Privacy Notice

What data we hold

As our client, we will hold the following information about you:

Your name, identity and contact information;
Information about your business activities; and
Information and documents about your matters or enquiries, including communications with you

Giving you legal advice

We use the information we hold about you and your business, both personal and otherwise, to give you the best legal advice we can.

We also use your information to bill you, and keep track of payments that you make.

ID checks

We will ask you for ID information and proof of address. If you would prefer not to provide this information, we will not be able to act for you.

We retain identity verification information for as long as you are our client, and then six years.

Sources of money

We may need to ask questions about the source of your money, to discharge our regulatory obligations relating to proceeds of crime and terrorist funding. If you would prefer not to provide this information, we will not be able to act for you.

Your data and the EEA

We do not transfer or process data outside the European Economic Area unless we have your specific consent or where the nature of the processing requires it (for example, where we are emailing a party to your matter who is based outside the EEA, or because you have chosen to use an email or other communications service which routes data outside the EEA).

Occasionally, to provide a high quality of service, we may work on your matters when we are outside the EEA (for example, when on business or even if we are on holiday) — if this might be a problem for you, please let us know, and we can discuss.

Your rights

You have lots of rights in respect of our processing of your personal data.

The relevant rights are:

get access to your personal data and information about our processing of it;

in some circumstances, restrict our processing of your data for strategy planning purposes, and compel us to erase the bits we do not use for security purposes;

object to our processing for strategy planning purposes

If you want to exercise any of these rights, please just contact us.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint about our processing with a supervisory authority — you probably want the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office.

Third parties

As a general principle, we will not transfer your personal data to third parties without your permission.

It is possible, though unlikely, that we might be forced to disclose your information in response to a court order or other binding mandate.

As solicitors, we have professional duties, including to co-operate with our regulator, the Solicitors Regulation Authority, as well as to report suspicious transactions or money laundering. We may not even be able to tell you of our suspicions if, in doing so, we would be committing the offence of tipping off. We will still try to minimise any sharing of your personal data.

We also have a small number of companies providing services to us. We use telephony services, which would get to see your phone number if we call you, and a broadband supplier which could see your email address (but not the content of what you send us, if you encrypt it). We also use an external accountancy service but, unless you are a sole trader or a partnership, they are unlikely to see any personal data relating to you.

Retention periods

Data about clients: duration of your relationship with us, then seven years

Client ID verification: duration of your relationship with us, then six years

Data about specific matters: duration of the matter, then seven years

ICO registration

CompleteLegal Solicitors Limited is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ZA123447).