Society of Ontario By-Law 7.1;
  • financial and trust records are kept for the periods required by Law Society of Ontario By-Law 9; and
  • client files and other records are kept for as long as reasonably needed for your matter, for our professional and insurance obligations, and as otherwise required or permitted by law.

Original documents we hold in safekeeping for you, such as original wills, are kept until they are released according to your instructions or as the law requires. When personal information is no longer needed, we destroy, erase or anonymize it securely.

10. Accessing and Correcting Your Personal Information

You may ask to see the personal information we hold about you, ask how it has been used and to whom it has been disclosed, and ask us to correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete. Please send your request in writing to our Privacy Officer (section 13). We may need to verify your identity before we respond.

We will respond within 30 days, or tell you if we need more time and why, as PIPEDA permits. We will not charge a fee for most requests; if a fee applies, we will tell you the amount before we proceed, and it will be minimal.

In some cases the law allows or requires us to refuse access, for example where the information is protected by solicitor-client privilege, would reveal personal information about another person, or cannot be disclosed for other legal reasons. If we refuse your request, we will tell you why in writing, subject to any legal restrictions, and explain how you can challenge our decision.

11. Questions and Complaints

If you have a question or concern about how we handle personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer first (section 13). We will look into your concern and respond to you.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada:

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
30 Victoria Street, Gatineau, Quebec K1A 1H3
Toll-free: 1-800-282-1376
Website: www.priv.gc.ca

12. Our Website, Cookies and Analytics

When you visit our website, our website host and the tools that run the site may automatically collect limited technical information, such as your IP address, browser and device type, the pages you visit and the date and time of your visit. This information is used to operate, secure and improve the website.

Our website may use cookies (small text files stored on your device) and similar technologies. Some are needed for the website to work properly. Others may be used to understand how visitors use the site (analytics) or may be set by third-party features such as embedded videos, maps or fonts. Where analytics are used, we use the information in summary form to understand how the site is used, not to identify individual visitors.

You can set your browser to refuse or delete cookies. If you do, some parts of the website may not work as intended.

Information you submit through our website’s forms is used to respond to you and, if you retain us, for your matter. Sending us information through the website does not by itself make you our client. Please do not send confidential details of a legal matter until we have confirmed that we can act for you. Our website may link to other websites; we are not responsible for their privacy practices.

13. Our Privacy Officer

Our Privacy Officer is responsible for our compliance with this policy. Please direct questions, requests and complaints to:

Masoud Zangeneh, Privacy Officer
Zangeneh Law Firm Professional Corporation
8199 Yonge Street, Unit 402, Thornhill, Ontario L3T 2C6
Email: info@zangenehlaw.ca
Telephone: 416-747-7234

14. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in the law, our practices or our services. The updated policy will be posted on this page with a new effective date. If we make a significant change in how we use personal information, we will seek your consent where the law requires it.