Privacy

How we handle your information

What this website collects, what happens to your information once you contact us about an apprehended violence order, and how to see it, correct it or complain about it.

Last updated: 23 September 2026

An apprehended violence order matter involves information most people would not tell anybody: what is alleged, what happened in a household, who the children are, and sometimes health or criminal history. This page explains what happens to all of that.

AVO Defence Lawyers is an informational website about apprehended violence orders in New South Wales. Legal services on this website are provided by Jameson Law. In this policy we, us and our mean that firm. We handle personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. We are also bound by the duty of confidentiality a solicitor owes a client, which is stricter than privacy law and is dealt with further down this page.

Before you send anything: your own safety

If somebody else can see your phone, your computer or your email, think about that before you use the form on this site. A message you send, and any reply, may be visible to whoever has access to the device or the account.

Browsing history can also be seen. If that is a risk for you, use a device that is not shared, or make contact from somewhere else.

If you are in immediate danger, call 000 rather than sending a form.

This applies to everyone, whatever side of an order you are on. We would rather you made contact safely than quickly.

What this website collects

You can read every page of this site without telling us who you are. Information is collected only when you send an enquiry, or automatically by the server that hosts the site.

The enquiry form is deliberately short. It asks for enough to let us come back to you and work out whether we can help, and no more. Please do not use it to send the detail of your matter and do not attach documents to it. It is a contact form, not a secure way to transfer files.

Exactly four things are asked for: your name, your email address, a message and a tick to confirm you have read this policy. A phone number is optional and the form says so. There is also a hidden field that people never see and never fill in — automated submissions do, which is how they are discarded, and it records nothing about you. The only thing the form is set up to do with your message is send it to the firm by email. It is not configured to store submissions in the website’s database.

The server that hosts this site also keeps standard access logs, as web servers ordinarily do. They exist to keep the site working and secure and to investigate faults or abuse, and they are not used to build a profile of you.

Enquiry form: your name and your email address, which the form requires
Enquiry form: your phone number, which is optional
Enquiry form: your message, which is whatever you choose to tell us
Enquiry form: the tick confirming you have read this policy
Server logs: your IP address, the browser and device type you are using, the date and time of each request, the pages requested and the response given
Cookies and analytics: any cookie set by this site, and any measurement data collected by an analytics service the site uses

If you would rather not use the form at all, email instead. The address is at the foot of this page. You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings, and this site will still work.

Why we collect it

We ask for personal information only where it is reasonably necessary for something we actually do. That is a short list.

To answer your enquiry and tell you whether we can help
To run a conflict check before we act, which means checking whether the firm already acts for someone whose interests are opposed to yours
To advise you, and to prepare, file and conduct proceedings on your instructions
To meet the obligations a law practice has under the Legal Profession Uniform Law, including costs disclosure, billing and keeping proper records
To keep this website available and secure

If you do not engage us we still keep a record of your enquiry, so that a later conflict check picks it up. In these matters that protects both people: it is how a firm avoids acting against someone who has already spoken to it. Making an enquiry does not put you on a marketing list.

These matters involve sensitive information

Sensitive information is a category the Privacy Act treats more carefully than ordinary personal information, and apprehended violence order matters touch several parts of it.

Sensitive information can generally be collected only with your consent and only where it is reasonably necessary for what we are doing. We ask for it when the proceedings actually require it, we tell you why at the time, and we do not ask for more than the matter needs.

Please do not send sensitive information through the enquiry form. Wait until we have confirmed that we can act and have told you how to send documents to us.

Health information, including mental health and any treatment relevant to the proceedings
Criminal record and pending charges, including anything arising out of the same events
Information about children, including where they live and go to school
Information about family violence, which may concern you, the other party or both
Racial or ethnic origin, where it is part of a claim or of an interpreter's involvement
Sexual orientation, where the relationship in question makes it relevant

An apprehended violence order file will usually contain information about at least one other person. That affects what can later be released to you, and it is dealt with under access below.

Who we give it to

The court is the main recipient, and that is unavoidable. Anything filed in proceedings goes to the court and, ordinarily, to the other party. A statement prepared for a hearing is served on the applicant, who may be the police or a private person.

Where police made the application, the police prosecutor receives what is filed and communicates with us about the matter. Where there are related criminal charges, the prosecution receives material in those proceedings under its own rules.

Everyone else receives your information only on your instructions or where the law requires it.

We do not sell personal information. We do not give it to data brokers and we do not pass it to other businesses for their marketing.

Counsel we brief, and any court or tribunal where proceedings are on foot
Interpreters and accredited translation services, where they are needed
A family lawyer acting for you in related proceedings, where you ask us to deal with them
The firm's insurer and auditors, where the law or the policy requires it
The technology and document storage providers that host the systems your file sits in

Where a disclosure is required by an Australian law or by a court order we may have to make it without your instructions. If that happens and we are permitted to tell you, we will.

How it is stored and kept secure

We take reasonable steps to protect personal information from misuse, interference and loss, and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. That means keeping client files on systems that control who can open them, limiting access to the people working on your matter and destroying material securely once it is no longer needed.

A law practice keeps client files for a period after a matter ends, because obligations to produce them can outlive the matter. A file about an apprehended violence order may also be relevant later, if an application is made to vary or revoke the order, so keeping it is often in your interest as well.

If a data breach occurs that is likely to result in serious harm, the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme in the Privacy Act requires notification to the people affected and to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. We would also tell you plainly what had happened and what you should do about it.

If you want to know what we still hold from a matter that has finished, you can ask. See Seeing your information, and correcting it below.

Information held overseas

Email, document storage and practice management systems are often provided by companies that store or back up data outside Australia.

Before personal information is disclosed to an overseas recipient, the Australian Privacy Principles require reasonable steps to be taken to ensure the recipient does not breach those principles, which is normally done through the contract with the provider.

The proceedings themselves are conducted in New South Wales, so it is the technology rather than the matter that raises this question for most people.

Seeing your information, and correcting it

You can ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and you can ask us to correct it if it is wrong, out of date, incomplete or misleading. Ask in writing using the details below, and tell us what you are after. A whole file, or a particular document, is much easier to find than ‘everything’.

There is no charge for making a request. If a request is large enough that gathering it involves real work, we will tell you what the charge will be before we start, and it will not be more than a reasonable cost of doing it. We will respond within a reasonable period; the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner publishes what it considers reasonable, and its pages are listed below.

Access can be refused only on the limited grounds set out in the Australian Privacy Principles. The ones most likely to come up here are these.

Giving access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of another person
The information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings between you and us, and would not be available through discovery
Giving access would be unlawful, or refusing access is required or authorised by an Australian law or by a court order
Giving access would pose a serious threat to the life, health or safety of any person

A file about an apprehended violence order almost always contains information about other people — the other party, a family member, a child — and the last two grounds above exist for exactly this kind of matter. If we refuse access, or refuse to make a correction, we will tell you why in writing and how to complain about it. If we do not agree that something is wrong, you can ask us to attach a statement to the record saying that you disagree.

Confidentiality and legal professional privilege

Privacy law is not the strongest protection your information has here. Two others sit above it.

The first is confidentiality. A solicitor must not disclose a client’s confidential information, and that duty continues after your matter has finished and after the file is closed.

The second is client legal privilege, usually called legal professional privilege. Confidential communications between you and us made for the dominant purpose of giving you legal advice, or for use in litigation, are privileged. The privilege belongs to you rather than to us, and it generally means the communication cannot be compelled out of us.

Privilege can be lost by sharing. If you forward our advice to a family member, a friend or anybody else, you may waive privilege in it. In these matters that carries an extra risk: material shared with someone close to the other party can find its way into the proceedings. Ask us before you send it on.

Nothing in this policy reduces that privilege, and a request made under privacy law is not a route by which anyone else can obtain privileged material about you.

If you have a complaint

Tell us first. Put it in writing using the details below, say what happened and say what you would like done about it. A privacy complaint is dealt with by the practice rather than by the person you were dealing with, and making one does not change how your matter is run.

If we have not responded within a reasonable time, or you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. The OAIC generally expects you to have complained to us first and to have given us a reasonable period to answer, and it publishes what it treats as reasonable and how to lodge a complaint on its own website.

A complaint about our legal service, our costs or our conduct as solicitors is a different thing and takes a different path. That is set out on our complaints page, and the external body for it is the Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner, not the OAIC.

This policy covers this website and the apprehended violence order work AVO Defence Lawyers does as part of Jameson Law. If we change it, the current version will always be on this page and the date at the top will change. Where this page describes the law — what sensitive information is, when access can be refused, how the data breach scheme works — it describes it in general terms, and the official sources listed below are the authority on it. What it says about how we handle your information is our own commitment to you. See also our terms of use and our accessibility statement.

Privacy requests and complaints

Write to us by email and say that it is a privacy request or a privacy complaint, so that it reaches the right person rather than being treated as a general enquiry.

[email protected]

Enquiries

Through the form on our contact page, if you would rather not send an email.

Who you are contacting

AVO Defence Lawyers is an informational website about apprehended violence orders in New South Wales. Legal services are provided by Jameson Law, and it is Jameson Law you are writing to. Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner

1300 363 992, or lodge a complaint at oaic.gov.au

In an emergency

If you are in immediate danger, call 000.