01274 271 505

  01274 271 505

Lustitia Law

Privacy Policy

Introduction

 

Lustitia Law is fully committed to protecting the privacy of those whose personal data comes into our possession. We take your privacy rights and the security of your personal data very seriously.

 

Please read this Privacy Notice carefully. It explains in detail how the staff member(s) at Lustitia Law in your case will use any personal information about you that is provided or made available to the individual member of staff.

 

The Fee Earner in your case and Lustitia Law will be the ‘controller’ of your personal information for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation 2018 and the Data Protection Act 2018. If you need to contact the Fee Earner about your personal information or the processing they have carried out, the relevant contact details are:-

 

Lustitia Law, Malik House, 29 Manor Row, Bradford, BD1 4PS, email address admin@lustitialaw.co.uk

 

Topics covered by this Privacy Notice:-

 

  • What information will be used by the staff member and Lustitia Law
  • How and why this information is used
  • Who your information will be shared with
  • How long your information will be held by staff members and Lustitia Law
  • International data transfers
  • Your rights
  • Further information and complaints

 

What information will be used by Lustitia Law and staff members.

 

Where it is necessary to do so, the Fee Earner/staff member will collect, use, share, retain and otherwise process personal information about you in order to provide you with legal services.

 

This personal information will be collected by the Fee Earner/staff member upon receipt of initial instructions to provide legal services to you and in the course of the provision of those legal services.

 

This personal information may be obtained from a number of different sources provided to or made available to the Fee Earner/staff member, for example instructions received directly from you, information from third parties such as your family, friends and associates, court documents, witness statements, medical records, employment records, educational records, HMRC records, DWP records, financial records, investigation documents, police reports, expert reports, regulatory authorities, courts and other tribunals, government departments, prosecution authorities, and public records and registers.

 

The personal information processed by the Fee Earner/staff member may include information about your:-

 

  • Name, address, telephone number(s), e-mail and other contact details
  • Gender
  • Marital status
  • Family background
  • Education, training and employment details
  • Financial details
  • Lifestyle and social circumstances
  • Visual image, appearance or behaviour
  • Any other personal information necessary for the purposes of providing legal services to you
  • Any other information that you choose to send to the Fee Earner & or staff member.

 

The personal information processed by the Fee Earner/staff member may also include particularly sensitive personal information, including information about your:-

 

  • Physical or mental health
  • Past medical history
  • Genetic data
  • Biometric data
  • Racial or ethnic origin
  • Political opinions
  • Religious or philosophical beliefs
  • Sex life or sexual orientation
  • Trade union membership
  • Any civil and criminal proceedings in which you have been involved
  • Any criminal convictions

 

How and why this information is used

 

The Fee Earner/staff member will only use your personal information if they have a proper reason for doing so.

 

The Fee Earner/staff member may collect, use, share, retain and otherwise process your personal information for the following purposes:-

 

  • To provide legal services, including (without limitation) the provision of legal advice and representation in courts, tribunals, arbitrations and mediations
  • To conduct checks to identify clients and verify their identity
  • To keep accounting records and carry out administration of the Fee Earner/staff member own professional practice
  • To take or defend legal proceedings
  • To respond to any potential or actual complaints
  • To publish legal judgments and decisions of courts and tribunals
  • To check for potential conflicts of interest in relation to future potential cases
  • To carry out anti-money laundering and terrorist financing checks
  • To promote and market their services
  • To comply with professional, legal and regulatory obligations
  • As otherwise required by law

 

The Fee Earner/staff member will collect, use, share, retain and otherwise process your personal information on the following legal grounds:-

 

  • Where you have consented to them processing your personal information. You have the right to withdraw your consent to the processing at any time. Please see the ‘Your rights’ section of this Privacy Notice for more details
  • To enable them to provide legal services or to fulfil their obligations under the contractual terms of work
  • To take steps at your request prior to entering into any contract to provide legal services
  • To comply with any legal obligation to which they are subject, for example retaining records required by anti-money laundering legislation
  • Where it is necessary for the legitimate interests of the Fee Earner and or staff member, for example for the purpose of conflict-checking, or for use in the defence of potential complaints, legal proceedings or fee disputes
  • Were it necessary for the legitimate interests of a third party, for example the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims of a third party, or for the purposes of training of staff
  • In respect of any personal information relating to criminal convictions and offences: Where it is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of a legal claim or whenever a court is acting in a judicial capacity
  • Where you have made the information public

 

Who your information will be shared with

 

Some of the personal information you provide will be protected by legal professional privilege. Your Solicitor has an obligation to keep your information confidential, except where it otherwise becomes public or is disclosed as part of the case or proceedings.

 

The Solicitor may share your information with the following categories of recipients for the purposes described above:-

 

  • Courts and other tribunals
  • Any other legal or non-legal professional advisor
  • Lay witnesses or potential lay witnesses
  • Expert advisors or witnesses
  • Solicitors, barristers or other legal or non-legal representatives acting for any other party in your case
  • Any employees of Lustitia Law
  • Trainee Solicitor(s) at Lustitia Law, or students undertaking work shadowing at Lustitia Law
  • The Solicitors own professional advisors
  • Any insurers to Lustitia Law
  • In the event of any complaint, Rashida Khan, who deals with complaints, the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and the Legal Ombudsman
  • Prosecution authorities
  • Any law enforcement agency, court, regulator or government authority or other third party where this is deemed by the Solicitor/Fee Earner or any other legal non legal member of staff of Lustitia Law to be necessary to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation or process Your Fee Earner/staff member may also disclose your personal information to any of Lustitia Law employees, agents or service providers (such as IT contractors, email providers, data storage providers) insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes as set out in this Privacy Notice, but only if Lustitia Law is satisfied that they take appropriate measures to protect the security of your personal information.

 

The Fee Earner/staff member will not share your personal data with any other third party unless they have your specific permission to do so.

 

How long your information will be held by Lustitia Law

 

The Fee Earner/staff member and Lustitia Law will retain your personal information for as long as is necessary, but no longer, for them to fulfil the purposes described in this Privacy Notice.

 

Whilst the Fee Earner/staff member involvement in your case is ongoing, the Fee Earner/staff member will retain your personal information for as long as is necessary to enable them to provide legal services.

 

After the Fee Earner/staff member involvement in your case has ended, the period for which they will retain your personal information will depend on various criteria:-

 

  • The length of the limitation period for bringing any professional negligence claim or contribution proceedings against the Solicitor and or legal and or non legal member of staff in respect of the legal services they have provided. The expiry of the relevant limitation period will depend upon, amongst other things, the age and capacity of the client
  • In respect of clients who lack mental capacity and to whom no limitation period might apply, a balance will be struck between the Fee Earner/staff member(s) legitimate interest in retaining personal information in case files to defend any professional negligence action and the privacy rights of the client
  • Whether the retention of the personal information is necessary for regulatory requirements, for example in order to carry out anti-money laundering checks
  • Some of your information which is needed to carry out conflict checks may be retained indefinitely but this is likely to be limited to your name, contact details and the name of the case.

 

There will be certain circumstances in which your personal information needs to be preserved beyond the default retention period set by the firm, and specifically where one of the following conditions applies:-

 

  • Legal action or a regulatory or similar investigation is known to be likely, threatened or actual
  • A legal or regulatory obligation to produce information is known to be likely, threatened or actual
  • A crime is suspected or detected.

 

Further information about how long your information will be held is contained in the firms Data Retention Policy.

 

International data transfers

 

This Privacy Notice is of general application and as such it is not possible to state whether it will be necessary to transfer your information out of the EEA in any particular case. However, if you reside outside the EEA or if the instructions you provide come from outside the EEA or your case involves persons, organisations, courts or tribunals outside the EEA then it may be necessary to transfer some of your data to that country outside of the EEA.   These transfers are subject to special rules under European and UK data protection law. If this applies to you and you wish additional precautions to be taken in respect of your information, please indicate this when providing initial instructions.

 

Your rights

 

You have a number of rights in relation to the personal information held by the firm.

 

Where you have provided your consent to the Fee Earner/staff member processing your personal information, you are entitled to withdraw your consent at any time, but this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing activity carried out by the firm prior to you withdrawing your consent. In certain cases, the firm may continue to process your information after you have withdrawn consent if they have a legal basis to do so or if your withdrawal of consent is limited to only certain processing activities.

 

Where there is a direct contract between you and the Fee Earner/staff member, the provision of your personal information is a contractual requirement under the contractual terms of work and failure by you to provide such personal information could mean that the Fee Earner/staff member will not be able to provide the legal services under the contract and may have the right to terminate the contract.

 

In other cases, whilst there may not be a contractual obligation owed to the Fee Earner/staff member to provide them with your personal information, failure to do so may prevent the Fee Earner/staff member from providing you with legal services and may require them to withdraw from acting for you under the regulatory obligations.

 

You are entitled to ask the Fee Earner/staff member to provide access to any personal information they hold about you and you can request a copy of some or all of your personal information.

 

You also have the following rights:-

 

  • Right of rectification – you have a right to correct information that is held about you that is inaccurate or incomplete
  • Right to be forgotten – in certain circumstances you can ask for the information that is held about you to be erased
  • Right to restriction of processing – where certain conditions apply you have a right to restrict the processing of your personal information
  • Right of portability – you have the right to have the information held about you transferred to another organisation
  • Right to object – you have the right to object to certain types of processing such as direct marketing
  • Right to object to automated processing, including profiling – you also have the right to be subject to the legal effects of automated processing or profiling

 

Where your personal information is being processed by the Fee Earner/staff member for the purposes of their own legitimate interests or those of a third party, you can object to this processing in certain circumstances. In such cases, the Fee Earner/staff member will cease processing your information unless they have compelling legitimate grounds to continue processing or where it is needed for legal reasons.

 

Any request to exercise any of the above rights should be made in writing (with a contact address and proof of your identity and address) to the Fee Earner/staff member at the contact address set out above.

 

Further information/complaints

 

If you have any concerns or wish to make a complaint about how the Fee Earner/staff member has collected, used or shared your personal information, please contact Rashida Khan at Lustitia Law, Malik House, 29 Manor Row, Bradford, BD1 4PS.

 

We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you may raise about the use of your information. However, you do have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), whose website is at www.ico.org.uk if you are in the UK, or with the supervisory authority of the Member State where you work, normally live or where the alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred.