Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

The Legal Partners respects your privacy and is committed to protecting the personal data that you share with us.

This privacy notice explains how The Legal Partners look after your personal data, whether you are a client, an individual associated with a client, a contact subscribing to our legal updates, or a visitor to our website. This privacy notice is important, please read it carefully. This privacy notice is in two parts.

Part 1. Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we are required to update the data protection references in our client care letters with clients and provide certain details regarding the collection and use of your personal data and information we collect from our newsletters and updates and our marketing communications.

Part 2: This sets out in relation to information we collect from this website, the practices we follow to respect the privacy of everyone who visits our website.

The address of The Legal Partners Limited is: Parkshot House, 5 Kew Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 2PR.

Email address: Info@thelegalpartners.com

Telephone number: +44 (0) 203 755 5288

If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests regarding data you share with us via our contact us form, for example, please contact our Data Privacy Manager by email Philippa.Mullett@thelegalpartners.com.

Part 1

What are your rights in relation to your personal data

Under certain circumstances, you have the following rights:

  • The right to be informed that processing of your data is taking place. This is the reason for this privacy notice.
  • The right of access to your data eg to ask us to provide you with copies of the personal data we hold about you at any time, to be informed of the contents and origin, verify its accuracy, or else request such information be supplemented, updated or corrected according to GDPR.
  • The right to have your data rectified.
  • The right to have your data erased.
  • The right to restrict processing of your data.
  • The right to object on legitimate grounds to the processing of your personal data where applicable.
  • The right to data portability, i.e. to receive your data in a format you can forward to another party.
  • The right to withdraw your consent at any time for any processing of your personal data. While we do not generally process personal data on the basis of consent, when personal data is processed on the basis of consent you may withdraw consent at any time. In the event that you no longer want to receive any marketing material from us, please use the unsubscribe option which is in all of our marketing emails to you.

    These rights have further details about how they can be exercised – see https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/ for more details.

    To exercise such rights and if you have any questions about how we collect, store and use Personal Information, then please contact our Data Privacy Manager Philippa.Mullett@thelegalpartners.com.

    While we hope that you will not need to, if you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office on 0303 123 1113. We would, however, appreciate the opportunity to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact our Data Privacy Manager Philippa.Mullett@thelegalpartners.com in the first instance.

What personal data do we collect

We need to know basic personal data (e.g your name, title, organisation, contact number, email address) in order to provide you with:

  • Our services, and our right to collect payment in return for our services, under our contract we have with you. If you do not provide this information then we will be unable to provide the services you have requested.
  • Our marketing communications, including our legal updates, articles, invitations to our webinars, events and information about the services we offer. For this purpose we use MailChimp (owned by Intuit). Intuit’s Privacy Policy describes what personal data it processes and how it uses it. MailChimp processes your data in accordance with its privacy policy. MailChimp are certified under the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework which is being updated under negotiations between the US and the EU. They store data in the US. Accordingly, the personal data you share with us will be transferred to their secure servers in the US. MailChimp’s privacy shield certification permits this transfer in accordance with GDPR. You may contact MailChimp directly here to request access to information that MailChimp may hold about you. As a client, your contact information is put onto the MailChimp system, so that we can keep in contact with you.
  • We collect personally identifiable information that is voluntarily provided by subscribers to our email newsletters. This user data includes name, email address, IP address (which are not personally identifiable) and details of the clicks on links in our newsletters. MailChimp uses technologies such as pixels and web beacons that allow us to track whether you have opened and then clicked on the links in our newsletters. These clicks and the open statistics are used together to give us an indication of the popularity of our content and to help us make decisions about future content and formatting.

Use of data 

Clients and Contacts

Some of our processing is necessary for compliance with legal obligations. For example, we may be obliged to report certain matters to law enforcement agencies or HMRC when handling a matter for clients.

We carry out certain background searches to verify whether or not there are any potential issues that may mean we cannot work with a particular person (to identify criminal convictions, politically exposed persons, sanctions or other potential reputation issues).

We may use your personal data (e.g. evidence of your identity) in order to fulfil our obligations to check the identity of our clients in compliance with anti-money laundering law and regulations.

We use your personal data to collect our fees or costs in connection with the services delivered to you.

We may also process data if it is necessary for the performance of a contract with you, or to take steps to enter into a contract. An example of this would be processing your data in connection with providing you with services you have asked us to provide, for example incorporating a company for you or instructing a barrister for your case.

We will also communicate with you information about other services we can offer you and update you about our activities because we have a legitimate business interest to do so because of our relationship.

You can specify your preferences when registering online to receive email updates from us or by subsequently advising us of your contact preferences using options provided on all of our marketing emails or by contacting our Data Privacy Manager.

Your personal data may also be collected by virtue of us providing our services to you or collected by us at a networking event, or events run by us, such as our HR Network webinars. We may collect the personal data you give to us from your business card, or in conversation with you, via air drop, QR codes and similar digital technologies.

We will have to transfer your personal data to MailChimp as described above for the purposes of providing newsletters and marketing communications. Except for that reason all the personal data we hold about you will be processed by us in the United Kingdom unless there is a legal obligation for us to provide them with it. We have set out below the legal bases for The Legal Partners to process your data and where a third party supplier such as a data processor will handle the data.

Suppliers

We will use and disclose personal data in such manner as we believe is reasonably necessary to receive and to review the provision of those services from suppliers. For example we use Google and Microsoft as data processors for our services.

If a supplier is assisting us in delivering services to our clients we will process personal data to manage that relationship and/or to agree payment arrangements with our suppliers, and to make payments to them.

Job Applicants

If you are a job applicant please refer to information made available when applying for a job for further details as to how your personal data is collected, processed and for how long we retain this information.

Where your information is used other than for one of these purposes, we will first obtain your consent to that use.

We take all reasonable steps to ensure that your personal data is processed securely.

How long we keep your personal data 

We will generally keep your personal data for a minimum of 7 years, after which time it will be destroyed if it is no longer required for the lawful purpose(s) for which we obtained it. If you consent to receive our email newsletters and marketing communications, any information we use for this purpose will be kept with us and held on the MailChimp and Google’s or Apple’s backup contact database (on our lawyers’ mobile phones) until you notify us that you no longer wish to receive this information.

Sharing your personal data 

Your personal data will only be shared with third parties for the purposes of providing our services to you. This includes other data controllers or  data processors where it is necessary for the performance of the data controllers’ or data processors’ tasks or where you first give us your prior consent. It is likely that we will need to share your data with our agents, suppliers, contractors and barristers or overseas lawyers whom we instruct for you. In addition, we may ask a supplier to send out email newsletters on our behalf (eg MailChimp as referred to under the heading “what personal data do we collect” above), to maintain our database software, or to provide us with administration, IT and other related services eg Thomson Reuters (Practical Law for Companies – PLC) which we use for creating precedent contracts.

Any personal data transferred to countries or territories outside the European Union will only be placed on systems complying with measures giving equivalent protection of personal rights either through international agreements or contracts approved by the European Union or where you have consented to the organisation located outside the European Union receiving your data (such as MailChimp as referenced above).

Part 2  – Our website

What personal data do we collect

We collect personal information that is automatically provided by visitors to this website e,g IP address. We perform analytics on our website pages such as monitoring visitor views and numbers so we can make our website and published articles more informative and effective for you.

We collect personally identifiable information that is voluntarily provided by subscribers who sign up to our email newsletter via our website. This information includes name, email address, job title, information preferences. We also collect personal information and any additional information you send us via the contact us form on the website or in a message to info@TheLegalPartners.com.

It is The Legal Partners’ policy to limit the information collected to only the minimum information required to complete a website visitor’s request.

We call any personal information collected through the website “user data”.

The Legal Partners’ intention is not to collect any sensitive personal data or special category data through our website unless legally required or if we must do for providing you with our services, for example, advising on an employment or HR case. Sensitive information and special category data includes a number of types of data relating to race or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or other similar beliefs, trade union membership, physical or mental health, sexual life, or criminal record.

Use of user data 

User data obtained by the website is used for internal business purposes of The Legal Partners and in connection with a visitor’s request. This data is not shared with others for unrelated purposes unless stated in this Privacy Policy or otherwise communicated to the website visitor.

Except for instances where visitors explicitly choose to receive The Legal Partners email updates, marketing or other informational materials, The Legal Partners will not use personal data collected from our Website to distribute marketing or information materials.

Third Parties

It is The Legal Partners’ policy only to disclose user data to third parties under the following circumstances:

  • when explicitly requested by the visitor
  • when requested to deliver marketing or other informational materials to the visitor which we will do using MailChimp who send out these materials on our behalf in accordance with the provisions of the data collection and sharing your personal data sections in Part 1 of this Privacy Policy above
  • when required to deliver publications or reference materials requested by the visitor
  • when required to facilitate conferences or events hosted by a third party
  • when required to meet any other request of a visitor.

Our website may link to other, unaffiliated third party websites.  Please note that The Legal Partners are not, and cannot, control or be responsible for the content or privacy and confidentiality practices of any third party websites.  You must always carefully review the privacy and confidentiality policy of any third party website that you may visit in order to understand how the operators of that website may collect, store and use your personal data.

Use of cookies

A cookie is a tiny element of data that a website can send to a visitor’s computer’s browser so that their device will be recognised by the site on their return.

Where you have signed up for our updates via Mailchimp please note that Mailchimp uses technologies such as pixels and web beacons that allow us to track whether you have opened or clicked on our emails. This indicates how helpful our content is and helps us plan future content.

Navigation data about site viewers may be automatically collected by our servers.

A visitor can set their browser to block the recording of cookies on their hard drive to minimise the amount of data that may be collected about their navigation on the website. For optimal use of the website, we recommend that visitors do not block the recording of cookies on their computer. The procedure for refusal of cookies may vary for different software products. Please check with your internet browser software help or your software supplier if you wish to refuse cookies.

The Legal Partners’ servers and computer systems are protected from outside intrusions. As a result, all data that may be collected about website viewers will be protected from unauthorised access. Our servers are located in the UK.

For more information about cookies, please see the Information Commissioner’s website.

Access

Each visitor has the right of access to personal data they have submitted through this website. Enquiries about the accuracy of identifying information previously submitted, or requests to have information removed should be directed to Data Privacy Manager.

Special category data

We only collect special category data or sensitive personal data which is information revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or similar beliefs, trade union membership, physical or mental health conditions, sexual life, sexual orientation, biometric or genetic data, and personal data relating to criminal offences and convictions if we must do so for providing you with our services, for example, advising on an employment or HR case. We will keep that information secure and retain it only in accordance with this privacy policy.

Automated processing

We do not automatically process your personal data.

Only authorised personnel are provided access to personally-identifiable information and these persons are required to agree to ensure confidentiality of this information.

Consent 

By continuing to use the website and by providing any personal data (including sensitive personal data or special category data) to us via the website or email addresses provided on the website, you are consenting to our use of your personal data as set out in this Privacy Policy. Please do not send us any personal data if you do not want that information to be used by us in this manner.

Copyright 

All documents, programmes, publications, designs, products, processes, software, technology, information, and ideas (Content) provided by or described in this website are the property of The Legal Partners and/or its affiliates or suppliers and are protected by UK and international copyright laws and other intellectual property laws, unless stated otherwise. The Content is provided to users of this website for informational purposes only and is not legal advice. You may share our website pages and articles with others or download pages of the website and documents available through it for your personal use provided in all cases our intellectual property rights (including copyright) are not infringed.  You may not systematically extract material from the website or any document available through it or in any other way exploit commercially all or any part of the website or any document available through it without our prior written permission.

Terms and Conditions for using this website

Nothing in this website constitutes legal advice. Always consult a suitably qualified lawyer on any specific legal problem or matter. This website contains links to other websites. The Legal Partners is not responsible for the content of such other websites and accepts no liability.

Modifications                                

The Legal Partners reserves the right to modify or amend this statement at any time. The effective date will be displayed at the bottom of this Privacy Policy.

20 August 2020.  Reviewed and updated May 2023