Lockharts/Law LLP Privacy Policy

About us

Lockharts Law LLP (“we”,“us”,“our”) is a Limited Liability Partnership registered in Scotland under Partnership No. SO306639 having its registered office at 12 Beresford Terrace, Ayr, KA7 2EG. We are regulated by the Law Society of Scotland and a full list of Partners is available at our office. You can contact us at the above address, addressing any request to the Data Protection Officer. You can also reach us by email at info@lockhartslaw.com.

Purpose

Our privacy policy sets out our approach to the collection and use of your personal data which we have collected from you or which we have obtained about you from a third party. It also sets out what rights you have in respect of accessing or changing your personal data. We will be a “controller” of the personal information that you provide to us when you instruct us to act on your behalf.

What we need

When you become our client, 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. This information can be gathered in writing, by email, in person, by telephone and at meetings with us. We may ask you for additional personal information during the course of our client / solicitor relationship, which shall be collected, stored and used in accordance with this privacy notice. Information may also be collected from you where you are registering to attend events or subscribe to publications etc issued by us.

We also collect, store and use the following personal information relating to you when you become our client from:-

Agents, third parties and relatives where you may be involved in a matter we are instructed in for example as a trustee, beneficiary, buyer or seller.
Other sources of referral such as solicitors, accountants and IFAs.
From your doctor
Online public sources or registers such as Registers of Scotland, Companies House.
ID verification and compliance services.

Why we need your personal information - contractual purposes

We need to collect our clients' personal information so that we can perform our service agreement with you. We will use our clients' personal information to:

provide you with legal advice, including communicating with you by email, letter and/or telephone, etc.
represent you as your solicitors in connection with your instructions.
respond to and communicate with clients regarding your questions, comments, support needs or complaints, concerns or allegations in relation to complaints and disciplinary procedures, for example, we will use your personal information to investigate your complaint, take disciplinary action, etc.

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 purposes

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

promote our services by sending clients communications with information for upcoming events and legal updates; and
invite our clients as guests to our events.

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 us. If we comply with your objection, this may affect our ability to undertake the tasks above for the benefit of you as a client.

Why we need your personal information - legal obligations

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

the Law Society of Scotland requirements for solicitors; and
the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds Regulations 2017.

Other uses of your personal information

We may ask you if we can process your personal information for additional purposes. Where we do so, we will provide you with an additional privacy notice with information on how we will use your information for these 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. Such organisations include for example - the Law Society of Scotland, HMRC, etc.

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

We 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 on our electronic filing system and our servers based in the UK and is accessed by our staff for the purposes set out above.

How long we keep your personal information

We do not hold information for longer than necessary.

We have a data retention policy that sets out the periods for retaining and reviewing all information that we hold. This sets out different retention periods and you can request a copy by contacting us at info@lockhartslaw.com. In some cases the Law Society of Scotland which regulates us recommends minimum periods of record retention and we comply with those.

Your rights

You can exercise any of the following rights by writing to us at Lockharts/Law, 12 Beresford Terrace, Ayr, KA7 2EG.

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 us 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