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Privacy Policy

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Privacy Policy

Privacy and Cookies

Edwards Duthie Shamash takes data privacy seriously and when we process your personal data we are processing it in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Please read this privacy and cookies policy carefully to understand why data is being collected and what we do with that data once in our possession. Further information about data privacy may be found in our terms of business document.

What type of personal data will we collect from you?

The personal data we collect will depend on the nature of the services we are providing and what we are contracted to do for you. Typically, this might include the following:

  • Contact details (including your name, address, date of birth, and email address)
  • Photographic identification and proof of address documents (to carry out due diligence)
  • Professional information (such as job title, previous positions, and professional experience)
  • Banking and financial details (to establish the source of funds where a transaction is involved)
  • Details of visits to our website (which enable our website to remember information about you and your preferences). Please see the sections on Cookies and Analytics and Anonymisation below for further details.
  • Information relating to your individual enquiry inc: Personal Injuries, Property Valuations and condition etc.

Where necessary to act in your best interests, and for the establishment, exercise, or defence of your legal matter, we may need to process personal data which is very sensitive in nature such as diversity and health related details. In some circumstances, we may need to share this information with third parties, for example a court or tribunal. If you volunteer sensitive personal data, you will be allowing us to process it as part of engaging our services.

On what basis can we process your personal data?

Our reasons for processing your personal data are as follows:

  • It is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party, or to take steps prior to entering into a contract with you. The retainer between you and us, which is made up of our terms of business and engagement letter, sets out the terms of the contract and the services we will provide.
  • It is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests, except where our interests are overridden by the interests, rights or freedoms of affected individuals (such as you). To determine this, we shall consider a number of factors, such as what you were told at the time you provided your data, what your expectations are about the processing of the data, the nature of the data, and the impact of the processing on you.
  • It is necessary in order to comply with mandatory legal obligations to which we are subject under EU or UK law.

Personal data collected from you about other people

In commercial matters, in the course of providing our legal, financial and other professional services to you we will hold and use personal data about you, your officers and/or your employees.  When you provide personal data to us relating to your officers or employees, you confirm that you are allowed to do so. You should ensure that those individuals understand how their data will be used by us.

In personal matters, you may be providing other third-party data to us, for example details about your family members, in which case we will use such data as a data controller in our own right and will comply with data protection legislation in relation to use of that data.  You must have the authority to disclose personal data if it relates to someone else and all data disclosed should be complete, accurate and up to date.

What are we going to do with your personal data?

We will hold and use personal data about you to:

  • Verify your identity and establish the source of funding in any transaction.
  • Carry out appropriate anti-fraud checks (by conducting online searches using a third-party identity provider).  Please note that this will not affect your credit rating.
  • Communicate with you during the course of providing our services, for example providing you with advice and dealing with your enquiries and requests.
  • Prepare documentation to complete transactions and commence legal proceedings on your behalf.
  • Carry out obligations arising from any contract entered into between you and third parties as part of your legal matter.
  • Refer you to another of our departments about additional legal services which may benefit you.
  • Statistical purposes so we can analyse figures to help us manage our business and plan strategically for the future.
  • Seek advice from third parties in connection with your matter, such as legal Counsel.
  • Respond to any complaint or allegation of negligence against us.
  • Prevent money laundering or terrorist financing in accordance with financial crime regulations.
  • Improve the products and services we provide.
  • Customise our website for you.
  • Send you information about products, services, offers and other things we think might be relevant to you.

How long we keep your personal data for

We will only retain your personal data for as long as is necessary to:

  • Carry out the legal work
  • Establishment or defence of legal claims (for example negligence claims) that could be made against us.
  • Compliance with legal obligations under EU/UK law (anti-money laundering regulations say your identification and source of funds information must be kept for a minimum period from conclusion of the matter).

We will keep your data in accordance with our data retention and erasure policy, a copy of which is available on request.

Who your personal data will be shared with

We may, when required and necessary, share your personal data with other organisations.  Depending on the work we are undertaking for you the other organisations may include:

  • Our firm’s ‘data processors’ who are contractors from whom we obtain operational services including IT, message-taking, typing and secretarial support, costs draftsmen, secure document storage and shredding.
  • Other ‘data controllers’ that provide professional or commercial services, such as Counsel, other solicitors, accountants, medical practitioners, surveyors and estate and letting agents.
  • Experts that you and we agree are necessary to assist us to progress your matter.
  • Providers of insurance, financial and banking services to you and/or to our firm.
  • HMRC, HM Courts & Tribunals Service, HM Land Registry, Councils and other national and local government bodies.
  • The Solicitors Regulation Authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and organisations involved with the preparation, assessment and certification of quality standards for which our firm is seeking or maintaining accreditation.

Controlling information about you

When you fill in an e-form or provide your personal details on our website, you may see one or more tick boxes allowing you to:

  • Consent to your personal data being collected and stored as per our Privacy Policy.
  • Consent to receive marketing communications from us by email, telephone, text message or post.

If you have agreed that we can use your information for marketing purposes, you can change your mind easily, via one of these methods:

  • Send an email to us.
  • Write to us.

We will never lease, distribute or sell your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or we are required to disclose your personal details by law. Any personal information we hold about you is stored and processed under our data protection policy, in compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

Security of your personal data

Your data will be held on secure servers within the European Economic Area (“EEA”) with all reasonable technological and operation measures put in place to safeguard it from unauthorised access.  Where possible any identifiable information will be encrypted or minimised.

Erasure of personal data

Where we obtained your personal data to fulfil our contractual obligations to you, or if we have a legitimate interest for processing your personal data, we will erase that data as soon as it is no longer necessary to retain it in relation to the purpose for which it was originally collected.

If you are not our client

If you are not our client your personal data may be processed to enable us to provide legal advice to our client and may also be used in legal proceedings on behalf of our client. We are allowed to use your personal data because it is in the legitimate interests of our client (for example under the terms and conditions of a loan agreement) to do so. We may also have to use your personal data to comply with our own legal and regulatory obligations.

Cookies

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites you visit. Cookies help make this website work and provide information to us about how users interact with our site. We use this information to improve our website.

The cookies we use help to provide us with anonymised, aggregated technical information.  This is principally so that we can make sure that the website is easy to navigate, identify the areas that are of particular interest to visitors and generally improve the site and our services. The information that we collect in this process will not identify you as an individual.  We do not seek to identify individual visitors unless they volunteer their contact details through one of the forms on the site. In some circumstances, our records will identify organisations visiting our site and we may use that information in managing our relationship with those organisations, for example, in considering how to develop the services that we offer them.

By using our website, you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your device.

When you accessed this website, our cookies were sent to your web browser and stored on your computer.  If you wish to remove them, you can manage this via the settings on your browser, but note that this may impact your ability to utilise this and other web sites.  The way to clear cookies varies from one browser to another.  You should look in the “help” menu of your web browser for full instructions. For your reference, please click the following links for details on how to manage cookies in each of the major web browsers:

Analytics and anonymisation

This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses cookies (see above), to help us analyse how users use our site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. We have activated IP-anonymisation, which will anonymise your IP address by cutting it short.  In most cases this procedure will be carried out within the area of the European Union and other parties to the European Economic Area Agreement. In exceptional cases the whole IP address will be first transferred to a Google server in the USA and then shortened there.  Google will use the information on our behalf for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for us and providing us with other services relating to website activity and internet usage. The IP address that your browser conveys within the scope of Google Analytics, will not be associated with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of these cookies via the settings in your browser as explained above. You can also opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics in the future by downloading and installing Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on for your current web browser: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en

Contacts

If you have any questions about our privacy policies, want to exercise your right to see a copy of the information that we hold about you, or think that information we hold about you may need to be corrected, want to delete all or any part of it or to object to the processing on legitimate grounds, please contact Shaun Murphy, Bank House 269-275 Cranbrook Road, Ilford IG1 4TG shaun.murphy@edwardsduthieshamash.co.uk  0208 5147 9000 our Data Protection Officer.

020 8514 9000
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