Confidential information policy for New Zealand businesses

Employment contracts and contractor agreements usually deal with obligations owed by individuals, but they often do not set day-to-day internal rules for handling sensitive material. A policy can fill that gap by defining what your business treats as confidential, who can access it, how it may be shared internally or externally, and what steps apply if information is lost or disclosed. That is especially useful where multiple teams handle client lists, pricing, product plans, source material, marketing strategy or other commercially valuable information.

It commonly covers the categories of information your business treats as confidential, access controls, storage and sharing expectations, approved use, return or deletion of information, and reporting steps if something goes wrong. Depending on the business, it may also address trade secrets, ownership of internally created material, licensing limits, use of third-party confidential information, and brand-risk issues if sensitive material is disclosed publicly. The exact content depends on your team structure and the way information is handled across roles, systems and external relationships.

The key factors are usually what information you hold, who handles it, where it is stored, and how it moves between staff, contractors, customers and suppliers. A business with remote staff, shared drives, outsourced marketing or software development may need different rules from a business with a small in-person team. The legal drafting should follow your actual information-handling process, rather than relying on generic privacy wording, so the policy should match your real workflows rather than an idealised process that nobody follows.

A template may be a starting point, but it often stays too general to deal with your actual risk points. For example, it may not distinguish between customer data, internal strategy, product development material and third-party confidential information, or explain who can approve disclosure and on what terms. A tailored policy is more useful because it can line up with your existing contracts, internal responsibilities and escalation process. The work can make the legal position clearer and reduce avoidable gaps, though it is not a substitute for ongoing monitoring or implementation work.

Once we have the information needed for the job, we prepare the policy and send it through for your review. Timing depends on the complexity of your business and how much tailoring is needed, especially if different teams handle information in different ways. If there are questions about ownership, licensing or enforcement points, those can be worked into the drafting process. The service covers the policy document and related legal input on that document. It does not include ongoing representation, technical implementation or security remediation.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Confidential Information Policy service, pricing starts from $900.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.