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Jackamans

Privacy Policy

This privacy notice is intended to inform you about how we hold your persona! data and how we will use that persona! data. lt is to be read in conjunction with our Terms of Business and our client care letter. The type of persona! data we collect and use Jackamans solicitors has a range of different departments ail of which collect some similar data and some of which collect different data. Data which we commonly collect from our clients includes the following:-

  • The full names, addresses and dates of birth
  • Spouses full na mes, addresses and dates of birth
  • Email addresses
  • Children’s na mes and dates of birth
  • Criminal records
  • Pensions/bank account information
  • CAFCASS/Expert Witness reports
  • Third party details who are connected with the case
  • Decree Absolutes
  • Financial Orders
  • Medical Records
  • Copies of passports, driving licence, bank statements/information on source offunds
  • Vaur Wills and contents of them
  • The contents of your Powers of Attorney including the full na mes, addresses and dates of birth of your attorneys
  • ln some circumstances we will also be processing what has been defined by the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) as ‘special categories of persona! data’ which are defined by Article 9 of GDPR. This is persona! data which reveals your race or ethnie origin, political opinions, religious and philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic data, bio-metric data, health data and sex life and sexual orientation.

For example, in taking simple instructions for a Will we will require your name, age and address and details about your assets, family and dependants, ail of which could provide us with data covered by Article 9. We collect and hold data in bath paper and electronic form. Using your persona! data -the legal basis and the purposes The vast majority of the information which we collect about our clients is collected because it is necessary for entering into or performing a contract with you, which is covered by Article 6{1}(b} of the General Data Protection Regulations, ie without receiving your data we simply cou Id not draft the necessary legal documentation, or provide you with proper legal advice. We are also under the scrutiny of the Law Society and Solicitors Regulation Authority who require us ta identify our clients and comply with ail other legal obligations. As an example of our legal obligations we are required to collect quite a lot of information ta comply with the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (information on the payer) Regulations 2017. This means, for example, in a conveyancing transaction we will need to have the bank statements of you and any other parties who transfer money to you as well as details of where that money came from, whether it be wage slips, sale of another property or an inheritance under somebody’s Will.

As solicitors we have to adhere to the Solicitors Regulation Authority principles and the first principle which applies to us is that we must uphold the rule of law and the proper administration of justice. The fourth and fifth principles are that we must act in the best interests of each client and provide a proper standard of service to you. For these reasons, amongst many others, we have to obtain your data in order to comply with legal obligations to which we are subject and to protect your vital interests (covered by Article 6(1)(C) and Article 6(1)(D) of GDPR). We will also have to retain and process your data for our own legitimate interests eg:-

(a) For good governance, accounting and managing and auditing our business operations

(b) To properly archive documents which we hold on your behalf eg Wills, Lasting Powers of Attorney, Enduring Powers of Attorney, Deeds, Trusts, Probates, Decrees Absolute.

(c) To send you communications should the law substantially change (eg regarding your Will should there be a major change to lnheritance Tax legislation), so that we can keep your details up to date.

 

Sharing of your Personal Data

We never have nor will we ever sell your data to third parties, or share it gratuitously. As solicitors we owe you a duty of confidentiality which we take very seriously, however, sometimes it will become necessary to share your persona! data with others, eg:-

  • Our Chartered Accountants who audit us every year in compliance with the Solicitors Accounts Rules. The Chartered Accountants will choose a number of our files at random to investigate to ensure we comply with the Solicitors Accounts Rules.
  • IT support providers. We currently outsource our IT support and occasionally require their assistance in transferring data across our IT networks and in maintaining that data, as a result of which they may corne into contact with your persona! data.
  • Barristers. Where we have advised you to obtain legal counsel we will need to share your persona!data with the Barrister so that he or she can provide advice on the matter.
  • GP’s, Healthcare professionals and other Expert Witnesses. ln some matters we need to instruct expert witnesses eg a doctor specialising in mental capacity for a Will. To do this we will have to share your persona! data with them.
  • Fraud Prevention Agencies. During the course of your legal matter with us, if we corne to suspect you of fraud we may have to report this to fraud prevention agencies, including but not limited to the Serious Organised Crime Agency.
  • Other Government Bodies and Agencies eg HMRC. We will commonly have to return tax information to HMRC eg Stamp Duty Land Tax, lnheritance Tax or Incarne Taxon your behalf, and as such we will have to share your persona! data with them.
  • Our insurers and their lawyers in the case of any potential claims of negligence.
  • The Legal Ombudsman in the case of any complaint you make about the standard of service you receive from us.
  • Courts. ln some matters eg children matters, we will have to share persona! data relating to yourself and your children with the Family Court as necessary.

When we share data with third parties we will always require third parties to comply with the GDPR regulations and respect the confidentiality of the information.

 

How long will my data be kept?

ln some cases your data will be kept indefinitely for example where we have completed a house purchase or Will for you and you have asked us to retain the deeds or Will in our strongroom, your name and address will appear on our Deeds and Wills Index. Should the Will or title deeds then be sent anywhere else, collected by you or collected by anyone else (eg your Executors) these details will be added to our Deeds or Wills Index. This is so that we keep an accu rate and up to date record as to where the Deeds and Wills went and when. This is necessary to protect your vital interests (covered by Article 6(1)(D)). This is so that we are able to know with confidence when your documentation was lodged with us, when it left us and as a result should the documentation be lost a Statutory Declaration or Affidavit can be done to reconstitute your vital information.

Where your matter has been opened on our firm’s accounting ledger (so that we can keep the office and client accounts details for all clients), your name and address and the matter type will be kept indefinitely. This allows us to know whether you were a client of ours, when you were a client of ours, whether the file we opened for you has been archived, and whether the physical file that we opened for you has now been destroyed. lt also allows us to conduct conflict searches so that we can ascertain whether we are likely to have a conflict of interests in representing you. This helps us to ensure that we can always act in your best interests.

The majority of our physical files will be destroyed after a minimum of seven years. We keep this information for a minimum of seven years after completion of the work in order to protect bath ourselves and you from daims and our insurers require us to keep the documentation for this long. This may be changed on a case by case basis where it is thought necessary by us. Will files are the exception to this general rule and are kept indefinitely. This is because we may not be informed when you have died and there is no limitation period on challenging a Will. The information contained within that Will file is vital bath to defend and uphold your Will and to defend us and our insurers against any daims.

Decree Absolutes and Financial Orders may also be kept indefinitely in paper form so that you will always have a copy to refer to. Lasting Powers of Attorney are kept for a minimum of seven years after you have died when we have been notified of your death. If we have not been notified of your death then the original Lasting Power of Attorney is likely to be held indefinitely, because we don’t want to destroy vital legal documents without being sure they are no longer necessary. This firm will update and change the period for which we hold your data as and when the law changes relating to limitation periods for legal claims.

 

Your Rights

You have the following rights under the General Data Protection Regulations:-

  1. The right to be informed.
  2. The right of access.
  3. The right to rectification.
  4. The right to erasure.
  5. The right to restrict processing.
  6. The right to data portability.
  7. The right to abject.
  8. Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.

This notice is to inform you about the data processing in order to caver your first right.

Vou have the right to access your persona! data by making a Subject Access Data Request. Vou can request this either verbally or in writing. We would be grateful, however, if you would make all such requests in writing. Should you wish to request information about the data we hold on you then please either write tous ma king a heading in either your email or letter ‘Subject Access Data Request’, or use the specific words when calling us, and please request that the matter be put before one of the Partners in the firm. This will help us to understand what it is you want and respond in a timely manner.

The right to rectification is the right to have the information which we hold about you rectified or completed. We always want to hold the most up to date and correct information on you that we can and would therefore be happy for you to contact us and inform us of the up to date information, whether that is a change in address or your name, or your persona! circumstances.

The right to erasure, also known as ‘The Right to be Forgotten’ is limited. Most of the data which we hold, we have to hold in order to comply with legal obligations or for the establishment exercise or defence of legal claims. This will caver most of the information which we hold for you and we do not therefore anticipate that there will be many cases in which you have a right to be forgotten, because our legal obligations override that right. However, we are happy to entertain your request to be forgotten and will then be able to judge it on a case by case basis. lf you wish to make this request you can do so either verbally or in writing and we would be grateful if you would state that you wish to make a request to be forgotten under the General Data Protection Regulations. We may not always comply with such a request due to the aforementioned legal obligations, but we will look at it on a case by case basis in order to see whether or not we can ‘forget’ you. We would however point out it is usually in your best interests that you are not forgotten by us.

Vaur rights to restrict us processing your data acts as a temporary stop on us and our legal activities. Vou have the right to request us to do this where you believe the accuracy of the data we hold about you is incorrect and we are verifying the accuracy of that data and we no longer need the data on a day to day basis, but we are keeping it for you in order to establish, exercise or defend a legal daim; or you may have objected to us processing your data and we are considering whether we have legitimate grounds to override your request.

The Right to Data Portability. This will not apply to Jackamans because this right only applies to information provided to an institution which uses a structured, commonly used and machine readable format for data, where there are no paper files. At Jackamans we hold paper files of information which is not machine readable or in a standard format. The information we hold is unique to you and your file and your solicitor. Therefore whilst we will be able to inform you about the information which we hold, we will not be able to port this data to you electronically. Vou should note that the right to data portability only applies where we are carrying out the processing by automated means, which means excluding paper files. At Jackamans we always use paper files and therefore this does not apply. Your right to object to our processing of your data is limited. If you wish to object to us processing your data then please give us specific reasons as to why you are objecting to the processing of your data. We will then consider your request and decide whether we have legitimate grounds to override your rights. Please note that any data we are processing in order to comply with our legal obligations, for example money laundering checks are not subject to your right to object to processing. These are deemed to be higher than your right to object and therefore we may continue.

Rights related to automated decision making do not apply to Jackamans. We do not make any decisions on the basis of automated decision ma king (ie where a computer makes the decision for us). Ali of our clients individual circumstances are assessed by individuals and therefore this does not apply.

 

Complaints

Should you have any complaints with regards to the data which we have gathered and kept and processed about you, or the way in which any of your above rights have been handled then we would be grateful if, in the first instance, you would raise the matter with any of the partners of this firm. However, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioners Office. They have enforcement powers and can investigate our compliance with the Data Protection law and make orders against us if it was found necessary. Their website is www.ico.org.uk.

 

Email and Data Security

We would remind you that email is not a very safe way of communicating your data. If you send us important data and your email is read or intercepted then we cannot take any responsibility for that. We would remind you that sending bank details via email is a particularly bad idea.

 

Conclusion

Due to the enormous variety of matters covered by Jackamans solicitors, it is difficult to write a complete list of the a mou nt of data which we may hold for you, or the reasons why we are holding it, and the foregoing examples are not intended to be an exhaustive list. Please rest assured however that the data which we hold will always be for the reasons that we need to complete our legal contract with you or for our own legitimate interests and good record keeping, or to comply with our legal obligations. If you are not happy to provide us with your persona! data, or the data which we request, then we would politely request that you do not instruct us. ln some circumstances where you refuse to provide us with the data required we may have to terminate our contract with you. Once you have instructed us in a legal matter it may become extremely difficult or even impossible to stop processing your data due to our legal obligations. Where you have lodged documentation with us for safekeeping it will not be possible for us to delete that data without us returning the documentation to you for your own safekeeping.

 

 

 

 

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