Privacy Notice

What information we may collect

We may collect or use the following information to provide legal services, provide service updates or for marketing purposes, or to comply with other legal requirements:

  • Personal information including name, address, contact details, date of birth etc;
  • Identification documents;
  • Payment and account details;
  • Information relating to compliments or complaints;
  • Marketing preferences, including website user information (including Google Analytics and Cookies);
  • Information provided to us via third parties, for example, insurance companies, other parties involved with a legal matter, professional organisations etc;
  • Other personal data and information related to the purpose through which personal data has been provided to the firm, for example, in relation to a legal matter we are involved with or through an introduction or recommendation.

We may obtain this personal information in the course of providing our services, through marketing (e.g. through our website or social media), etc.

Lawful basis

Our lawful basis for collecting or using personal information are:

  • Where you have provided your consent;
  • In order for us to fulfil our contractual obligations;
  • To comply with the law or our regulatory obligations;
  • Where such data/information is used for legitimate interests because it benefits you, our firm or someone else. For example, in the conduct of a legal matter, service update or marketing purposes or to further some other reason related to the purpose through which personal data has been provided to the firm.

How we use your information

We will collect information about you and keep this on our computers, in our email, in cloud storage and on paper for a certain period of time. The main reasons for this are to:

  • deliver the legal services we have agreed in contract to provide to you. For example, we may use your information to write letters on your behalf or prepare legal documents to help you with your matter;
  • comply with the law. For example, as solicitors we have to perform ‘conflicts of interest’ checks for new cases against a list of current and former clients. We also have a legal duty to report suspicious activity to the National Crime Agency (‘NCA’) if we suspect money laundering;
  • enable the effective administration of the firm for client, regulatory, governance, administration and marketing purposes.

In some cases, we may hold more ‘sensitive’ information about you such as about health. This may be necessary to pursue your legal matter or to make reasonable adjustments where appropriate in your dealings with the firm. We are permitted to use such information to provide legal advice to you or in connection with equality legislation.

You can withdraw consent to your information being used in a particular way, but this may limit what more we can do for you (if anything).

We may also in the future send you a newsletter or similar and find that most clients, and those with an interest in the firm, find this helpful. We rely upon the ‘legitimate interest’ we have in maintaining contact with former clients to do this in data protection law and your agreement for the purposes of the Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations (which can be implied under these Regulations). However, we will never share your information with third parties to market to you and will not contact you about non-legal services. We will make it quick and easy to ‘opt out’ of future communications in every communication sent. If you already know that you don’t want to receive these messages then you can opt out now by emailing info@tenarys.law .

Your information may be kept on computer servers within the European Union. If at any point information is stored on computer servers outside of the EU, we have selected countries which are either approved for this purpose (under Article 45 of the data protection rules) or are located where we are happy that the safeguards in place in that country to protect your information are appropriate (under what was Article 45 of the data protection rules).

We do not use your personal information to make ‘automated decisions’ which affect you.

Will you share my information with anyone else?

Generally speaking, we will not share your information with third parties unless this is part of the work on your legal matter, as required by law or regulation or for the effective administration of the firm. For example, we may need to send certain information about you to other lawyers or professionals working on, and involved in, the case, to Court or to government bodies. In rare circumstances we sometimes need to make reports of suspicious activity to the NCA. We do also work with some trusted contractors or consultants who may have access to your information such as service providers or copiers.  All contractors have a contract with us which requires that your information is accessed appropriately and kept confidential (among other data protection requirements).

How long will you keep my information?

Generally speaking, files are destroyed after 6 years. Certain original documents or files may need to be kept longer if there is a big risk of destroying something which is needed. We will also always keep a small amount of information after file closure to do conflicts of interest searches in the future to comply with our professional duties.

Can I see what information you hold about me?

We do normally have a right to payment of any outstanding costs before releasing a whole file, but you do have a separate right under the data protection rules to access your ‘personal data’ without charge. This may include having it in a particular electronic format (‘portable’ format).  Please contact Kevin Timms at kevin.timms@tenarys.law if you would like to request a copy of your personal data.

What are my rights?

  • Your right of access – you can ask us for copies of your personal data (see above);
  • Your right to rectification – you can ask us to rectify your personal data which you think is inaccurate. You can also ask us to complete information you think is incomplete;
  • Your right of erasure – you can ask us to erase your personal data in certain circumstances;
  • Your right to restriction of processing – you can ask us to restrict the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances;
  • Your right to object to processing – you can object to the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances;
  • Your right to data portability – you can ask that we transfer the personal data you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances;
  • Your right to withdraw consent – when we use consent as our lawful basis you have the right to withdraw your consent.

If you make a request, we have one calendar month to respond to you.

What if I have other questions or concerns?

Our general contact details are set out on our website (www.tenarys.law) and our information officer is: Kevin Timms, email: kevin.timms@tenarys.law . Contact this individual if you want to exercise one of your data protection ‘rights’ and in particular if you:

  • wish to complain about how your personal data is being used;
  • wish to request that our records about your personal information be corrected or deleted;

If you have a complaint about how your personal information is being used which we have not been able to address, please note that you may be able to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) directly at the following details:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

ICO Helpline: 0303 123 1113

Website: https://www.ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint

Last updated: June 2024

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