Privacy policy
Policy version: May 2021
www.colekhan.co.uk (our website) is provided by Cole Khan Solicitors LLP (‘we’). We are the controller of personal data obtained via our website, meaning we are the organisation that is legally responsible for deciding how and for what purposes it is used.
We take your privacy very seriously. Please read this privacy policy carefully as it contains important information on who we are and how and why we collect, store, use and share any information relating to you (your personal data) in connection with your use of our website. It also explains your rights in relation to your personal data and how to contact us or a relevant regulator in the event you have a complaint.
We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal data about you. When we do so we are subject to the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).
Given the nature of our website, we do not expect to collect the personal data of anyone under 13 years of age. If you are aware that any personal data of anyone under 13 years of age has been shared with our website please let us know so that we can delete that data.
This privacy policy is divided into the following sections:
What this policy applies to
Personal data we collect about you
How your personal data is collected
How and why we use your personal data
Marketing
Who we share your personal data with
How long your personal data will be kept
Transferring your personal data out of the UK and EEA
Cookies and other tracking technologies
Your rights
Keeping your personal data secure
How to complain
Changes to this privacy policy
How to contact us
Do you need extra help?
What this policy applies to
This privacy policy relates to your use of our website.
When you contact us to make an enquiry, whether through our website, by telephone or in writing, we will store the information you provide us and the outcome of your enquiry for the following purposes:
To be able to respond to your enquiry;
To comply with regulatory requirements in relation to prospective clients.
When using the Contact Form on our website, no information will be stored on the website and your IP address will not be stored. The information will be stored on our cloud based secure case management system.
We will store this information on our system for one year, following which it will be destroyed. If you would like further information about this please contact us.
Our Clients
If you are a client, we store and use the information you provide primarily for the provision of legal services to you and in order to comply with our contractual obligations as set out in our Retainer Letter. This will include using your data for related purposes including:
addressing correspondence and related documents to other parties and opponents in any litigation, as well as other agencies such as the courts or Government agencies where relevant to the work we are doing for you
maintaining the financial and other personal information we are required to keep on clients under the professional rules we are subject to and by law including our obligations to HMRC.
Our use of that information is subject to your instructions, the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2018 and our professional duty of confidentiality.
Our work for you may require us to give information to third parties such as expert witnesses, other professional advisers such as accountants and costs draftsman, consultants, our regulators and our bank if they wish to ascertain the source of monies held in our client account.
The primary legal bases which are relevant to the work we undertake for you are in order that we can satisfactorily perform the contract we have with you and also so that we can protect the interests of our professional indemnity insurers through maintaining suitable records. We are required by law to retain certain data including identity and address details in order that we can comply with the Government’s anti-money laundering controls.
Your personal data will be stored using a cloud-based case management software called LEAP. You should be aware that LEAP’s infrastructure is maintained by cloud-platform provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) and your data may be held outside of the UK and EU. LEAP uses multiple layers of security controls (software, physical and process based) to protect our client data. Further information about LEAP’s security and agreement with AWS is available on request.
Throughout our website we may link to other websites owned and operated by certain trusted third parties to make additional information products and services available to you. Those other third party websites may also gather information about you in accordance with their own separate privacy policies. For privacy information relating to these other third party websites, please consult their privacy policies as appropriate.
Personal data we collect about you
The personal data we collect about you depends on the particular activities carried out through our website. We will collect and use the following personal data about you:
your name, address and contact information, including email address and telephone number and company details
information to check and verify your identity, eg date of birth
your gender, if you choose to give this to us
location data, if you choose to give this to us
your billing information, transaction and payment card or other payment method information
bank account and payment details
details of any information, feedback or other matters you give us by phone, email, post or via social media
your account details, such as username and login details
your activities on, and use of, our website
your personal or professional interests
your professional online presence, eg LinkedIn profile
information about the services we provide to you
your contact history, purchase history and saved items
information about how you use our website and technology systems
your responses to surveys, competitions and promotions
If you do not provide personal data we ask for where it required it may delay or prevent us from providing services to you.
We collect and use this personal data for the purposes described in the section ‘How and why we use your personal data’ below.
How your personal data is collected
We collect personal data from you:
directly, when you enter or send us information, such as when you register with us, contact us (including via email), send us feedback, purchase products or services via our website, post material to our website and complete customer surveys or participate in competitions via our website, and
indirectly, such as your browsing activity while on our website; we will usually collect information indirectly using the technologies explain in the section on ‘Cookies and other tracking technologies’ below
We also collect personal data about you from other sources as follows:
Email
How and why we use your personal data
Under data protection law, we can only use your personal data if we have a proper reason, eg:
where you have given consent
to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
for the performance of a contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract, or
for our legitimate interests or those of a third party
A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests. We will carry out an assessment when relying on legitimate interests, to balance our interests against your own. You can obtain details of this assessment by contacting us (see ‘How to contact us’ below).
The corresponding numbered lists below explain what we use your personal data for and why.
What we use your personal data for
Create and manage your account with us.
Providing products and or services to you.
Conducting checks to identify you and verify your identity or to help prevent and detect fraud against you or us.
To enforce legal rights or defend or undertake legal proceedings.
Customise our website and its content to your particular preferences based on a record of your selected preferences or on a record of your selected preferences.
Retaining and evaluating information on your recent visits to our website and how you move around different sections of our website for analytics purposes to understand how people use our website so that we can make it more intuitive or to check our website is working as intended.
Communications with you not related to marketing, including about changes to our terms or policies or changes to the products and/or services or other important notices.
Protecting the security of systems and data.
Statistical analysis to help us manage our business, e.g. in relation to our financial performance, customer base, product range or other efficiency measures.
Updating and enhancing customer records.
Disclosures and other activities necessary to comply with legal and regulatory obligations that apply to our business, e.g. to record and demonstrate evidence of your consents where relevant.
Marketing our services to existing and former customers.
External audits and quality checks, e.g. for the audit of our accounts.
We may need to share your personal data with members of our group and third parties in connection with a significant corporate transaction or restructuring, including a merger, acquisition, asset sale, initial public offering or in the event of our insolvency. In such cases information will be anonymised where possible and only shared where necessary.
Our reasons
For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price
To perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract.
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
Depending on the circumstances:
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
In other cases, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to protect our business, interests and rights or those of others.
Depending on the circumstances:
Your consent as gathered by the separate cookies tool on our website—see ‘Cookies and other tracking technologies’ below.
Where we are not required to obtain your consent and do not do so, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price.
Depending on the circumstances:
Your consent as gathered e.g. by the separate cookies tool on our website—see ‘Cookies and other tracking technologies’ below.
Where we are not required to obtain your consent and do not do so, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price.
Depending on the circumstances:
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
In other cases, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price.
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
We may also use your personal data to ensure the security of systems and data to a standard that goes beyond our legal obligations, and in those cases our reasons are for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to protect systems and data and to prevent and detect criminal activity that could be damaging for you and/or us.
For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price.
Depending on the circumstances:
To perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract.
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
Where neither of the above apply, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, e.g. making sure that we can keep in touch with our customers about existing orders and new products.
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to promote our business to existing and former customers.
See ‘Marketing’ below for further information.For our legitimate interests or a those of a third party, i.e. to maintain our accreditations so we can demonstrate we operate at the highest standards.
Depending on the circumstances:
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
In other cases, for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to protect, realise or grow the value in our business and assets.
Certain personal data we collect is treated as a special category to which additional protections apply under data protection law:
personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, philosophical beliefs or trade union membership
genetic data
biometric data (when used to uniquely identify an individual)
data concerning health, sex life or sexual orientation.
Where we process such special category personal data, we will also ensure we are permitted to do so under data protection laws.
See ‘Who we share your personal data with’ for further information on the steps we will take to protect your personal data where it needs to be shared with others.
Marketing
We may use your personal data to send you updates (by email, text message, telephone or post) about our products and or services, including new products and or services.
We have a legitimate interest in using your personal data for marketing purposes (see above ‘How and why we use your personal data’). This means we do not usually need your consent to send you marketing information. However, where consent is needed, we will ask for this separately and clearly.
You have the right to opt out of receiving marketing communications at any time by:
contacting us at hello@colekhan.co.uk
using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in emails or ‘STOP’ number in texts
updating your marketing preferences on any marketing publications
We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you ask us to provide further products and/or services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.
We will always treat your personal data with the utmost respect and never sell or share it with other organisations for marketing purposes.
For more information on your rights to object at any time to your personal data being used for marketing purposes, see ‘Your rights’ below.
Who we share your personal data with
We routinely share personal data with:
third parties we use to help deliver our products and services to you, eg payment service providers, warehouses and delivery companies
other third parties we use to help us run our business, eg marketing agencies or website hosts and website analytics providers
our bank
the court and Tribunal service
addressing correspondence and related documents to other parties and opponents in any litigation,
Government agencies where relevant to the work we are doing for you
maintaining the financial and other personal information we are required to keep on clients under the professional rules we are subject to and by law including our obligations to HMRC.
Your personal data will be stored using a cloud-based case management software called LEAP. You should be aware that LEAP’s infrastructure is maintained by cloud-platform provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) and your data may be held outside of the UK and EU. LEAP uses multiple layers of security controls (software, physical and process based) to protect our client data. Further information about LEAP’s security and agreement with AWS is available on request.
expert witnesses, other professional advisers such as accountants and costs draftsman, consultants, our regulators and our bank if they wish to ascertain the source of monies held in our client account.
The primary legal bases which are relevant to the work we undertake for you are in order that we can satisfactorily perform the contract we have with you and also so that we can protect the interests of our professional indemnity insurers through maintaining suitable records. We are required by law to retain certain data including identity and address details in order that we can comply with the Government’s anti-money laundering controls.
We only allow those organisations to handle your personal data if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal data. We also impose contractual obligations on them to ensure they can only use your personal data to provide services to us and to you.
We or the third parties mentioned above may occasionally also need to share personal data with:
external auditors, eg in relation to the audit of our accounts, in which case the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations
professional advisors (such as lawyers and other advisors), in which case the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations
law enforcement agencies, courts, tribunals and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
other parties in connection with a significant corporate transaction or restructuring, including a merger, acquisition, asset sale, initial public offering or in the event of our insolvency—usually, information will be anonymised but this may not always be possible, however, the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations
If you would like more information about who we share our data with and why, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ below).
We will not share your personal data with any other third party.
How long your personal data will be kept
We will not keep your personal data for longer than we need it for the purpose for which it is used. For example, as long as you remain an active client of the firm.
Different retention periods apply for different types of personal data. Further details on this are available on request.
If you stop using your account we will delete or anonymise your account data after seven years.
Following the end of the of the relevant retention period, we will delete or anonymise your personal data.
Transferring your personal data out of the UK and EEA
The EEA, UK and other countries outside the EEA and the UK have differing data protection laws, some of which may provide lower levels of protection of privacy.
It is sometimes necessary for us to share your personal data to countries outside the UK and EEA. In those cases we will comply with applicable UK and EEA laws designed to ensure the privacy of your personal data.
For example we will transfer your personal data to:
a cloud-based case management software called LEAP. You should be aware that LEAP’s infrastructure is maintained by cloud-platform provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) and your data may be held outside of the UK and EU. LEAP uses multiple layers of security controls (software, physical and process based) to protect our client data. Further information about LEAP’s security and agreement with AWS is available on request.
As we are based in the UK we will also transfer your personal data from the EEA to the UK.
We will also ensure all protections required by applicable UK and EEA laws are in place before transferring personal data to any organisation or body (or its subordinate bodies) governed by public international law or set up by, or on the basis of, an agreement between two or more countries (international organisations).
Under data protection laws, we can only transfer your personal data to a country outside the UK/EEA or to an international organisation where:
in the case of transfers subject to UK data protection law, the UK government has decided the particular country ensures an adequate level of protection of personal data (known as an ‘adequacy regulation’) further to Article 45 of the UK GDPR. A list of countries the UK currently has adequacy regulations in relation to is available here.
in the case of transfers subject to EEA data protection laws, the European Commission has decided that the particular country ensures an adequate level of protection of personal data (known as an ‘adequacy decision’) further to Article 45 of the EU GDPR. A list of countries the European Commission has currently made adequacy decisions in relation to is available here and includes. In addition, EEA data protection laws provide that transfers of personal data to the UK are lawful under an interim arrangement (UK interim bridge) while the European Commission seeks to determine if the UK can be granted a longer-term adequacy decision
there are appropriate safeguards in place, together with enforceable rights and effective legal remedies for you, or
a specific exception applies under relevant data protection law.
Where we transfer your personal data outside the UK we do so on the basis of an adequacy regulation. In the event we cannot or choose not to continue to rely on either of those mechanisms at any time we will not transfer your personal data outside the UK unless we can do so on the basis of an alternative mechanism or exception provided by UK data protection law.
Where we transfer your personal data outside the EEA we do so on the basis of the UK interim bridge or an adequacy decision. In the event we cannot or choose not to continue to rely on either of those mechanisms at any time we will not transfer your personal data outside the EEA unless we can do so on the basis of an alternative mechanism or exception provided by applicable data protection law.
Cookies and other tracking technologies
A cookie is a small text file which is placed onto your device (eg computer, smartphone or other electronic device) when you use our website. We use cookies and on our website. These details help us recognise you and your device and store some information about your preferences or past actions.
For further information on cookies and [insert details of any similar technologies, eg web beacons, action tags, single-pixel gifs, our use of ‘cookies’ and/or to relevant similar technologies, when we will request your consent before placing them and how to disable them, please see our insert link to Cookie Policy.
Your rights
You generally have the following rights, which you can usually exercise free of charge:
Access to a copy of your personal data: The right to be provided with a copy of your personal data
Correction (also known as rectification): The right to require us to correct any mistakes in your personal data
Erasure (also known as the right to be forgotten): The right to require us to delete your personal data—in certain situations
Restriction of use: The right to require us to restrict use of your personal data in certain circumstances, e.g. if you contest the accuracy of the data
Data portability: The right to receive the personal data you provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and/or transmit that data to a third party—in certain situations
To object to use: The right to object:
at any time to your personal data being used for direct marketing (including profiling)
in certain other situations to our continued use of your personal data, e.g. where we use your personal data for our legitimate interests.
Not to be subject to decisions without human involvement:
The right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing (including profiling) that produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you
We do not make any such decisions based on data collected by our website.
For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply and circumstances in which they do not apply, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ below). You may also find it helpful to refer to the guidance from the UK’s Information Commissioner on your rights under the UK GDPR.
You also have a right of access under data protection legislation to the personal data that we hold about you. If you would like to make a request to know about the personal data we hold on you please let us know, preferably in writing and addressed to Emilie Cole, Partner by email emiliecole@colekhan.co.uk or by post to Cole Khan Solicitors LLP, 5 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1LG stating “data subject access request”.
If you are unhappy about the way we are managing your data you have a right to object to the Information Commissioner at Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF (tel: 0303 123 1113) https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint Please also see your rights to complain as explained in our Complaints Policy.
Keeping your personal data secure
We have appropriate security measures to prevent personal data from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed unlawfully. We limit access to your personal data to those who have a genuine business need to access it.
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.
If you want detailed information from Get Safe Online on how to protect your information and your computers and devices against fraud, identity theft, viruses and many other online problems, please visit www.getsafeonline.org. Get Safe Online is supported by HM Government and leading businesses.
Changes to this privacy policy
We may change this privacy policy from time to time—when we make significant changes we will take steps to inform you, for example via by including a prominent link to a description of those changes on our website for a reasonable period or by other means, such as email.