PRIVACY NOTICE FOR THIRD PARTY AGENTS (persons giving or receiving instructions on behalf of clients) AND THIRD PARTY FUNDERS (persons providing funding to clients)
Firm’s Compliance Officer for Legal Practice: Joanne Major
Major Family Law (MFL) is a “controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.
This notice contains information about how MFL collects and processes your personal data, and why. It also tells you who we share this information with, the security mechanisms we have put in place to protect your data and how to contact us if you have a complaint.
Data protection principles
We will comply with data protection law, which says that the personal information we hold about you must be:
- Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
- Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
- Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
- Accurate and kept up to date.
- Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
- Kept securely.
What information do we collect?
If you agree to act as a third party agent or a third party funder on behalf of a client MFL needs to collect and process a range of information about you. This may include:
- Information required to prove your identity for the purposes of Money Laundering Regulations,
- Your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number.
- Your date of birth and gender.
- CCTV images of you outside of the MFL offices.
In the case of third party funders this may also include:
- Details of your finances including bank accounts, remuneration, and pensions including those of your spouse / partner where relevant.
- Information about your nationality
It is very unlikely that we will ever collect and use special categories of personal data (sensitive personal data). We would only do this when we are entitled to do so, for example, when that is with your explicit consent or if you have manifestly made that information public. Sensitive personal data includes information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and political opinions, trade union membership, health and sickness records.
Where do we get your personal data?
MFL may collect this information in a variety of ways. For example, data might be collected through any questionnaire you have completed at our request; obtained from your passport or other identity documents such as your driving licence; from correspondence with you; or through interviews and meetings that we have.
MFL only seeks personal information about you from third parties (such as employers or HMRC in the case of third party funders) with your consent.
How does MFL use your personal data?
MFL will only use your personal data when the law allows.
Where you agree to act as a third party agent or a third party funder of a client, MFL needs to process your data to enable us to provide our client with the appropriate range of legal services under our legal services contract with them. We rely on your consent as the legal basis for processing this information.
In some cases, MFL needs to process data to ensure that it is complying with its legal obligations. For example, it is required to meet its obligations under anti money laundering legislation and to comply with the requirements of its regulator (currently the SRA). Note that personal information received from you for the purposes of complying with Money Laundering Regulations will only be processed for the purpose of preventing money laundering or terrorist financing unless such processing is permitted by law, or you consent to any alternative use of the data.
In other cases, processing your data is necessary for our legitimate interests, or those of a third party, and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. This may be before, during and after the end of the relationship we have with our client. for example processing your data allows MFL to respond to any complaints by you.
We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it unless we consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose.
The above are only examples of how we may use your data and is not exhaustive. We may also use your data in the following situations, although we would expect these instances to be rare:
- Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests).
- Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.
We do not need your consent where the purpose of the processing is to protect you or another person from harm or to protect your well-being and if we reasonably believe that you need care and support, are at risk of harm and are unable to protect yourself.
What if you do not provide personal data?
The limited amount of data we collect from third party agents and third party funders is required before MFL can accept that person as an agent or funder.
Who will we share your personal information with?
Your information may be shared internally, including with company directors, support and IT staff, if access to the data is necessary for the performance of their roles.
MFL also shares your data with third parties that process data on its behalf in connection with their IT systems, case management systems, and our typing resources. In the case of third party agents we may also share your personal data with third parties such as barristers, other law firms and expert witnesses in order to carry out the service that our client (or you on behalf of our client) has instructed us to do.
Where MFL engages third parties to process personal data on its behalf, they do so on the basis of written instructions, are under a duty of confidentiality and are obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of data.
We will share your personal information with third parties where required by law or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so. Such third parties will be required to maintain confidentiality in relation to your information, for example:
- Law enforcement agencies such as The National Crime Agency, if required by applicable law.
- Regulatory authorities such as the Solicitors regulation Authority in order to comply with our legal obligations.
- Insurers in order to ensure our client is provided with appropriate cover for identified risks, or in connection with any claim you or our client make against MFL.
Your personal data may be processed by providers of AI via third party AI tools, embedded in systems providing IT services to us. Any use of AI technologies by us will be in accordance with technical and operational safeguards appropriate for data types.
How does MFL protect data?
Data will be stored in a range of different places, including in our client’s case matter file, in MFL’s case management systems, and in other IT systems (including the MFL email system).
MFL takes the security of your data seriously. We will not sell your data to anyone and we have internal policies and controls in place to try to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by its employees in the performance of their duties. We use firewalls and anti-virus software, our computers are encrypted and we use password protection access for all of our systems.
For how long will we store your data?
MFL will retain your personal data only for as long as is necessary to ensure we can fulfil our business requirements and to comply with our regulatory requirements. After that period, we will confidentially destroy all data.
By ensuring our business records are adequate we can maintain the requisite levels of insurance to protect our clients.
Family Matters
MFL will typically hold personal data for the duration of our client’s matter and for a further 15 years after the matter concludes. In some cases, we retain client files and therefore personal data for a longer period to enable us to adequately address and assist with any query or dispute that may arise in the future (such as a request to vary an existing order). This includes private children’s proceedings, cases involving a financial order for child maintenance, cases involving a financial order for spousal maintenance payable beyond a 15 year period, and cases where a client chooses to agree settlement terms against our firm’s advice. We will notify you of the specific period for which your data will be retained by us at the end of our business relationship with our client.
Motoring/Driving Offences
MFL will typically hold personal data for the duration of our client’s matter and for a further 7 years after the matter concludes. We will notify you of the specific period for which your data will be retained by us at the end of our business relationship with our client.
Anti-Money Laundering
The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 require us to keep identification records and documents for 5 years from the end of our business relationship. At the end of the 5 year period the Regulations require us to delete this personal data unless certain exceptions apply. As stated above, in most instances we retain complete files, including personal identification documents, for over 5 years. We do this because the data may be required by us should we be sued, or should some other action be brought against us in relation to the matter for which we were instructed by our client.
Your rights
Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation, you have a number of important rights that you can exercise free of charge. In summary, these rights are to:
- Access to your personal information and other supplementary information;
- Require us to correct any mistakes or complete missing information we hold on you;
- Require us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing;
- Receive a copy of the personal information you have provided to us or have this information be sent to a third party, this will be provided to you or the third party in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format;
- Object at any time to processing of your personal information for direct marketing (note MFL does not currently engage in direct marketing);
- Object in certain other situations to the continued processing of your personal information;
- Restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances;
If you want more information about your rights under the UK GDPR, please see the Guidance from the Information Commissioners Office on Individual’s rights under the UK GDPR.
If you would like to exercise any of these rights please contact Jane Henderson at MFL.
How to make a complaint
The UK General Data Protection Regulation also gives you the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office who can be contacted by calling 0303 123 1113.
Future processing
We do not intend to process your personal information for any reason other than stated within this privacy notice. If this changes, we will inform you by letter or email.
Changes to this privacy notice
This privacy notice was last updated on the date shown in the header.
We constantly review our internal privacy practices and may change our policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the notice on our website.
Get in touch
If you have any questions about this privacy notice or the information we hold about you please contact Jane Henderson at Major Family Law, 01661 824582.