Privacy Policy

Who we are

Lexoral is an independent legal transcription provider based in Kanata (Ottawa, Ontario), serving clients in Canada, including Quebec, and in the United States. We provide attested bilingual French–English transcription for legal proceedings: depositions, examinations, arbitrations, tribunal hearings and cross-border litigation.

This policy explains how Lexoral collects, uses, retains and protects personal information in the course of its services. It applies to our clients, deponents, legal professionals and anyone whose personal information Lexoral processes.

Information we collect

Lexoral collects only the information strictly needed to produce transcripts and manage client relationships:

Client and contact information

• Name, title and firm or organization
• Email address and telephone number
• Billing address and payment information (handled securely; Lexoral never stores card data)
• File numbers and file identifiers

Proceeding materials

• Audio and video recordings of proceedings submitted for transcription
• Names, titles and words of everyone heard in the recordings
• Exhibits, reference documents and glossaries supplied by clients
• Completed transcripts and attestation documents

Technical information

• Metadata of the files and emails we receive (date, size, format)
• Correspondence (email, WhatsApp) about a file

Our website is hosted on GitHub Pages, which may log visitors’ IP addresses for security purposes. Lexoral has no access to those logs. The site’s audience measurement, which uses no cookies, is described in section L. 11.

How we use information

Personal information collected by Lexoral is used only to deliver our transcription services. We use it to:

• Produce accurate, attested bilingual transcripts of the proceedings submitted
• Communicate with clients about their file, turnaround and delivery
• Issue invoices and process payments
• Keep chain-of-custody records for evidentiary purposes
• Meet our legal obligations and respond to legitimate requests
• Improve our quality control (using anonymized data only)

Legal bases for processing

Where the GDPR applies (in particular for clients or individuals located in the European Union), Lexoral processes personal information on the following bases:

• Performance of a contract — processing needed to deliver the services requested
• Legitimate interests — record-keeping, chain-of-custody documentation and quality control
• Legal obligation — compliance with applicable laws in Canada and the United States
• Consent — where required for a specific activity, obtained explicitly and recorded

For the purposes of Quebec’s Law 25, the person in charge of the protection of personal information at Lexoral is Brian Fino, co-founder. He can be reached at brian.fno@proton.me. Lexoral has put internal procedures in place to ensure compliance.

Confidentiality of proceedings

Lexoral treats every recording and transcript as strictly confidential. Given the sensitive nature of legal proceedings, we apply heightened safeguards:

• Access to materials is limited to the people assigned to the file
• No recording or transcript is shared with anyone other than the instructing client
• Everyone who handles the materials is bound by confidentiality
• Clients may ask for all materials to be permanently deleted at the end of an engagement
• Materials are never used in marketing, testimonials or case studies without explicit written consent

Sharing of information

Lexoral does not sell, rent or trade personal information. We share it with third parties only in these cases:

• Service providers — encrypted file-transfer and storage providers bound by confidentiality commitments and data-processing agreements that comply with the law
• Website form — requests sent through the form on lexoral.org are relayed to our mailbox by FormSubmit (formsubmit.co), whose servers may be located outside Quebec; the form does not accept recordings
• Payment processors — PCI-compliant processors; Lexoral stores no card data
• Legal requirements — where disclosure is required by law, a court order or a regulator, in which case we notify the client to the extent the law permits

Transfers outside Quebec

Lexoral serves clients in Canada, including Quebec, and in the United States, so personal information may move between these jurisdictions. We protect those transfers through:

• Standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission, for transfers out of the European Union
• Compliance with Law 25 requirements for communicating personal information outside Quebec
• Encryption of file transfers, whatever the jurisdiction

Data retention

Lexoral keeps personal information and proceeding materials only as long as needed for the purposes for which they were collected. The full schedule is in our Data Retention Policy. In short:

• Completed transcripts and attestation documents: 2 years by default
• Submitted recordings: deleted within 30 days of delivery, unless you ask otherwise
• Contact and billing records: 7 years, for tax and legal reasons
• Permanent deletion of proceeding materials available at any time, on request

Security

Lexoral applies technical and organizational measures suited to the sensitivity of legal materials, including:

• Encryption of file transfers and communications
• Access controls limiting materials to the people assigned
• Secure, restricted-access storage with access logging
• Regular review of security procedures
• An incident-response procedure that meets the notification requirements of Law 25 and the GDPR

If a confidentiality incident presents a risk of serious injury, Lexoral will notify the people concerned and the Commission d’accès à l’information (or the competent authority) within the time the law requires.

Your rights

Depending on where you are, you may have the following rights over the personal information Lexoral holds about you:

• Access — obtain a copy of the information we hold
• Correction — have inaccurate or incomplete information corrected
• Erasure — ask for your information and proceeding materials to be permanently deleted
• Restriction — limit certain uses in certain circumstances
• Portability — receive your information in a structured, commonly used format
• Objection — object to processing based on our legitimate interests
• Withdrawal of consent — where processing is based on consent

To exercise any of these rights, write to the person in charge, Brian Fino, at brian.fno@proton.me, or to secure@lexoral.org. We respond within 30 days. You may also complain to Quebec’s Commission d’accès à l’information or to the competent authority where you are.

Cookies and audience measurement

Our website sets no cookies: no advertising cookies, no tracking pixels.

To know which pages are read, we use GoatCounter, an audience-measurement tool that works without cookies. It counts, as totals, page views, the site a visitor came from, the browser, the screen width and the country, derived from the IP address. GoatCounter does not keep the IP address, the full browser header or any tracking identifier: to tell visits apart, it holds the IP address and browser in memory for at most 8 hours without recording them. Its servers are in Finland and Germany. The totals it keeps cannot identify a visitor, and we use them only to improve the site.

An ad blocker is enough to switch this counting off; the site works the same way. See GoatCounter’s privacy policy.

Changes to this policy

Lexoral may update this policy to reflect changes in its practices or in the law. Material changes are emailed to active clients. The effective date at the top of the page is the date of the latest revision.

Contact

For any question about this policy, to exercise your rights or to report a privacy concern:

• Person in charge (Quebec Law 25) — Brian Fino, co-founder: brian.fno@proton.me
• Files and deletion requests — secure@lexoral.org
• Telephone — +1 (514) 712-7516
• Mailing address — 24191-300 Eagleson Rd, Kanata, Ontario K2M 2C3, Canada