Our Privacy Policy

You voluntarily give us your personal information for instance when:

• you contact us via our website
• provide a comment on our website
• write a review
• sign up to any newsletters
• interact with us on social media platforms, and/or
  use our services.

Where we request information from you we will collect the information set out in the relevant web pages, or as explained to you over the telephone or face to face.

Client services

We may collect personal data as follows:

• name and contact details (including address, email and phone numbers). This may include asking for and keeping a copy of your passport/driving licence and proof of address
• date of birth
• personal information that may be included in communications with us
• payment information and financial information that relates to a contractual relationship including bank details.

We may gather details of your age; ethnicity; gender etc. Where we are making an immigration application, we may also gather financial information from you.

We also collect and hold information about your case or legal problem.

Depending on the circumstances of their legal matters, for some clients, we may have access to or process special category data including:

• personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership
• genetic data
• biometric data processed for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, or
• data concerning health or a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation.

In addition to contract lawful condition for processing under Article 6 of the GDPR (see above), Article 9(2)(f) of the GDPR) permits us to process this data where it is necessary for, connected to and/or or relates to legal claims including for the purposes of assisting with legal proceedings, obtaining legal advice and/or establishing, exercising or defending legal rights. We will only process this specific data if it is necessary to establish, exercise or defend a client’s legal rights. We will ensure that the use of this data is relevant and proportionate and that we do not hold any more data than is needed. All such data is processed in line with the commitments and policies within this Privacy Notice.

We collect certain related technical information including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, logs (including, where available, the IP address and location of the device connecting to the online services and other technical information and identifiers about the device and the nature of the visit such as clickstream to, through and from our website) and other communication data, and the resources that you use.

On occasions, we acquire information from other companies, to collect information about how visitors to our website use the site. Information is also collected about how you arrived at our websites in the first place, including what links or adverts you have viewed or clicked on to reach us, or any search terms you have used. We do this to maintain and improve our website, getting a better understanding of visitor and client profiles and ultimately delivering a better experience. Information may be collected through the use of cookies or pixels.

We only use your data for the purposes of providing you with legal advice, assistance and where appropriate, representation and for reasons directly associated with those services.

In particular:

• to deliver our services
• to manage our relationship and communicate with you
• to provide you with advice or guidance about our services
• to make and manage payments
• to respond to complaints and seek to resolve them
• to train our staff and measure the quality of the service we give to clients.

We also use data to communicate with our regulators or legislators and to obey laws, regulations and codes of conduct that apply to us.

For example, we will process your data to enable us to identify and/or verify your identity and conduct fraud, credit and anti-money laundering checks in accordance with anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing legislation and regulation.

We may use your data to notify you of our other services but only where we have your consent to do so.

We only keep your data for as long as is necessary for the purpose(s) for which it was provided.

We use the following retention periods and review these periodically to make sure we are only keeping personal data and other data for as long as is needed:

• information in a matter file or related to a matter or instructions to us such as information on our case management system will usually be kept for a period of six years after the case or matter ends unless it is required to be kept for longer (for instance, the information is required for another or related case or matter or where the person is currently under the age of eighteen, in which case data will need to be held for six years after they reach the age of eighteen), or we have another legal basis to process that information. This is because we are required to keep client files for that period by our Regulator and/or by the SRA. This also protects you should you be unhappy with our services and want to complain or even due us after your case ends.
• data obtained for compliance with crime or fraud prevention has to be retained by us to meet our legal or regulatory obligations for five years from the close of the individual matter or the end of our business relationship with a relevant person, whichever is later
• enquiries where we do not take on your case are kept for only 18 months
• any complaints files for six years after the complaint is concluded (with the associated matter file(s)
• financial information and any financial transactions will be kept for a period of 7 years to comply with HMRC requirements except for cardholder data which will generally be destroyed immediately after the transaction is processed.

For some data we may decide that it is proper and appropriate to keep data for longer than the above, but we will notify you if we believe that your case falls into this category or there is another reason your data has to be retained.

We sometimes share your personal data with trusted third parties. We only do this where it is necessary for providing you legal services or for the effective operation of our legal practice.

For example, we may share your data with barristers; experts; translators; costs draftsmen; process servers; secure file storage and destruction companies; auditors; the company that securely hosts our off-site cloud storage servers.

We apply a strict policy to those recipients or data processors to keep your data safe and protect your privacy. In particular:

• We provide only the information they need to perform their specific services.
• They may only use your data for the exact purposes we specify in our contract with them.
• We work closely with them to ensure that your privacy is respected and protected at all times.
• If we stop using their services, any of your data held by them will either be deleted or rendered anonymous.

Your data is stored and processed within the United Kingdom (UK). If we ever have to share your personal data with third parties and suppliers outside the UK we will seek your specific consent to do so.

You have the following rights under the UK GDPR:

1. the right to be informed – the provision of clear and concise information about what we do with your personal data, as outlined within this Data & Privacy Notice
2. the right of access – commonly referred to as a ‘data subject access request’, this enables you to request a copy of your personal data to understand how and why we are using your data, and to check we are doing so lawfully. If we choose not to action your request, we will explain to you the reasons for our refusal
3. the right to rectification – the ability to have inaccurate personal data rectified or, in specific circumstances dependent on the purposes for our processing of your data, the ability to have incomplete personal data completed
4. the right to erasure – also known as the right to be forgotten, this permits you to request we erase your personal data. This only applies to data we hold at the time your request is received and does not apply to any data that may be obtained in the future. Please note that this is not an absolute right and only applies in certain circumstances. We may have overriding duties to retain some data which you cannot ask to be erased immediately or at all. For instance, once you become a client of our firm or you are an interested party in a case, we will be required by our regulators and for legal purposes to retain some of your personal data and other information within casefiles for a certain period (for retention periods, please see above)
5. the right to restrict processing – the ability to request a temporary restriction on the processing of your personal data, where one of a limited number of reasons specified by the ICO applies
6. the right to data portability – the ability to receive personal data you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format. This also gives you the right to request that we transmit this data directly to another Data Controller
7. the right to object – the ability, in certain circumstances, to request we stop processing your personal data. This request may relate to all of your personal data we hold or only certain information, and may only apply to a particular purpose for processing
8. rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling – restrictions on the use of automated decision making and profiling where such decisions have a legal or similarly significant effect on you. It is unlikely that our firm will use automated decision making and profiling.

For further details on your rights, please visit the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/.