Brigstow Family Law values your privacy and personal information. This privacy policy sets out how we use and protect any information that you provide to us when you engage our legal services and access our website.
Kindly note, this policy may change periodically, however the current version of our privacy policy can be found on our website.
INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU
We may collect the following personal information about you:
- Basic personal information e.g. your name, the company you work for, your title or position and your relationship to a person.
- Contact information e.g. your postal address, email address and phone number(s).
- Financial information, such as payment-related information.
- Technical information, such as information from your visits to our website or in relation to materials and communications we send to you electronically.
- Identification and background information provided by you or collected as part of our business acceptance processes.
- Personal information provided to us by or on behalf of our clients or generated by us in the course or providing services to them, which may include special categories of data.
- Any other information relating to you which you may provide to us.
HOW WE OBTAIN YOUR PERSONAL DETAILS
- When you interact with us and provide your information.
- When providing legal services. We collect, create, hold and use personal information in connection with the services we provide to our clients.
- Information provided by you or third parties to allow us to undertake legal work on your behalf.
- While monitoring our technology tools and services, including our websites and email communications sent to and from Brigstow Family Law
- Other sources, such as keeping the contact details we already hold for you accurate and up to date using publicly available sources. We may obtain information about you from a range of sources.
HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
We shall use the information provided to us for the specific purpose that information is provided.
- We shall provide information that you may request regarding the services that Brigstow Family Law offer.
- We shall process, collect, create and hold personal information provided to us by or on behalf of our clients in connection with the services we provide to our clients. The information may be disclosed to third parties if this is reasonably necessary in connection with that work, including referring them to other specialist advisors in the UK and overseas
- To provide and improve our services to you and to our clients, including handling the personal information of others on behalf of our clients.
- To fulfil our legal, regulatory and risk management obligations, including establishing, exercising or defending legal claims.
- We process identification and background information as part of our business acceptance, compliance, administration and marketing purposes. This includes anti-money laundering, conflict, reputational and financial checks.
- We process personal information provided to us by or on behalf of our clients for the purposes of the work we do for them. The information may be disclosed to third parties reasonably necessary in connection with that work.
- To provide and improve this website, including auditing and monitoring its use.
- To deal with your feedback, query or complaint and to contact you for feedback on our services.
- For legitimate business purposes
If we process any special categories of information i.e. information revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs or trade union membership, processing of genetic or biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying individuals, health data, or data concerning your sex life or sexual orientation, we must have a further lawful basis for the processing. This may include:
- where you have given us your explicit consent to do so
- where the processing is necessary to protect your vital interests or someone else’s vital interests
- you have made the information public
- the processing being necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims
- the processing being necessary for reasons of substantial public interest
We also use your information to administer, support, improve and develop our business generally and to enforce our legal rights.
WHEN WILL WE USE YOUR INFORMATION?
The main reason is to enable us to provide you with legal services in line with your instructions, our retainer and the firm’s regulatory duties.
We will only use your information for the specific purposes for which it has been provided to or collected by us, for example:
- initial contact with you to discuss your legal matter and see if we can assist;
- to provide our clients with legal services including referring them to other specialist advisers both in the UK and overseas;
- for legitimate business purposes; and
- to comply with our statutory and regulatory obligations
We also use your information to administer, support, improve and develop our business generally and to enforce our legal rights.
If we process any special categories of information revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs or trade union membership, processing of genetic or biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying individuals, health data, or data concerning your sex life or sexual orientation, we must have a further lawful basis for the processing.
FOR WHAT PERIOD WILL YOU RETAIN MY PERSONAL INFORMATION
Your data and personal information will be retained only for as long as is necessary, or as required by law, or as will be set out in any relevant contract with you. We may hold personal data for differing lengths of time depending on the reason for doing so.
We shall hold your data as long as is necessary to deliver our services to you and to avoid potential conflicts of interest in the future. Typically for a minimum of seven years from the conclusion of your legal work. In some matters certain documents and information may be kept for significantly longer. Information for clients is provided in our client care letter and terms of business.
PROTECTING YOUR DATA
We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and organisational procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.
We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.
WHO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WITH?
- Third party organisations which process data for us and on our behalf.
- Other organisations or professional advisers who we are working on client matters.
- Other organisations or professional advisors who we are referring you for additional or separate advice.
- Disclosure, if required, under certain laws or by court order or other competent regulatory body.
- If there is an emergency and we believe that you , or others, may be at risk
- Under applicable data protection laws
In the course of delivering our legal services to you, we are required to disclose information to third parties. Examples of this would include:
- HM Land Registry to register a property
- Courts or other alternative dispute resolution process providers
- Communications with the solicitor for the other side
- Instructing a Barrister or Counsel on your behalf
- Dealings with other legal and non-legal third parties in the furtherance of your matter
Where we do need to share your information with third parties, we do so on the basis that they comply strictly and confidentially with our instructions and that they do not use your personal information for their own purposes (unless you have specifically consented to them doing so).
Occasionally, some uses of personal data may require your specific consent. If this is the case, we will contact you separately to ask for your consent that you are free to withdraw at any time.
We will not share, sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties without your permission or unless required to provide our services to you, other than for the limited exceptions listed below:
- If we are required to do so by law or comply with the contractual obligations we are subject to;
- For the purposes of our legitimate interests or those of a third party, but only if these are not overridden by your interests, rights or freedoms;
- In urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety or vital interests of clients or the public;
- To protect and defend the rights of property of Brigstow Family Law;
- Data collected by the Google Analytics cookies is shared with Google, but no data which can personally identify you is shared.
YOUR RIGHTS REGARDING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
Under the General Data Protection Regulation, you have a number of important rights. In summary, these include rights to:
- Fair and transparent processing of your personal information;
- Access to your personal information;
- Correction to any incorrect information which we hold;
- Erasure of personal information concerning you in certain situations;
- Object at any time to processing of personal information concerning you for direct marketing;
- Object in certain situations or otherwise restrict our continued processing of your personal information.
You may choose to restrict the collection or use of your personal information in the following ways:
- Whenever you are asked to fill in a form on the website, look for the box that you can click to indicate that you consent to the information being used for direct marketing purposes. We will provide you with the details of any third parties with whom, and for what purposes, we may wish or need to
share
your personal information with and request your explicit consent to such processing of your personal information at that time. - If you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time by notifying us in writing.
- You can manage your cookies preferences in your browser.
We will respond to your request within the applicable statutory time period. If we are not sure of your identity, we may require you to provide further information in order for us to confirm who you are.
HOW WE USE COOKIES
A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added, and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.
We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.
We also use Google Analytics cookies on our website. Google Analytics is an analysis tool that helps us to understand how visitors to our site engage with our website. It uses a set of cookies to collect information and report site usage statistics without personally identifying any individual visitors. The main cookie used by Google Analytics is the ‘ga’ cookie.
Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.
You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.
THIS POLICY
We may update this policy in accordance with our internal policies and any changes in the applicable laws.
If you wish to discuss this policy or wish to raise a complaint with regard to the way that we have handled your personal data, please contact Sharon Mahmood or Bessie Hanson at Brigstow Family Law, Trym Lodge, Henbury Road, Westbury-On-Trym, Bristol BS9 3HQ
You can also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office via https://ico.org.uk/ for information, advice or to make a complaint.