Privacy Policy

We ask that you read this website privacy policy carefully as it contains important information on who we are, how and why we collect, store, use and share personal information, your rights in relation to your personal information and on how to contact us and supervisory authorities in the event you have a complaint.

Robert James Solicitors take the privacy of our clients very seriously and it is important that you read this privacy notice. Robert James Solicitors uses personal data to process services we offer.

We use your personal data under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) which applies across the European Union and its member states. Robert James Solicitors are Data Controllers and we are a responsible data controllers. We use the personal data which we gather to act on instructions and to carry out services and we are also bound by our overriding duty of professional conduct which includes the duty of confidentiality.

This website privacy policy is divided into the following sections:

1. Who we are
2. Our website
3. Our collection and use of your personal information
4. Our legal basis for processing your personal information
5. Who we share your personal information with
6. Whether information has to be provided by you and if so why
7. Transfer of your information out of the EEA
8. Cookies and similar technologies
9. Marketing
10. Your rights
11. Keeping your personal information secure
12. How to complain
13. Changes to this website privacy policy
14. How to contact us
15. Retention of personal data

Who we are

This website is operated by Robert James Law Ltd trading as Robert James Solicitors. Robert James Law is a company registered in England under number 11599143, registered office No 7 Woolton Street, Woolton Village, Liverpool, L25 5NH. Robert James Law Ltd t/a Robert James Solicitors is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). Our SRA registration number is 654368.

We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the General Data Protection Regulation which applies across the European Union (including in the United Kingdom) and we are responsible as 'controller' of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.

Our website

This privacy policy relates to your use of our website, www.robertjameslaw.co.uk only.

Throughout our website we may link to other websites owned and operated by certain trusted third parties. These other third party websites may also gather information about you in accordance with their own separate privacy polices. For privacy information relating to these other third party websites, please consult their privacy policies as appropriate.

Our collection and use of your personal information

We collect personal information about you when you access our website, register with us, contact us, send us feedback, when we provide services via our website or marketing partners, post material to our website and compete customer surveys.

We collect this personal information from you either directly, such as when you register with us, contact us, or when we provide services via our website or marketing partners; or indirectly, such as thr your browsing activity while on our website (see Cookies below).

The personal information we collect about you depends on the particular activities carried out through our website. Such information includes:

1. your name, address and contact details including electronic contact details
2. your national insurance number and tax information
3. date of birth
4. bank account and payment details
5. trade union memberships
6. medical records
7. details of any feedback you give us by phone, email, post or via social media
8. information about the services we provide to you
9. your account details, such as username, login details
10. your employment status including your salary, benefits and other relevant information relating to your employment
11. details of any online and/or social accounts
12. information which would enable us to undertake a credit reference check, if necessary

We use this personal information to:

1. create and manage your account with us
2. verify your identity
3. provide goods and services to you
4. customise our website and its content to your particular preferences
5. notify you of any changes to our website or to our services that may affect you
6. improve our services
7. comply with our professional obligations

This website is not intended for use by children and we do not knowingly collect or use personal information relating to children.

Our legal basis for processing your personal information

When we use your personal information we are required to have a legal basis for doing so. There are various different legal basis upon which we may rely, depending on what personal information we process and why. The legal basis we may rely on include:

1. consent: where you have given us clear consent for us to process your personal information for a specific purpose.
2. contract: where our use of your personal information is necessary for a contract we have with you, or because you have asked us to take specific steps before entering into a contract.
3. legal obligation: where our use of your personal information is necessary for us to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations).
4. vital interests: where our use of your personal information is necessary to protect you or someone else's life.
5. legitimate interests: where our use of your personal information is necessary for our legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party (unless there is a good reason to protect your personal information which overrides our legitimate interests).

Further information on the personal information we collect, when and how we use it

For further details on when we collect personal information, what we collect as well as how we use it, please read the following sections:

1. We collect your information when you register with us to deal with a legal service. We do this for the purposes of carrying out and the performance of our contract for legal services with you or your business.
2. We collect your information to conduct checks to identify our clients and verify their identity and to conduct other types of processing necessary to comply with professional, legal and regulatory obligations that apply to our business, such as the obligations under the Solicitors code of conduct or SRA. We do this to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
3. We collect your information to gather and collect information required by or relating to audits, enquiries or investigations by regulatory bodies. We do this to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
4. We collect your information to ensure that our business policies are followed, examples are security and internet use. (see cookies). We do this to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations and so we can deliver the best service to you.
5. We collect your information to keep our client records up-to-date and to provide the best service. We do this to ensure the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract, to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations and for legitimate interests or those of a third party, which ensures that we can keep in touch with our existing clients.
6. We collect your information for Operational, improvement, quality control and services reasons. We do this to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations and for legitimate interests or those of a third party, which ensures that we can keep in touch with our existing clients and to provide the best service.
7. We collect your information to ensure the confidentiality of and to maintain commercially sensitive information. We do this to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations and for legitimate interests or those of a third party, which ensures that our commercial and IP sensitive information is protected.
8. In some circumstances we may collect your information to perform credit reference checks via external credit reference agencies. We do this to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations and for legitimate interests or those of a third party, for credit control and to ensure our clients are likely to be able to pay for our legal services.
9. We may collect your information to perform reference checks via the MIB and ELTO data bases. We do this to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations. and for legitimate interests or those of a third party.
10. We may collect your information to ensure safe working practices and an environment, staff administration and assessments. We do this to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations. and for legitimate interests or those of a third party. To ensure that we are compliant with statutory obligations and our own internal procedures which allows us to deliver the best service.
11. We collect your information for internal and external audits and quality control checks such a seal of quality accreditations such as, but not limited to the Law Society accreditation scheme, Lexcel, ISO, investors in people, APIL, PNLA and the audit of our client and office accounts. We do this to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations. and for legitimate interests or those of a third party to maintain and apply for accreditations so we can demonstrate we operate to the high standards and best practices.

Who we share your personal information with

We routinely share personal data with professional advisors who we instruct on your behalf or refer you to e.g barristers, medical professional, accountants, tax advisors and other professional experts. We may also share your information with other company or companies within our group, the HM Land Registry, companies house, our bank, insurers and insurance brokers, external auditors in relation to accreditations, external service suppliers, representatives and agent we use to make our business more efficient which would include but not limited to typing services which may be offsite, marketing agencies including digital marketing agencies, document collection, private investigators or analysis suppliers and other providers. We also may in appropriate share your personal information with credit reference and fraud prevention agencies.

We will take our duty of confidentiality extremely seriously; however there are occasions when we may need to share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law.

We may also share some of your personal data with other parties, such as potential buyers of some or all of our business or during a re-structuring. Any third party which receives such information will also be bound by confidentiality obligations.

We will not share your personal information with any other third party, unless we give you notice.

Whether information has to be provided by you, and if so why

We require you to provide your name, address, date of date, contact details including digital details, insurance details, national insurance number, etc to enable us to provide you with the services we are instructed to provide you in accordance with your instructions and our professional obligations. We will inform you at the point of collecting information from you, whether you are required to provide the information to us.

Cookies and similar technologies

A cookie is a small text file which is placed onto your device (e.g. computer, smartphone or other electronic device) when you use our website. We use cookies and other similar tracking technologies on our website. These help us recognise you and your device and store some information about your preferences or past actions.

For further information on cookies generally visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

Marketing

We would like to send you information about products and services, which may be of interest to you. Where we have your consent or it is in our legitimate interests to do so, we may do this by post, email, telephone, text message (SMS) or automated call.

We will only ask whether you would like us to send you marketing messages when you tick the relevant boxes when you complete our online order form for the first time. If you have previously agreed to being contacted in this way, you can unsubscribe at any time by:

• contacting us at No 7 Woolton Street, Woolton Village, Liverpool, L255NH
• using the 'unsubscribe' link in emails or 'STOP' number in texts

It may take up to 28 days for this to take place.

For more information on your rights in relation to marketing, see Your rights below.

Your rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulation you have a number of important rights free of charge. In summary, those include rights to:

1. fair processing of information and transparency over how we use your use personal information.
2. access to your personal information and to certain other supplementary information that this Privacy Notice is already designed to address.
3. require us to correct any mistakes in your information which we hold.
4. require the erasure of personal information concerning you in certain situations.
5. receive the personal information concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to a third party in certain situations.
6. object at any time to processing of personal information concerning you for direct marketing.
7. object to decisions being taken by automated means which produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you.
8. object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information.
9. otherwise restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
10. claim compensation for damages caused by our breach of any data protection laws.

For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the Guidance from the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on individuals rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.

If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please:

1. write to us at Robert James Solicitors, No 7 Woolton Street, Woolton Village, Liverpool, L25 5NH, clearly marking the letter for the attention of the Data Protection Officer;
2. let us have enough information to identify you;
3. let us have proof of your identity and address (a copy of your driving licence or passport and a recent utility or credit card bill); and
4. let us know the information to which your request relates including any account or reference numbers, if you have them.

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

If you want detailed information from Get Safe Online on how to protect your information and your computers and devices against fraud, identity theft, viruses and many other online problems, please visit www.getsafeonline.org. Get Safe Online is supported by HM Government and leading businesses.

How to complain

We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.

The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in particular in the European Union (or European Economic Area) state where you work, normally live or where any alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/ or telephone 0303 123 1113.

Changes to this website privacy policy

This website privacy policy was published on 10/01/2019 and last updated on 10/01/2019.

We may change this website privacy policy from time to time, when we do we will inform you via an update on the following website www.robertjameslaw.co.uk.

How to contact us

Please contact us at info@robertjameslaw.co.uk, our Data Protection Officer, will answer any questions about this privacy notice or the information we hold about you.

If you wish to contact us or our Data Protection Officer, please send an email to info@robertjameslaw.co.uk, or write to Robert James Solicitors, No 7 Woolton Street, Woolton Village, Liverpool, L25 5NH or call 0151 559 0120.

Retention of personal data

Your personal data will be retained for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purposes listed within this privacy notice or as required by law. Should Robert James Solicitors provide services relating to Wills, Lasting Powers of Attorney and property deeds these shall be retained permanently. Files of papers created during a retainer or for investigation of claim shall be retained for a minimum of 7 years. We may also store personal data for the reasons of security and convenience in remote data facilities in an encrypted form.