Privacy Policy
Introduction
Hamshaw respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy concerns how we treat your personal data when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from) and tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.
Purpose
This privacy policy aims to give you information on how Hamshaw collects and processes your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide through this website when you contact us.
This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.
It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy supplements other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them.
Controller
Hamshaw Legal Ltd is the controller and responsible for your personal data (referred to as “Hamshaw”, "we", "us" or "our" in this privacy policy).
We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy policy. If you have any questions about this privacy policy please contact the DPO at contact@hamshaw.com.
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.
Changes
We keep our privacy policy under regular review. This version was last updated in March 2023.
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
Third-Party Llinks
This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.
Data Collection
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).
We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:
Identity Data includes names.
Contact Data includes email addresses and telephone numbers.
Financial Data includes bank account and payment details.
Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of services you have purchased from us.
Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
Usage Data includes information about how you use our website, and services.
We may also collect, use, store and transfer Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data. Aggregated Data could be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity.
For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy policy.
We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.
Where we are required to collect personal data by law, under the terms of a contract we have with you, or by our professional regulator, and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have formed, or are trying to form, with you. In this case, we may have to cancel a service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.
We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:
Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity, Contact and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
enquire about our services;
contract for our services;
give us feedback.
Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We may collect this personal data by using a combination of cookies, server logs, and other similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy for further details.
third parties or publicly available sources. We will receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources, such as (without limitation):
Technical Data from analytics providers (e.g. Google),
Identity, Contact, Financial and Transaction Data from banks and other financial institutions (e.g. HSBC)
Identity and Contact data from publicly available sources (e.g. Companies House)
Data Use
We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:
where we wish to form a contractual or tortious relationship with you;
where we need to perform a contractual obligation, or tortious or statutory duty;
where we wish to enforce a contractual obligation, or tortious or statutory duty;
where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not in our view override those interests;
where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
Generally, we do not rely on consent as a pre-requisite for processing your personal data although we will get your consent before sending third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us and making a clear request to be removed from our marketing communications.
We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.
Note that we may process your personal data on more than one lawful basis, depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal basis we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one basis has been set out below.
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Purpose/Acitvity
To register you as a new client
Type of Data
(a) Identity
(b) Contact
(c) Financial
Lawful Bases
(a) Formation of a contractual or tortious relationship with you
(b) Performance of a contractual or tortious relationship with you
(c) Necessary to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation
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Purpose/Acitvity
To take your instructions, deliver our services, invoice for payment of our fees and disbursement, and receive payment of our fees and disbursements:
Type of Data
(a) Identity
(b) Contact
(c) Financial
(d) Transaction
(e) Marketing and Communications
Lawful Bases
(a) Formation of a contractual or tortious relationship with you
(b) Performance of a contractual or tortious relationship with you
(c) Necessary to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation
(d) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to recover fees and disbursements due to us)
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Purpose/Acitvity
To manage our relationship with you, which will include notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy, and asking you to leave a review or take a survey
Type of Data
(a) Identity
(b) Contact
(c) Profile
(d) Marketing and Communications
Lawful Bases
(a) Performance of a contract with you
(b) Necessary to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation
(c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our products/services)
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Purpose/Acitvity
To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data)
Type of Data
(a) Identity
(b) Contact
(c) Technical
Lawful Bases
(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise)
(b) Necessary to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation
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Purpose/Acitvity
To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you
Type of Data
(a) Identity
(b) Contact
(c) Profile
(d) Usage
(e) Marketing and Communications
(f) Technical
Lawful Bases
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to inform our marketing strategy)
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Purpose/Acitvity
To use data analytics to improve our website, services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences
Type of Data
(a) Technical
(b) Usage
Lawful Bases
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy)
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Purpose/Acitvity
To make suggestions and recommendations to you about services that may be of interest to you
Type of Data
(a) Identity
(b) Contact
(c) Technical
(d) Usage
(e) Profile
(f) Marketing and Communications
Lawful Bases
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our services and grow our business)
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Marketing
We seek to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising.
We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which services and offers may be relevant for you (i.e. marketing).
You will receive marketing communications from us if you have made contact with us or purchased services from us and you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.
We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any third party for marketing purposes.
You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by contacting us at contact@hamshaw.com with a clear request.
Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of a service enquiry, or provision.
You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our cookie policy.
Change of Purpose
We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.
If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
Disclosure
We may share your personal data with third parties for specific purposes, for example (without limitation):
Internal Third Parties, such as our employees, directors, and shareholders;
External Client Dispute-Related Third Parties, such as courts, arbitrators, adjudicators, expert witnesses, opponent parties to disputes, opponent legal representatives, etc;
External Hamshaw Commercial-Related Third Parties, such as banks, financial institutions, insurers, accountants etc;
External Legal/Regulatory Third Parties, such as HMRC, the Solicitors Regulatory Authority, the Bar Standards Board, the National Crime Agency, the Financial Conduct Authority, etc;
External Unrelated Third Parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business, or our assets, including our data assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy.
We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law.
We do not knowingly transfer your personal data outside the UK, but we cannot guarantee that this does not occur via third parties (e.g. Google) over whom we have no control or influence.
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
Data Retention
We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of a dispute (whether litigation or otherwise) in respect to our relationship with you.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.
By law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they cease being customers for tax purposes.
In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see below for further information.
In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
Your Rights
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data, including:
to make a “data subject access request": this enables you to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to ask how we are processing it;
to request a correction: to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, although we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us before we accept the request;
to request deletion: to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with the law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
to object to processing: where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground because you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms, you can object. You can also object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may explain why we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
to suspend processing of your personal data in the following circumstances:
o if you want us to establish the data's accuracy;
o where you believe our use of the data is unlawful, but you do not want us to erase it;
o where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it, as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims;
o where you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
to request transfer of your personal data to you, or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to establish or perform a contract with you.
to withdraw consent in relation to data that we are relying on your consent to process. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent, or any processing that does not rely on your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, [please contact us at contact@hamshaw.com.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within 21 working days, but this is not guaranteed. Occasionally it could take us longer than this. In this case, we will endeavour to notify you and keep you updated.
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
March 2023