Privacy Notice – Gibson & Co. Solicitors

Gibson & Co. Solicitors Ltd

DATA PROTECTION PRIVACY NOTICE

The business is Gibson & Co. Solicitors Ltd whose registered office is at of 77-87 West Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE15 6PR. (“Business”, “we”, “us”, “our”). The Business is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) under number Z8432192.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice (“Notice”), please contact us by email here.

The Business will process your, and third parties’, personal data, as further explained below, in the course of providing you with legal and associated services within our retainer with you as a firm of solicitors including access to our website and online features (“Services”).

We will let you know, by posting on our website, www.gibsons-law.com, if we make any changes to this Notice from time to time. Your continued use of the Services after notifying such changes will amount to your acknowledgement of the amended Notice.

PLEASE NOTE: You shall and you hereby agree to indemnify the Business and its affiliates and their officers, employees, agents and subcontractors (each an “Indemnified Party”) from and against any claims, losses, demands, actions, liabilities, fines, penalties, reasonable expenses, damages and settlement amounts (including reasonable legal fees and costs) incurred by any Indemnified Party arising out of or in connection with any breach by you of the warranties included in paragraph 9.

What is Personal Data?

“Personal data” means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person, known as ‘data subject’, who can be identified directly or indirectly; it may include name, address, email address, phone number, IP address, location data, cookies and similar information. It may also include “special categories of personal data” such as racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a data subject, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation.

The Business may process personal data and special categories of personal data which you provide in connection with the Services about yourself and other data subjects, e.g. individuals whose details are included in any materials provided by you to the Business. The Business may obtain information about you and other data subjects from third party service providers, such as due diligence platforms.

The provision of certain personal data is mandatory in order for the Business to comply with mandatory client due diligence requirements and professional obligations and consequently to provide the Services. You warrant on a continuous basis that such personal data is accurate, complete and up to date. Failure to comply may result in difficulty to successfully completing the Services.

In relation to personal data of data subjects you warrant to the Business on a continuous basis that:

where applicable, you are authorised to share such personal data with the Business in connection with the Services and that wherever another data subject is referred to, you have obtained the explicit and demonstrable consent from all relevant data subjects to the inclusion and use of any personal data concerning them;
to the extent this is required in connection with the Services, such personal data is accurate, complete and up to date; and
either you provide your explicit consent and warrant that each data subject has provided explicit consent for the transfer of personal data to other organisations in connection with the proper and legal provision of the Services as set out at paragraph 3.

How do we use your personal data?

The Business will only process personal data, in accordance with applicable law, for the following purposes:

a) responding to your queries, requests and other communications;
b) providing the Services:
c) enabling suppliers and service providers to carry out certain functions on behalf of the Business in order to provide the Services, including webhosting, data storage, identity verification, technical, logistical, courier or other functions, as applicable;
d) sending you personalised marketing communications requested by you;
e) ensuring the security of the Business and preventing or detecting fraud;
f) administering our Business, including complaints resolution, troubleshooting of our website, data analysis, testing of new features, research, statistical and survey purposes;
g) developing and improving our Services;
h) complying with applicable law, including Solicitors Practice Rules, Law Society guidelines and Solicitors Regulation Authority regulations or in response to a lawful request from a court or regulatory body.

The legal basis for our processing of personal data for the purposes described above will typically include:

processing necessary to fulfil a contract that we have in place with you or other data subjects, such as processing for the purposes set out in paragraphs (a), (b), and (c);
processing necessary for our or a third party’s legitimate interests, such as processing for the purposes set out in paragraphs (a), (b), (e), (f) and (g), which is carried out on the basis of the legitimate interests of the Business to ensure that Services are properly provided, the security of the Business and its clients and the proper administration of the Business; and
processing necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject, such as processing for the purposes set out in paragraph (h).and
any other applicable legal grounds for processing from time to time.

Disclosure of personal data

There are circumstances where the Business may wish to disclose or is compelled to disclose your personal data to third parties. These scenarios include disclosure to:

our subsidiaries or associated offices;
our suppliers and service providers to facilitate the provision of the Services, including couriers, translators, IT consultants and legalisation and other handling agents, webhosting providers, identity verification partners (in order to verify your identity against public databases), consultants, for example, in order to protect the security or integrity of our business, including our databases and systems and for business continuity reasons;
public authorities to carry out acts which are necessary in connection with the Services, such as the local authority or the Courts;
professional organisations exercising certain public functions in relation to the solicitors’ profession, such as the Law Society or the Solicitors Regulation Authority;
successor or partner legal entities, on a temporary or permanent basis, for the purposes of a joint venture, collaboration, financing, sale, merger, reorganisation, change of legal form, dissolution or similar event relating to a Business. In the case of a merger or sale, your personal data will be permanently transferred to a successor company;
public authorities where we are required by law to do so; and
any other third party where you have provided your consent or disclosure is required by law.

Retention of personal data

Your personal data will be retained for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purposes listed above or as required by the law. For example, Wills, Lasting Powers of Attorney and property deeds shall be retained permanently. Files of papers will be retained for a minimum of 7 years. Please contact us for further details of applicable retention periods. Personal data may for reasons of security and convenience be stored on remote data facilities but in an encrypted form.

If our Regulatory Body so requires us, we may keep an anonymised form of your personal data, which will no longer refer to you, for statistical purposes without time limits, to the extent that we have a legitimate and lawful interest in doing so.

Security of personal data

The Business will implement technical and organisational security measures in order to prevent unauthorised access to your personal data.

However, please be aware that the transmission of information via the internet is never completely secure. Whilst we can do our best to keep our own systems secure, we do not have full control over all processes involved in, for example, your use of our website or sending confidential materials to us via email, and we cannot therefore guarantee the security of your information transmitted to us on the web.

Data subject rights

Data subjects have numerous rights in relation to their personal data. For further information about your data protection rights please visit the ICO website.

Right to make a subject access request (SAR). Data subjects may request in writing copies of their personal data. However, compliance with such requests is subject to certain limitations and exemptions and the rights of other data subjects. Each request should make clear that a SAR is being made. You may also be required to submit a proof of your identity and payment, where applicable.
Right to rectification. Data subjects may request that we rectify any inaccurate or incomplete personal data.
Right to withdraw consent. Data subjects may at any time withdraw their consent to the processing of their personal data carried out by the Business on the basis of previous consent. Such withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of processing based on previous consent.
Right to object to processing, including automated processing and profiling. The Business does not make automated decisions. If and only if our Regulatory Body so requires us, the Business may use third party due diligence platforms which provide recommendations about data subjects by automated means. We will comply with any data subject’s objection to processing unless we have a compelling overriding legitimate ground for the processing, the processing is for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims or we have another lawful reason to refuse such request. We will comply with each valid opt-out request in relation to marketing communications.
Right to erasure. Data subjects may request that we erase their personal data. We will comply, unless there is a lawful reason for not doing so. For example, there may be an overriding legitimate ground for keeping the personal data, such as, our archiving obligations that we have to comply with.
Data subjects may request that we restrict our processing of their personal data in various circumstances. We will comply, unless there is a lawful reason for not doing so, such as, a legal obligation to continue processing your personal data in a certain way.
Right to data portability. In certain circumstances, data subjects may request the controller to provide a copy of their personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format and have it transferred to another provider of the same or similar services. To the extent such right applies to the Services, we will comply with such transfer request. Please note that a transfer to another provider does not imply erasure of the data subject’s personal data which may still be required for legitimate and lawful purposes.
Right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority. We suggest that data subjects contact us about any questions or complaints in relation to how we process personal data. However, each data subject has the right to contact the relevant supervisory authority directly.