Privacy Policy

Please read the following information carefully. This privacy notice explains how we collect, store and otherwise process your personal information in the course of our business and the reasons for our so doing. It also explains who we share this information with, the security mechanisms that we have put in place to protect such information and how you can contact us in the event that you need further information.

In this notice, the following words shall have the following meanings:

We – Members of chambers, associate members, pupils, mini-pupils, working door tenants, third six pupils, squatters and/or chambers’ service company Serjco Ltd and “us”, “our” and “ourselves” shall be construed accordingly.
You – Individuals who are clients and/or other individuals whose personal information we obtain in the course of our business (except staff and applicants for positions in chambers and for references) and “your” shall be construed accordingly.

In the course of our business, we may collect, use and be responsible for personal information about you. When we do this we are the ‘controller’ of this information for the purposes of the GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

If you need to contact us about your data or its processing you can use the contact details at the end of this notice.

Use of Personal Information

We will collect only the minimum amount of your personal information necessary for the purpose for which we collect it.

Information Collected from You

In the course of our business we may collect some or all of the following personal information from you:

a. personal details

b. family details

c. lifestyle and social circumstances

d. goods and services

e. financial details

f. education, training and employment details

g. physical or mental health details

h. racial or ethnic origin

i. political opinions

j. religious, philosophical or other beliefs

k. trade union membership

l. sex life or sexual orientation

m. genetic data

n. biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person

o. criminal proceedings, outcomes and sentences, and related security measures

p. other personal information relevant to instructions to provide legal services, including data specific to the instructions in question.

Information Collected from Other Sources

The same categories of information may also be obtained from third parties, such as other legal professionals or experts, members of the public, your family and friends, witnesses, courts and other tribunals, suppliers of goods and services, investigators, government departments, regulators, public records and other resources.

Purposes for Which We Use Your Personal Information

We may use your personal information for the following purposes:

i. to provide legal services to clients, including the provision of legal advice and representation in courts, tribunals, arbitrations and mediations

ii. to keep accounting records and carry out office administration

iii. to take or defend legal or regulatory proceedings or to exercise a lien over material for unpaid fees

iv. to respond to potential complaints or make complaints

v. to check for potential conflicts of interest in relation to future cases

vi. to promote and market our services

vii. to carry out anti-money laundering and terrorist financing checks

viii. to train barristers and when providing work-shadowing opportunities

ix. to respond to requests for references

x. to fulfil equality and diversity and other regulatory requirements

xi. to procure goods and services

xii. to publish and comment on legal judgments and decisions of courts and tribunals

xiii. as otherwise required or permitted by law.

Personal Information You Must Provide

If a member of chambers has been instructed by you or on your behalf in a case or matter, your personal information has to be provided to enable him/her to provide you with advice or representation, to enable him/her to comply with his/her professional obligations, to keep accounting records and to comply with all statutory and professional regulatory requirements binding upon him/her.

If you are offering to provide or are providing us with goods or services your information will be processed in relation to such offers or contracts.

Client Care and Marketing

The personal information that we use for client care and marketing purposes consists of:

Your name and contact details and, where appropriate, the name of your organisation.
The nature of your interest in our activities.
Your attendance at our events.

This will be processed in order that you can be provided with information about us and to invite you to our events. You may contact us using the contact details at the end of this notice if you no longer wish to receive such information or invitations.

Legal Basis for Processing Your Personal Information

Non- Sensitive Information

In respect of the following information:

personal details
family details
lifestyle and social circumstances
goods and services
financial details
education, training and employment details
other personal information relevant to instructions to provide legal services, including information specific to the instructions which does not fall into the special category of sensitive information set out below

we rely on the following as the lawful bases on which we collect and use your personal information:

if you are a professional or lay client, we are entitled by law to process the information where necessary for the performance of a contract for legal services to which you are party, or in order to take steps at your request prior to entering into such a contract; or
we are entitled by law to process the information for our legitimate interest, your legitimate interest and/or the legitimate interests of a third party in carrying out the processing for the purposes set out above; or
we are entitled by law to process the information where the processing is necessary to protect your vital interests or of another natural person where you are physically or legally incapable of giving consent.

Sensitive Information

In respect of the following sensitive information:

physical or mental health details
racial or ethnic origin
political opinions
religious, philosophical or other beliefs
trade union membership
sex life or sexual orientation
genetic data
biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person
criminal proceedings, outcomes and sentences, and related security measures

we rely on the lawful bases set out above in relation to non-sensitive information and, in addition, on the following lawful bases set out in Article 9 GDPR in relation to sensitive information:

we are entitled by law to process the information where the processing is necessary for legal proceedings, legal advice or otherwise for establishing, exercising or defending legal rights; or
we are entitled by law to process the information where the processing is necessary to protect your vital interests or those of another natural person where you are physically or legally incapable of giving consent; or
we are entitled by law to process the information where the processing relates to information that you have manifestly made public.

In certain circumstances processing of data (whether sensitive or non-sensitive) may be necessary in order that we can comply with a legal obligation to which we are subject (including carrying out anti-money laundering or terrorist financing checks).

In certain circumstances processing of data (whether sensitive or non-sensitive) is necessary to publish and comment on judgments or other decisions of courts or tribunals.

Sharing Personal Information

If you are a client, some of the information that you provide will be protected by legal professional privilege unless and until it becomes public in the course of any proceedings or otherwise. As barristers, members of chambers have an obligation to keep this information confidential, except in circumstances in which it otherwise becomes public or is disclosed as part of a case or proceedings.

It may be necessary to share your information among ourselves and also with the following:

data processors, such as email providers, data storage providers and website providers.;
other legal professionals;
experts and other witnesses;
prosecution authorities;
courts and tribunals;
lay and professional clients;
your family and associates;
in the event of complaints, the Bar Standards Board and the Legal Ombudsman;
other regulatory authorities;
current, past or prospective employers or employees;
education and examining bodies;
business associates, professional advisers and trade or professional bodies, e.g. the Bar Council;
providers of outsourced functions such as fee collection;
public sources, such as the press, legal directories, public registers and law reports; and
the general public in relation to the publication of legal judgments and decisions of courts and tribunals.

We may be required to provide your personal information to regulators such as the Bar Standards Board, the Financial Conduct Authority or the Information Commissioner’s Office. In the case of the Information Commissioner’s Office, there is a risk that your information (including privileged information) may lawfully be disclosed by it for the purpose of any other civil or criminal proceedings, without our or your consent.

We may also be required to disclose your personal information to the police or intelligence services where required or permitted by law.

Sources of Information

The personal information that we obtain may include information which has been obtained from:

other legal professionals;
experts and other witnesses;
prosecution authorities;
courts and tribunals;
lay and professional clients;
your family and associates;
in the event of complaints, the Bar Standards Board and the Legal Ombudsman;
other regulatory authorities;
current, past or prospective employers;
education and examining bodies;
business associates, professional advisers and trade or professional bodies, e.g. the Bar Council;
the intended recipient, where you have asked us to provide a reference;
the general public in relation to the publication of legal judgments and decisions of courts and tribunals;
data processors, such as our IT support company, email providers, data storage providers and website providers;
providers of outsourced functions such as fee collection; and
public sources, such as the press, legal directories, public registers and law reports.

Transfer of Your Personal information Outside the European Economic Area (EEA)

This privacy notice is of general application and as such it is not possible to state whether it will be necessary to transfer your information out of the EEA for any particular purpose. However, if you reside outside the EEA or that purpose involves persons or organisations or courts and tribunals outside the EEA then it may be necessary to transfer some of your personal information out of the EEA for that purpose. If you are in a country outside the EEA or if any instructions that you provide come from outside the EEA then it is inevitable that information will be transferred out of the EEA. If this applies to you and you wish additional precautions to be taken in respect of your information you must notify us at the earliest opportunity.

Some countries and organisations outside the EEA have been assessed by the European Commission and their data protection laws and procedures have been found to provide adequate protection for your information. However, most do not. If your information has to be transferred outside the EEA, then it may not have the same protection as it would and you may not have the same rights as you would within the EEA.

We may transfer your personal information to the following which are located outside the European Economic Area (EEA):

cloud data storage services based in the USA who have agreed to comply with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, in order to enable us to store your personal information and/or backup copies of it so that we may access it when we need to. The USA does not have the same data protection laws as the EU but the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield has been recognised by the European Commission as providing adequate protection. To obtain further details of that protection click here.
cloud data storage services based in Switzerland, in order to enable us to store your personal information and/or backup copies of it so that we may access it when we need to. Switzerland does not have the same data protection laws as the EU but has been recognised by the European Commission as providing adequate protection; see further details here.

If we decide to publish a judgment or other decision of a court or tribunal containing your personal information, then this will be published to the whole world.

We will not transfer personal information outside the EEA except as necessary for providing legal services or for any legal proceedings.

If you require any further information, you should use the contact details at the end of this notice.

Storage of Your Personal Information

We will normally store all your personal information until at least one year after the expiry of any applicable limitation period. If you are a client, for example, this will be fifteen years from the latest of (1) the date on which the last item of work is carried out for you, (2) the date that the last fee payment is received or (3) the date on which all outstanding fees are written off. This is because it may be needed for potential legal proceedings. At this point, the need for any further retention will be reviewed and the information will be marked for deletion or for retention for a further period. The further retention period is likely to occur only where the information is still needed for legal proceedings, regulatory matters or active complaints. Deletion will be carried out (without further notice to you) as soon as reasonably practicable after the information is marked for deletion.

Equality and diversity monitoring data may be retained indefinitely in pseudonymised form for the purpose of compiling statistics and compliance with regulatory obligations in relation to the reporting of equality and diversity data.

We will store indefinitely that element of your information that is needed to carry out conflict checks. However, this is likely to be limited to your name and contact details and the name of your case and will not include any information within categories (g) to (o) above.

Information relating to anti-money laundering checks will be retained until five years after the completion of the relevant transaction or the end of the business relationship between you and us, whichever is the later.

Names and contact details held for client care and marketing purposes will be stored indefinitely or until a member of our client care team has been informed in writing that you have ceased to be a potential client.

Your Rights

Under the GDPR, you have a number of rights that you can exercise in certain circumstances. These rights are exercisable free of charge. In summary, you may have the right to:

ask for access to your personal information and other supplementary information;
ask for correction of mistakes in your personal information or to complete missing information that we hold on you;
ask for your personal information to be erased in certain circumstances;
receive a copy of the personal information that you have provided to us or have this information sent to a third party in a structured,
commonly used and machine readable format, e.g. a Word file;
object at any time to processing of your personal information for direct marketing;
object in certain other situations to the continued processing of your personal information;
restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances; and
request not to be the subject of automated decision-making which produces legal effects that concern you or affect you in a significant way.

If you require more information about your rights under the GDPR, you should refer to the guidance from the Information Commissioners Office.

If you want to exercise any of these rights, you should:

use the contact details at the end of this notice;
note that we may need to ask you to provide other information so that you can be identified;
provide a contact address so that you can be contacted to request further information to verify your identity;
provide proof of your identity and address; and
state the right or rights that you wish to exercise.

We will respond within thirty days from when we receive your request.

Marketing Emails

Please note that if you wish to unsubscribe from any marketing emails that you have signed up for, you can do so by emailing ‘unsubscribe’ to clientcare@serjeantsinn.com . It may take fourteen days for this to become effective.

Complaints

The GDPR also gives you the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office if you are in the UK or with the supervisory authority of the EU member state where you work or normally live or where the alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred. The Information Commissioner’s Office can be contacted here.

Future Processing

We do not intend to process your personal information except for the reasons stated within this privacy notice. If this changes, this privacy notice will be amended and placed on chambers’ website.

Changes to Privacy Notice

This privacy notice was published on 25th May 2018.

We continually review our privacy practices and may change this policy from time to time. When we do, the amended policy will be placed on our website.

Contact Details

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or the information that we hold about you, you should contact chambers’ Chief Executive, Catherine Calder (ccalder@serjeantsinn.com or 020 7427 5000).

Website data

We collect certain information or data about you when you use this website.

This includes:

questions, queries or feedback you leave, including your name and email address if you send an email to us via the site;
your IP address, and details of which version of web browser you used; and
information on how you use the site, using cookies and page tagging techniques to help us improve the website.

This helps us to:

improve the site by monitoring how you use it;
respond to any feedback you send us, if you’ve asked us to; and
provide you with information about our services and seminars etc.

We store your data on our secure servers in the UK.

By submitting your personal data, you agree to this.

Transmitting information over the internet is generally not completely secure, and we can’t guarantee the security of your data. Any data you transmit is at your own risk.

We have procedures and security features in place to try and keep your data secure once we receive it.

We won’t share your information with any other organisations for marketing, market research or commercial purposes, and we don’t pass on your details to other websites.

Links to other websites

This site contains links to and from other websites. This privacy policy only applies to this website, and doesn’t cover other websites that we link to.

Following a link to another website

If you go to another website from this one, read the privacy policy on that website to find out what it does with your information.

Following a link to this site from another website

If you come to this site from another website, we may receive personal information about you from the other website. You should read the privacy policy of the website you came from to find out more about this.

Resources & Further Information

General Data Protection Regulation 2018
Data Protection Act 1998
Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003
Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 – The Guide
Twitter Privacy Policy
Facebook Privacy Policy
Google Privacy Policy
Linkedin Privacy Policy