Privacy Notice
What is the purpose of this notice?
Which IP Ltd is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. This notice describes how we collect and use personal information about you during and after your relationship with us. Which IP Ltd is a “data controller” under data protection law. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information. This notice applies to current and former clients and contacts for whom we hold personal data. This notice does not form part of any contract to provide services. We may update this notice at any time.
Data protection principles
We will comply with data protection law. This says that 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, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. We will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you in the course of the legal services we provide:
• Personal and business contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses.
• Identity information and documentation (including passport, drivers licence, utility bills and bank statements).
• Additional information that is or may be required to enable us to undertake our legal services.
How is your personal information used?
We use your personal information primarily to enable us to provide the legal services we have been asked to undertake. This may be acting for you personally or in another capacity such as director, shareholder or trustee. We also use your personal information for related purposes including identity verification, administration of files, updating existing records if you have instructed the firm previously, analysis to help improve the management of the firm, for statutory returns and legal and regulatory compliance. The information will be held in hard copy and/or electronic format. You are responsible for ensuring the accuracy of all the personal data you supply to us. Where you are acting as an agent or trustee, you agree to advise your principal or the beneficiary of the trust that their personal information will be dealt with on these terms.
If we are working on your matter in conjunction with other professionals who are advising you, including experts, barristers, banks, building societies, mortgage lenders, estate agents etc., we will assume, unless you notify us otherwise, that we may share and disclose relevant personal data and information about your matter to them, if we feel it is appropriate and necessary.
All service providers (including but not limited to cloud services, archiving, compliance checks) we use are subject to confidentiality. All of the personal information you provide to us is kept in the UK; we will not transfer any of your personal data to another country outside the UK unless you specifically instruct us to do so.
There may be occasions when we are under a legal duty to share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities, including the Solicitors Regulation Authority or the Information Commissioner. If we are required to disclose information to the National Crime Agency, we may not be able to tell you that a disclosure has been made. We may have to stop working for you for a period of time and may not be able to tell you why. We cannot be held liable for any loss you suffer due to delay or our failure to provide information in these circumstances.
Occasionally some of our client files may be audited by external auditors or examiners to ensure we meet our legal, quality and financial management standards. Some information may be disclosed to our professional indemnity insurers and to our financial auditors if required.
Any data that is shared with a third party will be in line with the lawful bases below.
Why are you collecting and using my personal information?
We intend to rely on the following lawful bases to collect and use your personal or sensitive personal data:
• Your consent as a data subject.
• Processing necessary for the performance of our contract.
• Processing necessary for compliance with a legal obligation.
• Processing necessary for performance of tasks carried out in the public interest.
• Necessary for the purposes of legitimate interest pursued by us.
How long will you use my information for?
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. We also retain and archive the files we keep in respect of each matter for at least 6 years. After this period of time, your file of papers including the electronic file, will be destroyed confidentially without further reference to you, unless we contact you to confirm other arrangements or you contact us to request your file of papers at an earlier date.
Marketing
We would like to keep in touch with you and let you know periodically about information that we think may be of interest to you or to tell you about events or developments in the firm. We ask you to provide your email address and give specific confirmation that you want to “opt in” to us sending you such information in the future. If you provide your consent, you may withdraw it at any time.
Your rights in connection with personal information
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
• Request access to your personal information. This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• 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. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• 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.
If you want to exercise any of these rights please email us. Further information on your rights can be found on the Information Commissioners Website http://www.ico.org.uk/for-the-public/.
No fee usually required
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.
What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
Right to withdraw consent
In the 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, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law. To withdraw your consent, please email us.
Keeping your personal information secure
We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way.
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.