Data and Privacy Policy

DATA STATEMENT

  1. We will hold and process your personal data for your matter or cases upon receiving your individual express consent regarding your personal data. Pursuant to the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), your consent must be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous as regards our holding, processing and controlling of the data you provide to us.

 

  1. Prior to or on the commencement day of the engagement of our services for you (as per the signatory date of the client care letter or service contract), we will send you an email (sent by our Data Protection Officer, Andrew Morris), which will contain this data and privacy policy. We request that you reply to us with your consent/not-consent, by stating a simple “consent/not-consent”. We strongly advise you to read the policy beforehand to ensure your understanding of it.

 

  1. We require your consent to the information and data, which you have provided to us (relating to you), being held, processed and controlled by us in order that we may properly seek to achieve our legitimate business interests (namely those of a law firm and a business of legal advisors); and, in order to carry out our duties, rights and obligations in relation to you as our clients or business partners according to our retainer or contracts.

 

  1. Accordingly, you are hereby made aware, and therefore you fully understand that such processing will be for working on your matter or cases as per our retainer or contract; or, advising you on your matter on an ad-hoc basis based on our contract with you; or assisting you as a business partner/associate as per our business contract with you.

 

  1. EPLegal hereby makes you aware and, accordingly, you also understand that the term ‘processing’ includes the obtaining, recording or holding of information or data or carrying out any operation or set of operations on the information or data, including organising, altering, retrieving, consulting, using, disclosing, combining or destroying the information or data.

 

  1. In the event that you confirm your consent to EPLegal controlling, processing and/or holding your data, we hereby make you aware, and you fully understand that in pursuant to your individual rights under the GDPR, you are entitled to require EPLegal to delete/erase, amend/update or transfer to a third party any or all of your data held or controlled by EPLegal at your specific request.

 

  1. EPLegal also confirms, and you, therefore, understand that your data will be held, processed and controlled by EPLegal until you exercise your individual rights under the GDPR (as above); or, until EPLegal no longer requires to hold, process or control your data, whereupon EPLegal will delete and inform you of the same.

 

OUR DATA POLICY

  1. Information We Collect, Store or Use
    1. What information: email addresses, telephone numbers, home or office addresses, you and your spouses’ first and last name, photos, comments, social media handles (if used in emails or communication provided by you to us); and, there may be times as per demanded by your matter or case progression that we may request for your NI number and any other pre-requisite information for court applications; or, for processing with your applications with the Home Office or any other governmental bodies in the UK;
    2. Other information:
  • which you provide to us when you fill in any forms on our website https://eplegal.uk/. This includes information that you provide when you register to use or visit our Website to ask for information; and, the information you provide to us when you engage us to advise you on a retainer or an ad-hoc basis or to engage/ liaise us on business matter/projects.
  • If you contact us (for example, if you report an issue or problem with our Website), we may keep a record of that correspondence;
  • We may request for you to complete surveys for survey/research purposes (which you do not have to respond to);
  • We may also automatically collect other non-personally identifiable information each time you visit our Website, including:
  1. technical information, including the IP (Internet Protocol) address used to connect your computer to the internet, browser type and version, device type and screen size.
  2. information about your visit, including the full URL (Uniform Resource Locator), page response times, download errors, and length of visits to certain pages.
    1. You hereby understand that you shall respect the privacy of others and that you shall not send unsuitable or infringing information or materials on your emails or correspondence to us or to our website. Please direct queries to us if you have questions on this (our customer services’ email address is below);
    2. We do not store debit/credit card details on our Website or database. Please be advised that we may from time to time use a third-party provider to process payment(s) for our retainer or contract fee. Such third party provider may provide you with an option whether you wish for your card details to be stored for your convenience. It is important for you to read their terms of use;
    3. Please be advised that we never knowingly collect data from anyone under 13;
    4. Please be advised that before you provide to us any personal information of another person, you must obtain that person’s consent.

 

  1. What We Do with Your Information
    1. Any information we collect from you, or that you provide to us is for the purpose of understanding your needs and providing better services to you;
    2. We may use non-personally identifiable information collected from you for purposes, such as research, statistical and survey purposes.

 

  1. Sharing of Your Information
    1. We may disclose your personal information, on a confidential basis, to any member of our affiliate firms or companies, employees, consultants, professional advisers, barristers or counsels and/or valid representatives of ours or theirs, in so far as reasonably necessary, and for the purposes of performing our obligations and providing you with our contracted services and pursuant to our legitimate business interests;
    2. We shall so disclose accordingly if we are under duty to disclose your personal information in order to comply with our legal obligation under the Code of Conduct of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) or any other legislation such as the UK Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 and the UK Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, as amended from time to time; or if required under a court order.

 

  1. Where We Store Your Information

Any data we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, our database or at a destination within the UK pursuant to and for the purposes mentioned in the above paragraphs. It may be processed by staff (ours or third parties’) within the UK pursuant to and for the purpose mentioned in the above paragraphs.

 

  1. How We Use Cookies
    1. We will be using cookies to help us to improve our Website;
    2. We use cookies to remember and store users’ settings, preferences and authentication;
    3. You can control the use of cookies at the individual web browser level. Disabling  cookies may prevent you from taking full advantage of the functionality of our Website;
    4. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit the website: http://www.allaboutcookies.org

 

  1. Other Websites and Others

Our Website may contain links to other websites of interest. These third parties’ websites may have their own privacy policies, which are entirely independent from and have no relation to us.

 

  1. How to Contact Us

For customer services, queries about our legal and business services; or, any general questions about this Policy, website and the firm, please contact office@eplegal.uk