Privacy Policy.

Forge is a registered business name of Queensland Law Practice Pty Ltd (ABN 52 151 687 964), referred to in this policy as “Forge”, “we”, “us” or “our”. We are bound by the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

This policy covers personal information you provide through forgelegal.com.au, including the contact form, the free-chapter email capture, the newsletter signup, and any document you upload through the site. It also covers personal information we collect when you call us, email us, or engage Forge to act in a matter.

We collect personal information you provide when you contact us, book a strategy call, sign up for the free book chapter, or otherwise engage with our services. That can include your name, contact details, the state or territory you're in, brief details of your situation, and any documents you share with us.

Where you engage Forge in a matter, we also collect the information needed to act for you: identity verification, financial information, parenting arrangements, court documents, and communications with the other side.

We do not knowingly collect sensitive information through the website. If you need to share sensitive information (health, family violence history, financial detail), do so by phone or in person, not through web forms.

Most personal information comes directly from you: through a form, a phone call, an email, or in a meeting. We sometimes collect from third parties where that's necessary to act for you (court records, the other side's lawyer, a financial institution responding to a subpoena). We tell you when we do that, except where the law allows otherwise.

The primary purposes we use your information for:

• Assessing whether we can act for you
• Running a conflict-of-interest check
• Preparing for and conducting a strategy call
• Acting in your matter, if you engage us
• Delivering the free book chapter (if you signed up)
• Sending you our newsletter (if you opted in)
• Responding to your enquiry
• Meeting our legal, regulatory and insurance obligations

You can ask general questions about how we work without identifying yourself. To assess a potential matter, run a conflict check, or act for you in a court matter, we have to know who you are, both for our professional obligations and so we don't end up acting for both sides of the same dispute.

We disclose personal information only when necessary: to our insurers, our regulator (the Queensland Law Society), independent counsel where engaged, the courts and tribunals handling your matter, the other side and their representatives (where the conduct of the matter requires it), and service providers who help us run the firm (email, calendaring, case-management, mailing-list, payments).

Where we use a service provider, we require contractual confidentiality and Australian Privacy Principle compliance.

We may also disclose information where required by law: court order, subpoena, statutory notice, or a regulator's request.

Some of our service providers operate outside Australia or use overseas cloud infrastructure. At the time of writing, this includes website hosting (United States), email and mailing-list services, calendaring, and AI tools used to assist with research or drafting. We take reasonable steps to ensure each provider handles personal information consistently with the APPs, but we cannot guarantee how a foreign government or court may compel disclosure.

If you'd rather we not use overseas-hosted services for your matter, tell us before you engage Forge. We'll discuss whether it can be accommodated.

We only send marketing emails (the newsletter, book-launch updates, event invitations) to people who have specifically opted in. Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link that works in one click; we honour unsubscribes immediately. If you've been a client of Forge, you may also receive limited matter-related communications. Those aren't marketing and don't require an opt-in, but you can ask us to stop them at any time.

The website uses cookies to remember your cookie-consent choice and to keep your form inputs while you're filling them in. We don't use third-party advertising cookies. If you accept cookies, we record privacy-respecting, first-party analytics: the pages you view, where you arrived from, any campaign tags in the link, and your approximate location (city, state and country) worked out from your IP address at the time. We do not store your IP address itself, and none of this is linked to your identity. We use it to see which content is useful and, where relevant, to tailor the information and offers we show by region. Decline, and we record none of it. If we enable Google Analytics, it runs only on acceptance and with IP anonymisation.

The website isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 18 through the website. In a family-law matter, we may hold information about your children. That information is protected to the same standard as the rest of the file.

Personal information is held in encrypted systems with access controls. We retain client files for a minimum of seven years after a matter concludes, as required by our professional obligations. Enquiries from prospective clients who do not engage us are retained for two years and then deleted. Newsletter subscriber lists are retained until you unsubscribe.

If a data breach is likely to result in serious harm, we follow the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme under the Privacy Act. We'll notify you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as soon as practicable.

You can request access to or correction of the personal information we hold about you. Email enquiries@forgelegal.com.au. We'll respond within 30 days. There's no fee for a reasonable access request; we may charge if you ask for substantial copying or formatting work.

If you believe we have mishandled your personal information, contact us first using the details above. We'll acknowledge within five business days and resolve or substantively respond within 30 days. If you're not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au) within 12 months of becoming aware of the issue.

We may update this policy. The version on this page is always the current one. Last updated: May 2026.