This privacy notice contains important information on who we are, how and why we collect, store, use and share personal information, and your rights in relation to your personal information.
Thompson Mitchell Solicitors (“Thompson Mitchell”) are a partnership regulated by the Law Society of Northern Ireland.
Thompson Mitchell collect, use and are responsible for certain personal information about you, in respect of which we are regulated under the General Data Protection Regulation (“the GDPR”) which applies across the European Union (including in the United Kingdom). We are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.
It is necessary for us to collect and use your personal information:
There are two types of personal data that may be provided to us:
The type of information we will request from you will depend upon what we are contracted to do for you.
In the majority of cases personal data will be restricted to basic information needed to complete identification checks. Typically, we will need your full name, address, date of birth, e-mail and contact telephone numbers. We may also request copies of passports, driving licences, utility bills, bank statements and similar information to assist in confirming your identity.
If a financial transaction is involved, we will need details to support the funding of the transaction in order to comply with our obligations under Anti-Money Laundering and Law Society Regulations.
Whilst we appreciate that such requests can be intrusive, we are prevented by law from proceeding with your work until these checks have been completed.
We may need to obtain and use special category data in order to carry out some work for you. If required, we will obtain your explicit consent before we do so. In certain cases, we may need to share this information with third parties, such as medical professionals, if for example you have had an accident and we are making a claim on your behalf. This is only done when there are safeguards in place to ensure that the information remains confidential and secure.
We may also obtain personal information from third parties in order that we can carry out legal work on your behalf. Typically, these organisations will include banks, building societies, other financial institutions or other firms such as accountants or independent financial advisors or government departments or agencies.
The primary reason for asking you to provide us with your personal data is to allow us to represent you and carry out your legal work.
The following are other examples, although not exhaustive, of what we may use your information for:-
Generally, we will only use your information within our firm. However, there may be circumstances where we may need to disclose some information to third parties in carrying out your legal work. For example:
We will not share your personal information with any third party for marketing purposes.
Your personal information will be retained for as long as may be necessary:-
In addition:
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.
Under the GDPR you have a number of important rights including:
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 GDPR.
If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please:
If you wish to contact us write to Thompson Mitchell Solicitors at:
12-14 Mandeville Street
Portadown
Co. Armagh
BT62 3NZ
or
Trevor House
9 The Square
Hillsborough
Co. Down
BT26 6AG
or email reception@thompsonmitchell.co.uk
We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.
The GDPR also gives you a 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 https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ or by telephone to: 0303 123 1113.
We may change this Privacy Notice from time to time and the current notice will always be displayed on our website. Any material changes will be advised to you.
This Privacy Notice was issued in May 2018.
