Privacy Policy – Ferguson Legal

PRIVACY & COOKIE POLICY

Ferguson Legal Limited (“we” or “us”) respects your privacy and value the trust you place in us when you share your personal information with us. We are committed to protecting your personal data.

We are committed to being a responsible custodian of the information you provide to us and the information we collect in the course of operating our business and providing legal services.

Important Information

This privacy notice aims to give you information on how we collect and process your personal data through your use of our services or this website.

Ferguson Legal Limited is the controller and responsible for your personal data. Our data protection director is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the data protection director.

In general terms, we collect and use personal information to:

deliver our services and meet our legal responsibilities
verify your identity where this is required
contact you by post, email or telephone
understand your needs and how they may be met
maintain our records
process financial transactions
prevent and detect crime, fraud or corruption

The information we collect about you

We collect your personal data when you provide it to us. Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

Identity Data includes first name, last name, title and date of birth.
Contact Data includes correspondence address, home address, email address and telephone numbers.
Financial Data includes bank account, payment card details and payments to and from you regarding the use of our services.
Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website. This information is collated by Google analytics for the purposes of improving our website.
Usage Data includes information about how you use our website and services.
Marketing and Communications Data includes your communication preferences.

We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

If you fail to provide personal data

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or in order to provide our services to you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to provide you with our services. In this case, we may have to resign from acting for you or providing the services requested but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

How is your data collected?

We may also collect other information that you voluntarily provide to us, including direct interactions with you in person either in person or corresponding with you by post, phone, email or otherwise.

We collect information about you when you sign up for or request that we send you alerts, or other legal or marketing materials; and when you sign up for an event. We also collect information when you voluntarily complete an enquiry form on our website. Website usage information is collected using cookies.

We may receive information about you from other sources, including third parties and publically available information including providers of technical, payment and delivery services and from publicly available sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register based inside the EU. We may receive information about you from organisations or businesses that introduce you to us, such as referrals from other law firms, professional advisors and intermediaries with whom you are also client.

We may also receive information about you from social media platforms such as LinkedIn, including but not limited to, when you interact with us on those platforms or access our social media content. Please note that the information we may receive from those third party sites is governed by the privacy settings, policies, and/or procedures of the applicable platform, and we strongly encourage you to review them before submitting any information to them.

Our responsibilities to you? Better known as How we use your data.

We rely on the following legal grounds to process personal information, namely:

We may use the information we collect:

To respond to your enquiries;
To provide you with legal and other services that you request;
To send you alerts and other legal updates, marketing communications and other information or materials that may be of interest to you or which you have expressed an interest in receiving;
To maintain our list of contacts;
For the firm’s business purposes, including improving the provision of our legal services, data analysis; submitting invoices; detecting, preventing, and responding to actual or potential fraud, illegal activities, or intellectual property infringement;
To assess the effectiveness of our events, promotional campaigns and publications; and
As we believe reasonably necessary or appropriate to: comply with our legal obligations; respond to legal process or requests for information issued by government authorities or other third parties; or protect your, our, or others’ rights.

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data to provide the services you have instructed us to provide.

Consent: we may use personal information as described in this Notice, and as detailed in our Terms of Business, subject to your consent. To withdraw your consent to such use, please email at any time saying “unsubscribe” to contact@fergusonlegal.co.uk

Legal obligation: we may need to collect and use personal information to comply with legal obligations to which the firm is subject. This includes undertaking client due diligence and background checks as well as all other anti-money laundering or other legal obligations.

Legitimate interests: we may use your personal information for our legitimate interests to provide legal services and to improve our services. Consistent with our legitimate interests and consents that may be required, we may use personal information for our marketing purposes and other technical information as described in this Notice.

We do not sell, rent, or otherwise share any information with unaffiliated entities except as expressly described in this Notice, or with your prior permission. We may share anonymised information that does not reasonably identify you or your organisation only as permitted by applicable law.

Disclosures of your personal data

We may also share information we collect with:

Our people, but their use shall be limited to the performance of their duties and in line with the reason for processing.
Third-party service providers engaged by us to perform services on our behalf, such as web-hosting companies, information technology providers, analytics providers, marketing and communications services and event hosting services.
Law enforcement, courts or tribunals, other government authorities, or third parties (within or outside the jurisdiction in which you reside) as may be permitted or required by the laws of any jurisdiction that may apply to us; as provided for under contract; or as we deem reasonably necessary to provide our legal services. In these circumstances, we take reasonable efforts to notify you before we disclose information that may reasonably identify you or your organisation, unless giving prior notice is prohibited by applicable law or is not possible or reasonable in the circumstances.

International transfers

We do not transfer your personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA).

Security

Information security is a key element of data protection. The firm takes appropriate measures to secure personal data and protect it from loss or unauthorised disclosure or damage. However, no information system can be 100% secure. So, we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your information. We are not responsible for the security of information you transmit to us over networks that we do not control, including the Internet and wireless networks.

We use a small number of suppliers in connection with the operation of our business and they may have access to the personal data we process. For example, a company which we use for a marketing campaign may process contacts’ personal data for us. When contracting with suppliers and/or service providers, the firm takes appropriate steps to ensure that there is adequate protection in place and that the principles are adhered to.

Retention of the information we collect

We retain the information we collect for no longer than is reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we collect the information and to comply with our legal obligations.

Following completion of the legal services provided by us, we will either retain the file and working papers or store these records digitally. The Law Society of Scotland provide guidance on when these files and papers may be destroyed or deleted from storage. That guidance varies according to the type of work being carried out. We shall retain files, papers and/or records in accordance with that guidance. You can find out more about the Law Society’s guidance by visiting https://www.lawscot.org.uk/members/rules-and-guidance/rules-and-guidance/section-e/division-b/guidance/the-ownership-and-destruction-of-files/.

Where personal data is retained for the purposes of sharing promotional material, and you no longer want to be contacted by us, please either email at any time saying “unsubscribe” to contact@fergusonlegal.co.uk or click the unsubscribe button on our email marketing.

Your Rights

Personal data must be processed in line with individuals’ rights, including the right to:

request a copy of their personal data;
request that their inaccurate personal data is corrected;
request that their personal data is deleted and destroyed when causing damage or distress; and
opt out of receiving communications (including electronic) from the firm.

You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. If you would like a copy of some or all of your personal information, please email contact@fergusonlegal.co.uk.

When making your request please provide:

your full name and address.
details of the information you want. Please be as specific as possible, and if it is not obvious, it would be helpful if you could explain why you expect us to hold your personal information.

We may also ask you to provide further information in certain circumstances including to clarify the terms of your request or to confirm your identity.

We want to make sure that your personal information is accurate and up to date. You may ask us to correct or remove information you think is inaccurate.

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to collect standard internet log information and visitor behaviour information. This information is used to track visitor use of the website and to compile statistical reports on website activity.

We use cookies and similar technologies on the Site. We may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system and business administration and for usage monitoring. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.

You can also opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites by installing Google’s opt-out browser add-on.

Our website may contain links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to this website. When you link to other websites you should read their own privacy policies.

Changes

We reserve the right to amend or change our privacy policy at any time. Any changes will be posted on our webpage and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail. This Notice was last updated 22 May 2018.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should emailed to contact@fergusonlegal.co.uk.