Privacy policy

Who we are

LawMatch (lawmatch.co.za) is operated by Ophir Technologies (Pty) Ltd. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who receives it, and the choices you have under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA).

Ophir Technologies (Pty) Ltd is the responsible party for the personal information described on this page, except where we say that a law firm becomes the responsible party once a lead reaches it. Our Information Officer is the person you deal with on any privacy question, and you can reach that office at privacy@lawmatch.co.za. We answer privacy requests by email. If you write to us about something else, use hello@lawmatch.co.za so that your message reaches the right desk faster.

This policy covers the public website, the matching form, the newsletter, the template downloads and the attorney portal. It does not cover what a law firm does with your information after we have passed it on, and it does not cover other websites that we link to.

How we collect information

We collect information in three ways, and it helps to keep them apart in your mind.

The first is what you type. If you fill in the matching form, subscribe to the newsletter, download a template, write a review or email us, you are handing us information on purpose. You choose what goes into the description of your problem, and you can leave out anything you would rather not put in writing.

The second is what your browser sends. Every website receives certain technical details automatically: your internet protocol (IP) address, the type of browser and device you are using, the page you arrived from, and the date and time of each request. Our web server writes these into a log. We do not use that log to build a profile of you. We use it to keep the site running, to work out why a page broke, and to spot attacks such as repeated attempts to submit fake forms.

The third is what cookies do. A cookie is a small text file that a site asks your browser to store and send back on your next visit. Cookies are how the site remembers that you are in the middle of something, how the security token on a form is checked, and how your cookie choice is remembered so that you are not asked again on every page. Advertising cookies work differently and are described further down.

Information you give us

When you use the matching form we collect your name, phone number, email address, province and city, the category of law and a short description of your problem. When you subscribe to the newsletter or download a template we collect your email address. When you write a review we collect the name you choose to show and the text of your review.

Please do not put more into the description box than the firm needs in order to decide whether it can help. A short summary of what happened and what you want is enough. You do not need to attach identity numbers, bank details, medical records or the names of other people. If you have already sent us something you would rather we did not keep, write to privacy@lawmatch.co.za and ask us to remove it.

Why we use it

We use the matching details to connect you with up to three attorneys who practise in your area and category of law, and to follow up on whether the match worked. We use newsletter and template email addresses to send what you asked for and, if you opted in, occasional plain-English legal updates. Every email we send has an unsubscribe link.

The lawful basis for each purpose

POPIA requires us to have a proper reason for each use of your information. In plain words, these are ours.

Matching you with attorneys is done to carry out what you asked for. You filled in a form whose whole purpose is to send your details to firms, and we cannot do that without processing them.

Sending you a newsletter or a template is done with your consent. You gave us an email address for that purpose and you can withdraw that consent from any email we send.

Keeping the site secure, preventing fraudulent or abusive submissions and keeping proper business records serves our legitimate interests as the operator of the site, balanced against your privacy. We keep this to the minimum that does the job.

Publishing a review is done with your consent, given when you submit it. Moderating it before publication protects the firm and other readers.

Where the law requires us to keep something, for example records that support our invoices to firms, we process it to meet a legal obligation.

Who receives it

Your name, contact details and description are shared with the matched firms only. Firms that use AttorneyOS receive the details directly in their practice management system. We do not sell personal information, and we do not share matching details with advertisers.

We also use service providers who process information on our behalf and under our instructions: hosting and server infrastructure, email delivery, and error monitoring. They may only do what we tell them to do with the information, and they may not use it for their own purposes.

What happens when a firm receives your details

This is the part people most often misunderstand, so we set it out plainly.

Up to the moment we send a lead, we are responsible for your information. From the moment a firm receives it, that firm becomes a responsible party in its own right under POPIA for what it does with the details. It has to keep them secure, use them only to assess and, if you instruct it, act on your matter, and delete them when it no longer needs them. Our Attorney terms say exactly that, and firms agree to those terms before they can receive a lead.

What this means for you is practical. If you want a firm to delete what it holds about you, ask that firm directly. We can delete our copy, but we cannot reach into a firm's files. If a firm contacts you about something unrelated to your matter, tell us at privacy@lawmatch.co.za, because that is a breach of our terms with them, and tell the firm to stop.

Who inside Ophir Technologies can see it

Access is limited to the people who need it to do their work. The engineering team maintains the systems and can see lead records when fixing a fault. The support desk sees lead records when you or a firm raises a query. The Information Officer sees whatever a privacy request requires. Editorial staff who write guides do not have access to lead records at all. Everyone with access is bound by confidentiality, and access is removed when a person leaves or changes role.

Automated processing

Some of what happens after you submit the form is automated, and you should know that.

Our system reads the category, province, city and urgency you chose, checks which verified firms cover that category and area, and orders them using a routing rule. It also runs a simple quality check on the submission, looking at things like whether a phone number is in a valid format, whether the description is long enough to be a real request, and whether the same details were submitted several times in quick succession. Submissions that fail those checks may be held back or not sent.

What this means for you is that no person reads your form before it is routed. There is no automated decision that decides your legal rights, and no algorithm decides whether a firm takes your matter, because each firm makes that decision itself. If your submission was held back by an automated check and you think that was wrong, email hello@lawmatch.co.za and a person will look at it. You may ask us to explain how a decision affecting you was reached.

Advertising and Google AdSense

LawMatch shows advertisements served by Google AdSense. Google, and the advertising partners it works with, use cookies and similar technologies to show ads, to limit how often you see the same ad, to measure whether ads are effective and to detect fraud. These cookies are set by Google, not by us, and Google processes the data under its own privacy policy.

Google may also use cookies to personalise ads based on your visits to this and other websites. On LawMatch that only happens if you choose "Allow all" in the cookie notice. If you choose "Essential only", we ask Google to serve non-personalised ads, which still use cookies for the basic purposes above but not for profiling.

You can change your choice at any time by clearing this site's data in your browser, which brings the cookie notice back. You can also opt out of personalised advertising directly with Google at Google Ads Settings, and learn how Google uses information from sites that use its services at How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services. Other advertising partners can be managed at www.aboutads.info/choices.

Cookies we use

• Essential cookies keep the site working: the session cookie, the security (CSRF) token and your cookie choice. These cannot be switched off.
• Advertising cookies are set by Google AdSense as described above. Personalisation is off unless you allow it.
• Analytics cookies are off unless you choose "Allow all". We do not currently run an analytics tool that sets cookies.

You can also control cookies in your browser settings, including blocking them or deleting them. If you block essential cookies the matching form will not work, because the security token cannot be checked.

Retention

Personal information on leads is deleted or anonymised 12 months after the lead was created unless there is an active matter. Newsletter subscriptions are kept until you unsubscribe. Server logs, which record IP addresses, are kept for a limited period for security.

Taking each category in turn and saying why:

Lead records are kept for the 12 months described above because a matter can go quiet and come back, because a firm may query a lead well after it was sent, and because we need to be able to answer a complaint about a match. After that period the identifying details go and only a count remains.

Newsletter and template email addresses stay until you unsubscribe, because that is the only way to keep sending you what you asked for. Once you unsubscribe we keep a minimal record that you did so, so that you are not added back by mistake.

Reviews stay published while the listing exists, because a review that vanishes is of no use to the next reader. You can ask us to remove yours.

Server logs are kept for a limited period, long enough to investigate a security incident and no longer.

Billing records relating to firms are kept for as long as tax and company law require us to keep supporting documents.

Cross-border transfers

Some of the service providers we use, including hosting, email delivery and Google's advertising services, operate servers outside South Africa. That means your information may be stored or processed in another country.

POPIA allows this where the receiving country or the provider gives protection that is substantially similar to POPIA, or where the transfer is necessary to perform the service you asked for. We use providers that commit contractually to comparable protection, and we ask them to limit access and to keep the information secure. If you want to know which country a particular provider stores information in, ask at privacy@lawmatch.co.za and we will tell you what we know.

Children's information

LawMatch is written for adults. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18, and the matching form is not designed to be used by a child.

A parent, guardian or other competent person may submit a matter that concerns a child, for example a maintenance or custody question. In that case, only include what the firm needs to understand the matter, and only submit it if you are the person legally entitled to act for that child. If you believe a child has given us personal information without the consent of a competent person, write to privacy@lawmatch.co.za and we will delete it.

Security and what happens if something goes wrong

We use technical and organisational measures to protect personal information, including encrypted connections to the site, access controls on the systems that hold lead data, and limits on who inside the business can see what. No system is perfectly safe, and we do not pretend otherwise.

If there are reasonable grounds to believe that personal information has been accessed or acquired by an unauthorised person, POPIA requires us to notify the Information Regulator and to notify you as the affected person, unless the Regulator or another public body tells us to delay so that an investigation is not harmed. We will tell you what happened as far as we know it, what information was involved, what we are doing about it, and what you can do to protect yourself. We will use the contact details we hold for you, and we will also put a notice on the site if we cannot reach people individually.

Your rights

Under POPIA you may ask what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, object to direct marketing, and complain to the Information Regulator. Contact our Information Officer at privacy@lawmatch.co.za and we will respond within a reasonable time.

How to make a request

Send your request to privacy@lawmatch.co.za and tell us which right you are exercising: access, correction, deletion, or objection to direct marketing.

So that we do not hand your information to someone else, we will ask you to confirm that you are the person the information is about. Usually that means writing from the email address you used on the form, or telling us the phone number and approximate date of the submission so that we can find the record. If we still cannot match you to a record we may ask for one further piece of identifying information. We ask for as little as possible and we do not keep what you send for verification longer than the request takes.

A request for access to a record can also be made under the Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000, and our manual under that Act explains that route. For most people an email is simpler and gets the same result.

If we cannot do what you asked, we will tell you why. There are situations where we must keep something, for example a billing record that tax law requires us to hold, or a review that is the subject of a live complaint.

Complaining to the Information Regulator

If you are not satisfied with how we handled your information or your request, you may complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa. The Regulator is the independent body that enforces both POPIA and the Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000, and its complaint form and contact details are on its website. You do not need to come to us first, although we would rather have the chance to fix the problem.

You are also free to take the matter to court. Nothing on this page limits any right you have under POPIA, the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 or any other law.

Changes

We will update this page when our practices change. The date at the top of the page shows when it was last updated.

If a change is significant, for example a new category of information or a new purpose, we will say so on the page and, where we hold your email address for that purpose, tell you by email. Continuing to use the site after a change means the updated policy applies to your use of it. Our Terms of use and our Disclaimer sit alongside this policy, and firms should also read the Attorney terms.