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Privacy notice for clients

What we need

Walker and Sharpe will be a “controller” of the personal information (also referred to as ‘data’) that you provide to us when you instruct us to act on your behalf.

When you become a client of Walker and Sharpe, we will collect, store and use the personal information that you provide to us in your instructions and during the course of our solicitor / client relationship. We may ask you for additional personal information during the course of our solicitor / client relationship, which shall be collected, stored and used in accordance with this privacy notice.

We also collect, store and use personal information supplied by and pertaining to you from other data controllers and third party data processors within the meaning of the GDPR.

Why we need your personal information – contractual purposes

We need to collect your personal information so that we can act on your behalf. We will use your personal information to:

• provide you with legal advice, for example, by communicating with you by email, letter and/or telephone, etc;
• represent you and act on your behalf as your solicitors;
• respond to and communicate with you regarding, for example, your questions, comments, support needs or complaints, concerns or allegations in relation to complaints and disciplinary procedures.

If you do not provide us with all of the personal information that we need to collect then this may affect our ability to provide you with legal advice and / or represent you as your solicitors.

Why we need your personal information – legitimate interests

We also process your personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interests to:

• promote our services by sending you communications with information for upcoming events and legal updates;
• invite you as guests to events; or
• any other legitimate interest which may arise.

Where we process your personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interests, you have the right to object to us using your personal information for the above purposes. If you wish to object to any of the above processing, please contact Mr Lister McKiddie, Walker and Sharpe, 37 George Street, Dumfries

Why we need your personal information – legal obligations

We are under a legal obligation to process certain personal information relating to you for the purposes of complying with our obligations under:

• the Law Society of Scotland requirements for solicitors;
• compliance with Anti-Money Laundering requirements; and
any other applicable legal requirements

Other uses of your personal information

We may ask you if we can process your personal information for additional purposes.

Who we share your personal information with

We may be required to share personal information with statutory or regulatory authorities and organisations to comply with statutory obligations. We may share your personal information with third parties when we reasonably consider it to be in your interests to do so or in order to comply with legal and practice requirements.

We may also share personal information with our professional advisors for the purposes of taking advice.

Walker and Sharpe employ third party suppliers to provide services, including IT, payroll, etc. These suppliers may process personal data on our behalf as “processors” and are subject to written contractual conditions to only process that personal data under our instructions and protect it.

In the event that we do share personal data with external third parties, we will only share such personal data strictly required for the specific purposes and take reasonable steps to ensure that recipients shall only process the disclosed personal data in accordance with those purposes.

How we protect your personal information

Your personal information is stored in paper form and on our computer system. Our servers are based in the UK / EU, and are accessed by our staff for the purposes set out above.

We may be required to transfer your personal information outwith the UK / EU for the purposes set out above. If you instruct us to carry out business on your behalf which includes the transmission of your personal information outwith the UK / EU then we shall not be held to be responsible for failure to comply with GDPR concerning transmission of your personal information. In such circumstances it shall be your responsibility to put in place any necessary safeguards with the recipient country to protect your personal information.

How long we keep your personal information

We keep our clients’ personal data for periods sufficient to comply with legal requirements and professional guidelines relating to the conduct of legal business on your behalf and as required to protect our own legitimate interests. A copy of our Data Retention Policy can be made available upon request.

Your rights

You can exercise any of the following rights by writing to us at Walker and Sharpe, 37 George Street, Dumfries, DG1 1EB.

Your rights in relation to your personal information are:

• you have a right to request access to the personal information that we hold about you by making a “subject access request”;
• if you believe that any of your personal information is inaccurate or incomplete, you have a right to request that we correct or complete your personal information;
• you have a right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal information for specific purposes; and
• if you wish us to delete your personal information, you may request that we do so.

Any requests received by Walker and Sharpe will be considered under applicable data protection legislation. If you remain dissatisfied, you have a right to raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ico.org.uk