Vialegal Consultancy Services Limited (“Vialegal”) is committed to respecting the privacy of all our clients and contacts.  Please read the following privacy policy to understand how we use and protect the personal information that you provide to us or that we obtain or hold about you and to understand what your rights are in relation to personal information that we hold.

What information do we process?

If you seek an estimate of costs for consultancy work, are provided with free initial advice or become a client of ours, we will also need information to confirm your identity e.g. your date of birth, about your matter and circumstances as well as contact information for you, your personnel and other parties to the matter. The information that we need will be explained to you by our advisors and/or set out in terms of conditions depending on the nature of your matter but may include both personal data and special categories of data. You may also provide us with additional information that you consider relevant as part of your instruction.

We may also receive information about you (or your personnel) from third parties such as accountants, banks, medical professionals, courts, regulatory bodies and other advisors and specialists related to your matter. Our clients and matter contacts may also provide us information about you if you are involved in a transaction or dispute with one of our clients or have a connection with them such as being an employee of a client.  Alternatively, you may provide us with information about you directly at our request or otherwise.

How do we use your information?

We will use your information for the specific purpose(s) for which it has been provided to or collected by us, for example:

• To provide you with information on our services
• To provide you with consultancy advice and services including our referral of you to other advisors both in the UK and overseas
• To comply with our statutory obligations and to comply with our insurance requirements
• To verify your identity and undertake credit checks as we may require
• To deal with your queries, complaints and or feedback
• To ask you for your reviews on our services

We also use your information to administer, support, improve and develop our business generally and to enforce our legal rights.

We may also use the information that we collect about you for marketing purposes:

• To communicate with you about our services that may be of interest to you
• To provide you with updates on relevant areas of the law to you
• To inform you about events, training, and or other activities we may undertake

Processing grounds

We must have a lawful basis for processing your information; this will vary on the circumstances of how and why we have your information, but typical examples include:

• Legitimate Interest - The activities are within our legitimate interests as a service provider seeking to engage with and deliver services to prospective and existing clients
• Consent - You have given your consent for us to process your personal information (e.g. for certain marketing activities)
• Contract Necessity - We are performing necessary steps in relation to a contract which you have entered into or prior to entering into
• Legal Obligations - Our processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation which we are subject to

If we process any special categories of information i.e. information revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs or trade union membership, genetic data, processing of biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying individuals, health data, or data concerning your sex life or sexual orientation, we must have a further lawful basis for the processing. This may include:

• Where you have given your explicit consent for us to process such information
• Where it is necessary to protect your vital interests or someone else’s vital interests
• Where you have made the information public
• Where it is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal proceedings (Legal Claims)
• Where the processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest e.g. to prevent or detect fraud or other unlawful or dishonest activities

If we process any information relating to your criminal convictions or offences, we will typically rely on one of the following lawful bases:

• Preventing or detecting unlawful acts
• Complying with our regulatory requirements
• Where it is necessary for us to obtain legal advice or establish, exercise or defend legal rights

Marketing

If you are a client, we may use your personal information to send you information that we think may be of interest to you or your business. This is within our legitimate interests as a legal consultancy to use your information in this way.

We may also use personal information about our professional contacts 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 marketing 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.

If you do not wish to receive any direct marketing material or marketing communications after you submit or provide your details, please contact us via enquiries@vialegal.co.uk 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. Please note that the preferences that you state will override any registrations you or your organisation may have with the relevant preference organisations (such as the telephone preference services).

Automated Processing/Profiling

We may use certain external checking facilities to verify your identity and carry out credit checks as part of our client due diligence checks before accepting an instruction.

Disclosure of your information

Some of the information you provide to us will be held on our computers in the UK and will only be accessed by or given to our staff (or staff of connected and or associated entities) working in the UK. Some of the information you provide to us may be transferred to, stored and processed by third party organisations which process data for us and on our behalf. These third parties may be based (or store or process information) in the UK or elsewhere including outside of the EEA.  Such third parties may include third party IT platforms (including cloud-based platforms), suppliers of administrative and support services and suppliers of other specialist products. 

We may also transfer your information to other organisations or professional advisers with whom we are working on client matters or to whom we are referring you for additional or separate advice.  

We may be obliged to disclose data under certain laws or by order of court or other competent regulatory body or may be permitted to disclose it under applicable data protection laws.

If we merge with another business entity or divest a part of our business or we carry out some internal corporate restructuring, your information may be disclosed and transferred to our new business partners or owners or the new corporate entities.

We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy; please see section "Protection of your information" below.

Protection of your information

We have in place administrative, technical and physical measures on our website and internally designed to guard against and minimise the risk of loss, misuse or unauthorised processing or disclosure of the personal information that we hold.

Where we transfer information to third parties to enable them to process it on our behalf, we ensure that the providers meet or exceed the relevant legal or regulatory requirements for transferring data to them and keeping it secure.

We will also ensure that where information is transferred to a country or international organisation outside of the UK / EEA, we will comply with the relevant legal rules governing such transfers.

We will ensure that we maintain the confidentiality of your personal information in accordance with our terms and conditions of business and will only disclose the same as per our disclosure statement above.

We keep your personal information no longer than is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. Information on our destruction dates policy summary is available below:

Retention Periods

Client records will be retained for at least 6 years and will generally be destroyed at 7 years from the date the client matter is closed.  All closed matters and other documents (hard copy papers and e–documents) have a destruction  date allocated to them i.e. the date when we must destroy documents and not before. Documents are destroyed securely and confidentially in accordance with that destruction date. Destruction dates are primarily based upon the likelihood of Vialegal needing to refer to the  documents again, as informed by limitation periods or the nature of the transaction covered by the client matter. Certain items of information about client matters may be retained for longer periods of time for legal and regulatory reasons e.g. as part of our accounting records.

If you contact us as a prospective client and you are given advice in an initial telephone call or email or meeting, but the matter is not taken further and no client record is opened, the matter is treated as a closed client matter and any written or electronic records of the advice given will be deleted no later than 7 years after initial contact.

Your rights

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

• Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.  We may ask you to verify your identity as part of our security measures for the protection of personal information.  We may also ask you for more information regarding your request in order to ensure that we meet our obligations fully.  Whilst no fee is generally chargeable for access requests, we reserve the right to charge a fee if you make repeated requests, ask for further copies of our disclosure, or your request is considered excessive in our reasonable view.  We may also decline your request for access if we believe that your request is vexatious.
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information 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 information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).  However, please note we may not be able to erase certain personal information due to our continuing legal obligations or in other circumstances allowed under data protection laws.
• Object to processing of your personal information 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. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.  We have a right to reject your request if we decide that our interests in continuing to process your personal information override your interests, rights and freedoms in certain circumstances.
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.  We can only store your personal information during this time and will not delete or otherwise use your personal information, except in relation to Legal Claims, where it is to protect the rights of another person, or it is for reasons of important public interest, or where you have consented to a particular use.
• Right not to be subject to automated decision making and profiling
• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party (this will only apply to personal information which is processed on the grounds of consent and which is processed by automated means by us)

Updates to our policy

We may from time to time update this policy to reflect legal changes and or changes in our how operate our business.  We will not seek change the original purpose(s) for which your personal information was collected or obtained except to the extent permitted by law.

How to contact us

If you would like to get in touch to discuss this policy, how we use your personal information, to exercise your rights or to provide feedback or make a complaint about use of your information, please contact the data protection manager, sara.mccracken@vialegal.co.uk via email or you can contact us by post, at 31 Linden Street, London RM7 7DP.

You can also contact the Information Commissioner's Office at https://ico.org.uk/  for information, advice or to make a complaint.

 

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