Our Privacy and Cookie Policy

 

 

What personal data will we collect?

·       Your name, address and telephone number

·       Information to enable us to check and verify your identity - eg: your date of birth or passport details

·       Electronic contact details - e.g: your email address and mobile phone number

·       Information relating to the matter in which you are seeking our advice or representation

·       Financial details relevant to your instructions, such as the source of your funds if you are instructing on a purchase transaction

We may also collect other personal information, depending on why you have instructed us, including:

·       Your National Insurance and tax details

·       Your bank and/or building society details

·       Details of your spouse/partner, marital status and dependants or other family

·       Your employment status and details including salary and benefits - e.g: if you instruct us on matters in which your employment status or income is relevant

·       Your medical history or records - e.g: if we are acting for you in a personal injury claim

·       Details of disabilities you have if relevant to your case

·       Information to enable us to undertake a credit or other financial checks on you

·       Your nationality and immigration status and information from related documents, such as your passport or other identification, and immigration information

·       Your employment records including, where relevant, records relating to sickness and attendance, performance, disciplinary, conduct and grievances (including relevant special category personal data) - e.g: if you instruct us on matters in which your employment records are relevant

·       Your racial or ethnic origin, gender and sexual orientation, religious or similar beliefs - e.g: if you instruct us on a discrimination claim

·       Your trade union membership - e.g: if your matter is funded by a trade union

·       Information on open social media accounts in the public domain only where relevant to your claim

 

How Your Personal Data Is Collected

We collect most of this information from you directly. However, we may also collect information in the following ways.

·       From publicly accessible sources - eg: Companies House or HM Land Registry

·       Directly from a third party - e.g: insurance providers, trade unions or other introducers, credit reference agencies, client due diligence providers or other organisations who’ve obtained your permission to share information about you with us

·       From a third party with your consent - e.g: your bank or building society, another financial institution or advisor, insurance companies, consultants and other professionals we may engage in relation to your matter, your employer, professional body or pension administrators, your doctors, medical and occupational health professionals

·       From online review sites when you leave feedback about a service we’ve provided to you

·       From our dedicated telephone answering service provided by MoneyPenny. 

·       From experts in contact centre management like Intelling Group Limited

·       Via our website - we use cookies on our website (see out Cookies Policy below for further details)

 

How We Use Your Personal Information

We’ll only use your personal data if we have a proper reason for doing so.

The information that you provide to Simpson Millar will be used to deal with your enquiry and provide services you request from us.  We also use this information to recommend other, relevant Simpson Millar services to you where you have given your consent, to improve the service we provide to you and future clients and to enhance the targeting of our marketing.

We will never share your information with third parties for them to sell their products or services to you unless they have provided consent.

We’ll therefore need to process that information either:

·       For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract

·       To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

·       For our legitimate interests or those of a third party

·       Where you have given consent

A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests.

If we need to process your sensitive information, such as your health records or trade union information to proceed with your case, we’ll do so on the basis that processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of your legal claim.

You acknowledge that we’re entitled to obtain, use, process and disclose your personal information to enable us to discharge the services which we have agreed to provide, and for other related purposes, including updating client records, analysis for management purposes, crime prevention and legal and regulatory compliance.

As stated above, we’ll need to process your personal data in order to conduct your claim or matter under our retainer. If you don’t provide us with this data, we won’t be in a position to assist you with your matter.

We may use your personal information to better understand your interests and preferences so that we can contact you with information about our products and services that we believe are relevant to you.  We may make use of additional information about you when it is available from external sources to help us do this effectively. 

We may use your information as part of the services we provide including using new technologies as part of the delivery. We may use information about you to train, develop and test generative AI tools to improve the quality and efficiency of the services provided to you and our other clients e.g. usage may include automated prompts and guidance to our contact centre agents to respond to your requests and the transcription of telephone calls.

We have a legitimate interest to process your information in this way, however, you have the right to object to this processing at any time by emailing our Data Protection Officer at [email protected]

We won’t use your personal data to carry out automated decisions about you - i.e. to use technology alone to make any processing decisions that carry legal effect.

 

Sharing your information

 

Whilst acting for you, in order to assist with your case, we may share your personal information including your name, contact details, personal circumstances and relevant information about your case with selected third party suppliers

This will enable us to discharge the services which we have agreed to provide.

We routinely share personal data with:

·       Professional advisers who we instruct on your behalf or refer you to - e.g: barristers, medical professionals and agencies, accountants, tax advisors or other experts

·       Other third parties where necessary to carry out your instructions - e.g:, HM Land Registry, HMRC, Companies House, a court, tribunal, third party insurers or defendant solicitor on a litigated matter

·       The person or organisation that referred you to us, such as a trade union, claims management company or other introducer

·       Any insurance company that is providing financial assistance for your claim, such as a provider of legal expenses insurance or other third party funders

·       Insurers and brokers

·       External auditors - e.g: Law Society to verify the quality of service provided by us under independent accreditations like Lexcel and the audit of our accounts

·       Our bank

·       External service suppliers, representatives and agents that we use to make our business more efficient - e.g: legal costs draftsman, typing services, PR/marketing agencies, document collation, couriers like Royal Mail and DHL, experts in contact centre management like Intelling Group Limited or analysis suppliers including social media.

·       The Legal Aid Agency if you are publicly funded

·       With third party organisations like Trust Pilot and Survey Monkey to contact you in relation to customer surveys or market research.

·       Online ID checking services in order to verify your identity under the Money Laundering Regulations or to meet other regulatory requirements

·       With 8x8 UK Limited to facilitate efficient call handling.

·       Third party data services, for example Experian, who may help us to segment and understand our clients by providing additional information so that we can send the most relevant and targeted communications possible. We will also use this information to be able to improve our services and to make our marketing and advertising more effective in the future

 

We only allow our service providers to handle your personal data if we’re satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal data. We also impose contractual obligations on service providers to ensure they can only use your personal data to provide services to us and to you.

We may disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.

It may sometimes be necessary to transfer personal information outside the UK. We will only transfer your personal information overseas to third party service providers where we are sure that your personal information is protected to the same standard as it would be protected in the UK.

 

Promotional Communications

We may use your personal data to send you updates by email, text message, telephone or post about legal developments that might be of interest to you and/or information about our services, including exclusive offers, promotions or new services or products.

We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal data for promotional purposes. This means we do not usually need your consent to send you promotional communications. However, where consent is needed, we will ask for this consent separately and clearly.

We’ll always treat your personal data with the utmost respect and never sell or share it with other organisations for marketing purposes.

You have the right to opt out of receiving promotional communications at any time by:

Contacting us by calling 0345 357 9977

Using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in emails in any communication we may send you.

We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you instruct us to provide further services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.

 

How long will we hold your information?

Where we have acted for you or your information relates to a matter we’ve acted in, we’ll usually keep paper records for 7 years and electronic records for 15 years.

Exceptions to this include property transactions, commercial litigation, wills, clients who are minors or who may lack capacity.

Where we have not acted in a matter we will usually keep electronic and written records for 2 years.

If you have shared any information with us via social media, such as your name, address and details regarding a case, this will only be kept for 2 years.

Where your information is held by our outsourced telephone answering service Money Penny this is deleted after 12 months.

 

Your Rights

You have the following rights, which you can exercise free of charge.

 

Access

The right to be provided with a copy of your personal data

 

Rectification

The right to require us to correct any mistakes in your personal data

 

To be forgotten

The right to require us to delete your personal data - in certain situations

 

Restriction of processing

The right to require us to restrict processing of your personal data in certain circumstances - e.g: if you contest the accuracy of the data

 

Data portability

The right to receive the personal data you provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and/or transmit that data to a third party - in certain situations

 

To object

·       at any time to your personal data being processed for direct marketing (including profiling);

·       in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal data - e.g: processing carried out for the purpose of our legitimate interests.

If you’d like to see the information we hold or enforce any of the other above rights, please contact our DPO.

 

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way.

We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it.

 

Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

 

How to Complain

 

We hope that our Data Protection Officer can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.

If you have a complaint about how we process your personal data or our compliance with GDPR, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), who are independent, impartial and have official powers to resolve complaints. Here’s how to get in touch:

Website: https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/

Email: [email protected]

Helpline no: 0303 123 1113