Boddy Matthews Solicitors (”We”) are committed to protecting and respecting the privacy of our clients and contacts and all visitors to our website.

This policy sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read this policy carefully to understand our practices regarding treatment of your personal data and how we will treat it. Please note this policy applies to information about identifiable living individuals only.

This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

For the purpose of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation the data controller is Boddy Matthews Limited (trading as Boddy Matthews Solicitors) of 7-11 High Street, Reigate, Surrey, RH2 9AA.

We have appointed a Knowledge Management Contact (KMC) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact us by post or email at info@boddymatthews.com.

Information we process about you

We will collect and process the following data about you:

Information from our website

  • Personal information you give us by filling in forms on our website www.boddymatthews.com for example when signing up for our newsletters, marketing and events information and/or season’s greetings cards.
  • We may also ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond to them. Details of your visits to our website including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data, whether this is required for our own billing purposes or otherwise and the resources that you access. See our cookie policy for more information.

Information received directly from you

  • Personal information you provide us when communicating with us by telephone, e-mail or otherwise for the purposes of using our services.
  • When you make enquiries with us for legal services and when you instruct us to provide legal services we will need certain personal information to confirm your indemnity. For example: photographic identity documents, your date of birth and contact information. We will explain exactly what information we need depending on your matter (this may include both personal data and special categories of data).This will be clearly set out in our Engagement Letter and Terms of Business.
  • You made provide us with additional further information as necessary or at our request and information that you consider relevant as part of your instruction to us.

Information from third parties

  • In order to conduct your matter we may receive and process information about you or your personnel from third parties such as courts/tribunals, medical professionals, accountants, regulatory bodies and other advisors and specialists related to your matter and companies house. Our clients and matter contacts may also provide us with information about you if you are involved in a transaction or dispute with one of our clients or have a connection with a client.

Cookies

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a comprehensive experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our website. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them see our Cookie policy.

Uses made of the information

We use information held about you for the purpose for which it has been provided for example in the following ways:

Legal Services

  • to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us i.e. to provide our clients with legal services ;
  • to verify your identity for anti – money laundering purposes;
  • to update and enhance client records;
  • to refer our clients to other specialists in the UK and abroad;
  • to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
  • for internal analysis and research; to provide you with information and/or services that you request from us including whether we can assist with certain legal advice;

Marketing

  • to update you on relevant areas of law and practice;
  • to send you publications, event information and marketing communications about our legal products and services which we think may be of interest to you;
  • to invite you to hospitality events

IT uses

  • to allow you to participate in interactive features of our services, when you chose to do so;
  • to notify you about changes to our services; and
  • to ensure that content from our website is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.

Grounds for processing your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to i.e. we must have a lawful basis for processing your personal data. Most commonly we will be processing it where:

  • It is necessary to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you (i.e. legal services)
  • The activities are within our legitimate interests as a law firm and your interests or fundamental rights do not override those interests
  • We need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation
  • You have given us your consent to process your information (i.e. in relation to certain marketing activities)
  • To protect your vital interests e.g if you fall ill on our premises.

Where we process 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) we need a further lawful basis for doing so. This will usually be where:

  • It is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims;
  • You have given us your explicit consent to do so;
  • You have made the information public

We do not typically process information relating to criminal convictions or offences. However, if we do we will rely on one of the following lawful basis:

  • Complying with our regulatory requirements in relation to unlawful acts or dishonesty
  • Where it is necessary for us to obtain legal advice or establish, exercise or defend legal rights
  • Preventing or detecting unlawful acts
  • Dealing with suspicions of terrorist financing or money laundering

Where we store your personal data

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (”EEA”). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. This may include third parties who transfer, store and process the information for us and on our behalf. See below. This includes staff engaged in, among other things, the provision of legal services to you, the processing of your payment details and the provision of support services. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our website; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Disclosure of your information

We may disclose your personal information to third parties such as business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with you.

These third parties may be based (or store or process information) in the UK or elsewhere including outside of the EEA. As with many law firms, these third parties may include third party IT platforms (including cloud based platforms), and suppliers of administrative and support services.

We may also disclose your personal information:

  • To other organisations or professional advisers with whom we are working on your matter or to whom we are referring you to for additional or specific advice;
  • In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we will disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
  • If we or substantially all of our assets merge with or are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by us about our clients will be one of the transferred assets.
  • If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal or regulatory requirement.

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 allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Protection of your information

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. These include administrative, technical and physical measures on our website and internally.

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.

Your rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data.

You have the right to:

  • Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
  • Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
  • Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you 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 local 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.
  • Object to processing of your personal data 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 as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
  • Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) 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; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
  • Request the 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 perform a contract with you.
  • Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

No fee usually required

  • 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 may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

  • 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.

Time limit to respond

  • We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Marketing

If you become a client of ours, we may use your personal data to invite you to events and/or to send you information that we think may be of interest to you or your business. This is within our legitimate interests as a law firm to use your information in this way.

We may also use personal data about our professional contacts to invite them to events and/or to send them information that we think may be of interest to them or their business. This is also within our legitimate interests.

You will be given an opportunity to tell us whether or not you wish to receive direct marketing materials and communications from us either at the time you submit or provide your details to us (primarily if you are a private individual, a sole trader or an unincorporated partnership) and/or within the communication itself.

You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time. If you do not wish to receive any direct marketing material or communications after you submit or provide your details, please contact us at our offices or by email at info@boddymatthews.com (stating UNSUBSCRIBE in the heading of any email message) indicating if you do not wish to be contacted for one or more of these marketing purposes and/or via particular forms of communication e.g. email or telephone.

Third Party Links

Our website may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

International Transfer of Information 

If in the course of providing our legal services to you, we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we will let you know in advance and treat such transfer in the manner stated above. Where we transfer your personal data outside of the EEA we will ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it as in the UK and we will comply with the relevant rules governing such transfers.

Data Retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

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 requirements. We will make this clear to you in our Client Engagement Letter and Terms of Business.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

We may make changes to this policy from time to time. Any changes we make to our Privacy Policy in the future will be posted on this website page and, where appropriate, may be notified to you by e-mail.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to info@boddymatthews.com or your usual contact.

If you wish to exercise your rights or provide feedback or make a complaint about the use of your information, please contact the KMC at info@boddymatthews.com or at our offices or by telephone on 01737 339838. You can also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office via www.ico.org.uk for information, advice or making a complaint.