Privacy Notice

At JLJ Legal Limited we take your privacy seriously. This Notice is primarily for the benefit of our clients or potential clients or for related third parties whose data we may process as part of the provision of legal services. We maintain and will provide separate privacy notices in relation to the collection and use of personal information about our staff and employees, including potential employees, during and after their working relationship with us.

JLJ Legal Limited is a registered company in England and Wales, registered number 11330992, our registered address is Office 2, Tweed House, Park Lane, Swanley, BR8 8DT. For the purposes of data protection JLJ Legal Limited is a Data Controller, our ICO registration number is ZA493348.

Our firm processes your data in accordance with the terms of the Data Protection Act 2018, the Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 and the relevant provisions relating to the General Data Protection Regulation contained within the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (UK GDPR). This Data & Privacy Notice explains, in detail, the types of personal data we may collect about you when you interact with us. It also explains how we will store and handle that data and keep it safe. Unless otherwise indicated, references in this Data and Privacy Notice to the GDPR refer to the UK GDPR.

We know that there's a lot of information here, but we want you to be fully informed about your rights, and how our firm uses your data. We hope the following sections will answer any questions you have but if not, please do get in touch with us.

Conditions for Processing Data

We are only entitled to hold and process your data where the law allows us to. The current law on data protection (Article 6 GDPR) sets out a number of different reasons for which a law firm may collect and process your personal data. These include:

Contractual obligations

The main purpose for our holding your data is to provide you with legal services under the agreement we have with you. This agreement is a contract between us and the law allows us to process your data for the purposes of performing a contract (or for the steps necessary to enter in to a contract).

Legitimate Interests

In specific situations, we require your data to pursue our legitimate interests in a way which might reasonably be expected as part of running our business and which does not materially impact your rights, freedom or interests. This may include to satisfy our external quality auditors or our Regulators.

Legal compliance

If the law requires us to, we may need to collect and process your data. For example, we can pass on details of people involved in fraud or other criminal activity.

Consent

In some situations, we can collect and process your data with your consent. For example, when you tick a box to receive email newsletters. When collecting your personal data, we'll always make clear to you which data is necessary in connection with a particular service.

When do we collect your data?

We normally collect your data when you provide it to us or when it is provided to us by others (your opponent's solicitors for example) during your case. You may give us your data by email; through an online web form; over the telephone; face to face; or by post.

What sort of data do we collect?

We may collect personal data about clients, prospective clients, suppliers and external experts.

Information you provide to us

You voluntarily give us your personal information for instance when:

you contact us via our website or telephone
Instruct us on your behalf
use our website
offer to provide or provide services to us
exchange business cards with a member of our team
interact with us on social media platforms

Where we request information from you, we will collect the information set out in the relevant web pages, or as explained to you over the telephone or face to face.

Client services

We may collect personal data as follows:

name and contact details (including address, email and phone numbers). This may include asking for and keeping a copy of your passport/driving licence and proof of address
date of birth
personal information that may be included in communications with us
payment information and financial information that relates to a contractual relationship including bank details.
IP address, and information regarding what pages you access on this website and when.

We may gather details of your age; ethnicity; gender etc. We also collect and hold information about your case or legal problem.

How do we use your data?

Provision of services

We only use your data for the purposes of providing you with legal advice, assistance and where appropriate, representation and for reasons directly associated with those services.

In particular:

To register you as a client of JLJ Legal
To deliver and administer legal services to you on your instruction.
To answer enquiries that you make prior to any formal instruction.
To administer and manage our relationship with you.
To carry out background checks, where permitted
To exercise or defend our legal rights or to comply with court orders
To avoid any conflict of interest as we represent you
To adhere to regulations set out by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority
To maintain records, compliance checks or screening and recording (e.g. anti-money laundering, financial and credit checks)
To maintain security of our office and IT infrastructure
To invoice you, and to track payments you make or payments made to you
To respond to complaints and seek to resolve them

We will not user your personal data for taking any automated decisions affecting or creating profiles other than those described above. We believe that all these purposes are justified on the basis of our legitimate interests in running and promoting the firm, our contractual requirements to deliver the agreed legal services to you, and our legal obligations as a limited company. Where we process sensitive personal information in the course of these and other similar cases, we do so to assist you and/or your organisation to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

We will only provide you with marketing related information when we have a previous contractual relationship or a business relationship with you and provided you do not opt- out to receive those communications. You have the opportunity to opt-out at any time.

Details of Our Processing:

Sensitive Personal Data

In the course of our client services, we may represent you and/or your organisation in legal matters that require us to collect and use sensitive personal information relating to you, that is information about your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union activities, physical or mental health, sexual life and sexual orientation or details of criminal offences, or genetic or biometric data. In some employment representations, such as disputes involving alleged discrimination, information about medical conditions, race, religion and/or sexual orientation may be relevant to the representation.

Regulatory

We also use data to communicate with our regulators or legislators and to obey laws, regulations and codes of conduct that apply to us.

For example, we will process your data to enable us to identify and/or verify your identity and conduct fraud, credit and anti-money laundering checks in accordance with anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing legislation and regulation.

Consent

We may use your data to notify you of our other services but only where we have your consent to do so.

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

By law, we may not place cookies on your computer without your consent, unless they are strictly necessary to the operation of the service that we provide on the Website.

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings.

To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

How do we protect your data?

We take protecting your data very seriously. The data you give us may be subject to Legal Professional Privilege and is often extremely sensitive and confidential.

With this in mind we will treat your data with the utmost care and take all appropriate steps to protect it. We have clear data protection and information security policies and procedures in place (along with Regulatory and other legal obligations to keep your data safe) and these are regularly assessed as part of our Quality Standards and compliance processes.

We protect our IT system from Cyber Attack. Access to your personal data is password-protected, and sensitive data is secured by encryption.

We regularly monitor our system for possible vulnerabilities and attacks, and we carry out penetration testing to identify ways to further strengthen security.

How long will we keep your data?

We will retain your personal data 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 and, where required for JLJ Legal to assert or defend against legal claims, until the end of the relevant retention period.

Upon expiry of the applicable retention period we will securely destroy your personal data in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.

information in a matter file or related to a matter or instructions to us such as information on our case management system will usually be kept for a period of six years after the case or matter ends unless it is required to be kept for longer (for instance, the information is required for another or related case or matter or where the person is currently under the age of eighteen, in which case data will need to be held for six years after they reach the age of eighteen), or we have another legal basis to process that information. This is because we are required to keep client files for that period by our Regulator and/or by the SRA. This also protects you should you be unhappy with our services and want to complain or even due us after your case ends.
data obtained for compliance with crime or fraud prevention has to be retained by us to meet our legal or regulatory obligations for six years from the close of the individual matter or the end of our business relationship with a relevant person, whichever is later
enquiries where we do not take on your case are kept for only 18 months
any complaints files for six years after the complaint is concluded (with the associated matter file(s)
financial information and any financial transactions will be kept for a period of 7 years to comply with HMRC requirements except for cardholder data which will generally be destroyed immediately after the transaction is processed

For some data we may decide that it is proper and appropriate to keep data for longer than the above, but we will notify you if we believe that your case falls into this category or there is another reason your data has to be retained.

Who do we share your personal data with?

We sometimes share your personal data with trusted third parties. We only do this where it is necessary for providing you legal services or for the effective operation of our legal practice.

For example, we may share your data with barristers; experts; translators; costs draftsmen; process servers; secure file storage and destruction companies; auditors; the company that securely hosts our off-site cloud storage servers.

We apply a strict policy to those recipients or data processors to keep your data safe and protect your privacy. In particular:

We provide only the information they need to perform their specific services.
They may only use your data for the exact purposes we specify in our contract with them.
We work closely with them to ensure that your privacy is respected and protected at all times.
If we stop using their services, any of your data held by them will either be deleted or rendered anonymous.

We do not sell or rent your personal data or information to any third party or share your information with third parties for their marketing purposes.

Where is your data processed?

Your data is stored and processed within the United Kingdom (UK). If we ever have to share your personal data with third parties and suppliers outside the UK we will seek your specific consent to do so.

Transfers outside of the European Economic Area

Some of your data may be stored outside of the European Economic Area (“the EEA”) (The EEA consists of all EU member states, plus Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein). Where we do store data outside the EEA (for example, the use of MailChimp for e-mail marketing where their servers are located within the United States). We take all reasonable steps to ensure that your data is treated as safely and securely as it would be within the UK and under the Data Protection Act 2018 and GDPR.

What are your rights?

You have the following rights under the UK GDPR:

the right to be informed – the provision of clear and concise information about what we do with your personal data, as outlined within this Data & Privacy Notice
the right of access – commonly referred to as a ‘data subject access request’, this enables you to request a copy of your personal data to understand how and why we are using your data, and to check we are doing so lawfully. If we choose not to action your request, we will explain to you the reasons for our refusal
the right to rectification – the ability to have inaccurate personal data rectified or, in specific circumstances dependent on the purposes for our processing of your data, the ability to have incomplete personal data completed
the right to erasure – also known as the right to be forgotten, this permits you to request we erase your personal data. This only applies to data we hold at the time your request is received and does not apply to any data that may be obtained in the future. Please note that this is not an absolute right and only applies in certain circumstances. We may have overriding duties to retain some data which you cannot ask to be erased immediately or at all. For instance, once you become a client of our firm or you are an interested party in a case, we will be required by our regulators and for legal purposes to retain some of your personal data and other information within casefiles for a certain period (for retention periods, please see above)
the right to restrict processing – the ability to request a temporary restriction on the processing of your personal data, where one of a limited number of reasons specified by the ICO applies
the right to data portability – the ability to receive personal data you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format. This also gives you the right to request that we transmit this data directly to another Data Controller
the right to object – the ability, in certain circumstances, to request we stop processing your personal data. This request may relate to all of your personal data we hold or only certain information, and may only apply to a particular purpose for processing
rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling – restrictions on the use of automated decision making and profiling where such decisions have a legal or similarly significant effect on you. It is unlikely that our firm will use automated decision making and profiling.

For further details on your rights, please visit the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/.

Contact Details

For information on how your information is used, how we maintain the security of our information, and to exercise your rights to access information we hold on you, please contact us. Similarly, if you believe that the information we hold is wrong or out of date, please let us know and we will update it. The person in this firm responsible for data protection is our Data Protection Officer, Jane Johnson, Director. Enquires and requests can be sent to her by email on jane@jljlegal.co.uk or at our registered address.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this policy. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement or policy applicable to the website in question.

The Regulator

If you feel that your data has not been handled correctly, or you are unhappy with our response to any requests you have made to us regarding the use of your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office.

You can contact them by calling 0303 123 1113.

Or go online to www.ico.org.uk/concerns (opens in a new window; please note we can't be responsible for the content of external websites).

Changes to this Notice

We do not intend to process a client or related third party’s personal information for any reason other than stated within this privacy notice. If this changes, we will update this privacy notice on this webpage and in any documentation we will send to you. However, internet and data privacy best practice and acceptable standards are developing. We therefore reserve the right to revise this Notice at any time. If this Notice changes in any way, we will place an updated version on this webpage. For all other clients with ongoing instructions, we will provide a copy directly. Continued instructions to us will signify that you agree to any such changes