What you tell this site, and what becomes of it

In force from 28 September 2026. If this page changes, that date changes with it.

In short

• Reading this site sets no cookies. There is no banner here because there is nothing to consent to.
• Counsel runs no analytics, and there is no advertising tracker on any page.
• An enquiry is read by counsel. It is not sold, shared, or used for marketing.
• Your browser does fetch a typeface and a small animation library from other companies, and the contact page fetches a map. Each of them is told your address.

Who is responsible

Suraj Sakal, Attorney-at-Law, of Fortis Chambers, 9 Cornelio Street, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Anything on this page can be asked about at [email protected], or on +1 (868) 338-8895.

Before you write: what an enquiry is, and is not

Sending the form does not make you a client, and it does not by itself put what you send behind the protection an attorney owes a client. That protection begins when counsel has agreed in writing to act, which is after he has checked that he is free to — including that your matter does not conflict with one he already has.

So say enough to explain what has happened and what you need. Do not attach documents, and do not set out anything you would not want read if it turned out that counsel could not act. If you know that he already acts for someone on the other side of your matter, do not use the form at all.

What the form asks, and why

• Your name and an email address — to know who is writing, and to answer.
• A telephone number, if you give one — some things are quicker said than typed, and it is needed for a call or a WhatsApp reply.
• How you would like a reply — by telephone, WhatsApp or email. A WhatsApp reply is carried by WhatsApp, a service of Meta, on its own terms.
• The kind of matter — so that it is read with the right law in mind.
• What has happened — the part that decides whether there is a matter here at all.

It is used to answer you, to work out whether this is a matter counsel can take, and to check it against existing matters for a conflict of interest. It is used for nothing else. There is no mailing list to join, and none to leave.

The form also carries a hidden field that only an automated script would fill in. Where it is filled in, nothing is stored at all.

Where it goes

The enquiry is written to a ledger on this site’s own server and emailed to chambers. You are sent a receipt with its reference number, so that you know it arrived. Counsel reads the enquiry. No one else does.

How long it is kept

An enquiry that does not become a matter is kept for two years, and then deleted along with the email that carried it. An enquiry that does become a matter stops being a website record: it goes onto the file for that matter, and it is kept, and destroyed, under the rules that govern an attorney’s files.

Who else sees it

No one. It is not sold, rented, passed to another practice, or given to any service that sends marketing. It would be disclosed only where the law requires that of counsel — a court order, or an obligation under the anti-money-laundering law — and in some of those cases the law also forbids telling you that it happened.

The record the server keeps

Asking for a page leaves a line in a technical log: the time, the page, the address that connected, and what the browser says about itself. Those lines are kept for fourteen days and used for nothing but keeping the site up and secure.

Because the site sits behind Cloudflare, the address on that line is usually Cloudflare’s rather than yours. Cloudflare itself does see your address, and keeps its own records of it.

Cookies, and what is left in your browser

None, for a visitor. That covers the companies named below as well — an ordinary visit to this site leaves the cookie jar empty, which is why there is no banner asking you about one.

One entry is written to your browser’s session storage, to remember that the opening animation has already played so that it does not repeat on the next page. It disappears when you close the tab, and it says nothing about who you are.

A sign-in cookie exists for counsel, and for anyone he authorises to edit the site. It is set when they sign in, and never for a visitor.

What your browser fetches from other companies

Four, on an ordinary page. Each is told your address and which page asked for it, because that is how the web works. None of them is told anything else about you by this site.

• Cloudflare — stands in front of the site and serves it. It adds a small counter of its own to each page, which sets no cookie, and it rewrites the email address on the page so that automated harvesters cannot read it.
• Google Fonts — the typefaces the site is set in.
• jsDelivr — the small library that moves things on the page as it is read.
• Google Maps — the map of the chambers, on the contact page and nowhere else. Google is told when you read that page, and nothing about the rest of your visit.

Keeping it safe, and the limit of that

The site is served over an encrypted connection. The ledger sits on a server counsel controls, and the part of the site where enquiries are read is behind a sign-in.

Email is a different matter. Ordinary email is not encrypted end to end, it can be read in transit, and it can go to the wrong address. For anything you would not put on a postcard, telephone instead.

What you can ask for

Write and ask what is held about you, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for it to be deleted. You will be told, and it will be corrected or deleted, unless there is a legal reason it has to be kept — in which case you will be told that instead.

Trinidad and Tobago’s Data Protection Act is in force only in part, so some of what that Act describes cannot yet be pursued through an Information Commissioner. That does not change what is done here.

Children

Nothing on this site is directed at children, and the form asks nothing of them.

If this page changes

The date at the top changes with it. An enquiry already sent is dealt with under the page as it stood on the day it was sent.

The terms on which this site is read are set out separately.