4 August 2021
A message from the team at de Groots
In light of the Covid-19 Pandemic, we wish to assure you that our offices in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne remain open for business and our office hours are unchanged.
With the recent Delta strain of COVID-19 cases present in the community, in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria and the lockdowns currently in place in Qld and NSW we have continued to follow the advice of Australia’s Chief Medical Officer.
We acknowledge the importance of these restrictions and will be abiding by them. As such, our Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne teams will be primarily working from home. Communications via Email & Phone will continue as normal with no disruptions during this period.
Onsite or physical appointments however will be changed to an online alternative. Once the current lockdowns have ended, we will again offer the options of online, onsite or physical appointments.
Our business continuity plan has been activated to ensure that the health and well-being of our staff and our clients are safeguarded.
We’re following the advice of Australia’s Chief Medical Officer and the World Health Organisation and have stepped up preventative hygiene measures at our offices.
There are no instances of Covid-19 amongst any of our staff.
The majority of them are working remotely via our remote technology infrastructure. All data is securely stored in a national data centre.
To facilitate the progress of legal work and to minimise any disruption in the provision of our services to you, the following measures are also in place:
- Our Settify client information portal, which is accessible via our website, is a valuable facility to enable you to provide us with information concerning your estate planning needs.
- Use of phone and/or email as our first point of contact with you.
- Client appointments will occur via a telephone conference or via digital conferencing (Zoom) to minimise physical ‘ in office’ meetings.
- Any documents that you are required to sign will be scanned and emailed to you.
- Documents such as wills and powers of attorney will be mailed to you via express post (or any other similarly traceable mail/courier service).
We will continue to monitor the Covid-19 situation on a daily basis and let you know of any adjustments to our operations that we may need to make in response to further guidelines/restrictions that the Government may impose.
Should you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.
We look forward to continuing to assist you.
Our very best wishes to you and your family as we all work through the challenges at this time.