Privacy Notice
This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal information about you while we provide services to you and afterwards, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. In terms of this legislation we are a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are legally required to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.
Data Protection Principles
To comply with data protection law, the personal information we hold about you must be:
- Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
- Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
- Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
- Accurate and kept up to date.
- Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
- Kept securely.
The Kind of Information We Hold About You
Personal data means any information about you from which you can be identified. There are also “special categories” of more sensitive personal data, which require a higher level of protection. We will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal data:
- Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses
- Information to enable us to verify your identity, including copies of photographic identification and your date of birth
- Marital status and dependants
- Where necessary, details about your personal finances including your bank account details
Why We Need Your Personal Information
We will use your personal data for the following purposes (“the/those purposes”):
- To provide you with legal advice, including advising you and keeping you informed of developments in the law and our services which we think will be of interest to you, unless you tell us not to.
- To represent you as your solicitors in the matters in which we are instructed
- To respond to and communicate with clients and third parties regarding the matter in which we are instructed and to respond to your questions and comments
- Where we need to comply with a legal obligation such as client identification and compliance with anti-money laundering legislation
- Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
- In relation to “special categories” of particularly sensitive information, for example about your health and criminal convictions, with your consent, or, where you are not capable of giving your consent but it is necessary for us to use the information to protect your interests.
- Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests)
- Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.
We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it and reasons that are compatible with those purposes.
Data Sharing, Data Security and Data Retention
We may have to share your data with third parties, including other professionals involved in our work for you, our regulators (where necessary) and IT service providers. We do not allow our third party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In the event that we do share personal data with external third parties, we will only share such personal data strictly required for the specific purposes in which we are instructed and take reasonable steps to ensure that recipients shall only process the disclosed personal data in accordance with those purposes. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of this where we are legally required to do so.
We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. The retention policy will be reviewed in line with the requirements of the Law Society of Scotland and any other regulatory body, such as HMRC. The period of retention varies by type of work but will be for a minimum period of 5 years at the end of the matter we are handling for you.
Rights of Access, Correction, Erasure and Restriction
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
- Request access to your personal information and to receive a copy of it.
- Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you.
- Request erasure of your personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to hold it.
- Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground.
- Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
- Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.
To assert any of these rights please contact us in writing which will be considered under the applicable data protection legislation. You will not have to pay a fee to exercise your rights. However, we may charge a reasonable fee or refuse to comply with your request if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. If you remain dissatisfied you have the right to raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ico.org.uk.
Right to Withdraw Consent
In limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact us in writing. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.
If you have any questions about this privacy notice please contact our Client Care Partner, Colin Redpath.