Privacy Policy

ELC Solicitors believes that the privacy of its clients’ information, as well as the management of the information it collects, are of fundamental significance.

Please take the time to thoroughly read the following information. This privacy notice describes how, when, and why we gather and store personal information about you on our website. You will also be informed as to how your personal information will be used, when it may be released to third parties, how it will be kept safe, and for how long it will be held. It also contains information on how to contact us and what to do if you have a complaint. Contact us by e-mail at [email protected] if you have any requests regarding your personal information or if you have any questions or concerns about our privacy practises.

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As a result, when you visit our website for the first time, we will ask for your approval to use cookies in line with the terms of this policy.

Who we are and what we do

ELC Solicitors Limited (doing business as ELC Solicitors) gathers, uses, and is responsible for certain personally identifiable information concerning customers and members of the public that it obtains from third parties. According to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, we are a controller of personal information for the purposes of those laws, and we collect personal information from you. The Information Commissioner’s Office has assigned us the registration number 100000, which means we are registered with them.

Contact Sara Edwards by email at [email protected] if you have any concerns regarding this notice or if you wish to exercise any of your rights under data protection legislation; she will respond as soon as possible.

The personal information we collect and use from our clients

Client information is collected in the course of the provision of legal services (the Services) and may include any or all of the following personal information about them:

• name;
• the names of any children (if there are any);
• Addresses for both the residence and the business
• contact information, such as a telephone number and an email address;
• the date of one’s birth;
• gender;
• state of one’s marriage;
• duplicates of identification papers such as passports, national identification cards, driver’s licences, utility bills, bank statements, and other similar documents;
• credentials and experience in the commercial and professional fields;
• Immigration status and employment authorization;
• data from our building’s access control systems; as well as
• data gathered from our information technology and communications monitoring system

Third, the personally identifiable information that we collect from visitors to our website

If you fill out a form on our website or submit an application for a position advertised on the website, we will collect the information you willingly disclose to us. The following types of personal information may be included in this information:

• name;
• both a residential and a commercial address;
• contact information, such as an email address and a telephone number;
• along with other categories of personal information, such as ethnic origin and gender, if you want to supply it.

The personal information we collect from suppliers and other third parties

Even if you provide us with your personal data in a manner other than through the use of our website, or if we obtain your personal data from a third party or from publicly available information about you, we will only collect, process, and store your information for the purposes set forth in this notice.

REASONS FOR COLLECTING AND USING PERSONAL INFORMATION

We will only use your personal information for the purposes listed below:

• We do this in order to provide you with the information, goods, and/or services you have requested.
• providing you with responses to your questions, requests, and other correspondence
• Under the terms of a retainer or a contractual agreement, legal services, including dealing with legal procedures, are provided;
• permits third-party companies to perform some duties on our behalf in order to offer legal services, including webhosting, data storage and identification verification as well as other related functions (such as logistical delivery and courier services) where appropriate.
• making it possible for you to make use of certain features on our website when you choose to do so;
• giving you targeted marketing emails based on your preferences and requests;
• safeguarding the security of information and eliminating or detecting fraud;
• administering our website, including the handling of complaints, troubleshooting our website, data analysis, the testing of new features, doing market research, and conducting surveys;
• we are always expanding and upgrading the legal services we provide;
• recruitment and job opportunities; and
• compliance with legal and regulatory obligations and relevant law, including anti-money laundering laws, guidelines, and regulations; or in response to a legally valid request from a court or regulatory authority

The following will normally provide the legal basis for our processing of personal data for the purposes stated above:

• Processes that are essential to carry out the terms of a contract that we have with you or another data subject;
• you have given your express approval;
• Processed for our or a third party’s legitimate interests, which is carried out on the basis of our legitimate interests to guarantee that legal services are effectively given, our security and the security of our clients, as well as the correct administration of our business
• Processes are carried out in order to comply with a legal requirement to which we are subject; and
• any other legal reasons for processing that may become relevant from time to time.

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Selected Categories of (Sensitive) Personal Information

You may also provide us with particular categories of (or sensitive) personal data, or we may obtain such information from you. Personal data disclosing a person’s racial or ethnic background, religious or philosophical opinions, or health information are all examples of what data protection rules consider to be sensitive information. Our processing of certain specific categories of personal data is justified on the basis of one or more of the grounds listed below:

• if you have provided your express agreement to the processing of your personal data for one or more specific purposes, such as marketing;
• if the processing is related to personal data that you have made publicly available by virtue of your actions;
• in cases where the processing is required for the creation of legal claims, the exercise or defence of legal claims;
• if the processing is required for reasons of considerable public interest, and the processing is carried out in conformity with current legislation

Examples of such causes include situations in which the processing is required:

(a) for the aim of preventing or detecting an illegal conduct or preventing a fraud from taking place;

b) for the purpose of providing confidential counsel.

INFORMATION ON CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS AND OFFENSES

The following reasons for which we will collect and retain personal data pertaining to criminal convictions and offences (including the alleged commission of offences) are limited to those that are strictly necessary:

• an investigation into the prevention or discovery of an unlawful act that is required for grounds of significant public interest;
• legal advice (whether provided or obtained);
• creating, exercising, or protecting one’s legal rights

WHEN AND WITH WHOM WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

To properly pursue your case and offer legal services, we frequently exchange personal data from our clients with a variety of third-party service providers. Third parties may include the following:

• Other law companies as well as the courts are involved.
• Providers of legal services;
• Barristers;
• Experts from a third party, such as forensic accountants;
• Suppliers of business-related services;
• Providers of background and identification checks, as well as credit check agencies
• Agents, consultants, and contractors are all included.
• Insurance brokers and insurance firms are two types of organisations.
• Attorneys who act as third-party litigation funders;
• Organizations in the government, regulatory, and other official capacities;
• If necessary under relevant law, law enforcement or other authorities may be contacted.

Our policy is that we will not disclose your personal information with any third party unless you directly request that we do so.

MARKETING

Among other things, we use your personal data to alert you by email, telephone, post, or SMS about relevant legal developments and services that we believe you will find helpful, as well as to send you newsletters and invitations to seminars and other marketing materials.

Consequently, we may release personal information to third parties that provide marketing services to us or with whom we are undertaking joint marketing exercises in conjunction with this.

By contacting Sara Edwards, using the contact information provided above, or by clicking on the unsubscribe link in an email, you have the option to opt out of getting direct marketing communications from us.

EMAIL MONITORING

It is possible that we will monitor email messages that you submit to us or that we send to you in order to ensure that they comply with professional standards and internal compliance procedures. Monitoring is not continuous or routine, but it may be carried out on the order of a partner if there are good grounds to believe that such action is necessary.

FAILURE TO PROVIDE INFORMATION

If clients do not submit the personal information that we request and that we require in order to carry out their instructions, we may be unable to offer legal services to them or we may be unable to provide legal services at all.

Clients are obliged to provide us with their name and address, as well as information about their identification papers, in order for us to comply with our requirements under anti-money laundering laws.

HOW LONG WE RETAIN YOUR INFORMATION

We shall retain the information we collect from our clients for the purpose of conducting anti-money laundering checks on them for a period of five years following the termination of our connection with them. After the completion of a client’s case, we shall retain all additional personal information about them for a period of eight years. We retain the information that visitors to our website provide us for a period of six months.

Transfer of your information outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) (EEA)

We shall not habitually transmit personal data outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), to any organisation regulated by public international law, or to any organisation established under any agreement between two or more nations. If we do intend to transfer personal data outside of the European Economic Area, we will ensure that the data subject’s privacy rights are sufficiently secured by suitable technological, organisational, contractual, or other permissible measures before transferring the data.

RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides data subjects with a variety of crucial rights. These contain the following rights:

• equitable information processing, as well as openness in how we utilise your personally identifiable information;
• you can gain access to your personal information
• ask us to make any necessary corrections to your information;
• In some circumstances, you may be entitled to the deletion of personal information on you;
• receive the personal information about you that you have given to us in a systematic, widely used, and device layout, and have the right to transfer those data to a third party in certain circumstances; receive the personal information about you that you have supplied to us in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format;
• You have the right to object at any time to the processing of personal information about you for direct marketing purposes.
• You have the right to object to decisions made by automated methods that have legal consequences for you or have a comparable impact on you.
• You may also object to our continuing processing of your personal information in certain specific circumstances.
• Other restrictions on our handling of your personal information may apply in certain situations.

In order to exercise any of those rights, please contact us as follows:

• Contact our Data Protection Officer, Sara Edwards, through email, phone, or letter at [email protected].
• Make sure you provide us with evidence of your identification and residence (a copy of your driver’s licence or passport, as well as a current utility or credit card statement);
• Please provide us with the information that your request pertains to.

HOW WE ENSURE THE SECURITY OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We have put in place suitable security measures to keep your personal information safe from being mistakenly lost, misused, or accessed in an unauthorised way by third parties. Those who have a legitimate business need to know about your personal information are the only ones who have access to it. Those who process your information will do so solely in accordance with your instructions and will be subject to a strict duty of secrecy.

We have also put measures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach that may occur. We shall notify the data subject as well as any applicable authority if we think a data security breach has occurred, unless we are prohibited from doing so by law.

COMMENTS AND COMPLAINTS

We hope that our Data Protection Officer, Sara Edwards, will be able to address any questions or concerns you may have concerning our use of personal information.

There is also a right to file a complaint with an appropriate supervisory authority, particularly with in European Union (or European Economic Area) member state for which you perform, normally reside, or in which any alleged infringement of data protection laws has occurred, under the General Data Protection Regulation. In the United Kingdom, the Information Commissioner, who may be reached at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ or by phone at 020 7278 4737, is the supervisory authority for personal data.

MODIFICATIONS TO THIS PRIVACY ADVICE

This privacy notice was issued on May 14, 2019 and is effective immediately.

We reserve the right to modify this privacy notice at any time, and when we do, we will post an updated version on our website.