Privacy

AMT Lawyers offers a broad range of legal services to private individuals and small and medium-sized businesses, including (but not limited to) personal injury, uninsured loss recovery, family law, immigration and conveyancing throughout England and Wales.

As an essential part of our business, we collect and manage client and non-client data. We are committed to protecting and respecting clients’ and non-clients’ privacy and rights.

This Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) explains our approach to any personal information that we collect from you or which we have obtained about you from a third party and the purposes for which we process your personal information. It also sets out your rights in respect of our processing of your personal information.

This Privacy Policy will inform you of the nature of your personal information that is processed by us and how you can request that we delete, update, transfer and/or provide you with access to it.

This Privacy Policy is intended to assist you in making informed decisions when using the Site and our Services and/or to understand how your personal information may be processed by us as a result of providing the Services to third parties or when you apply to work at AMT Lawyers. Please take a moment to read and understand it.

Please also note that this Privacy Policy only applies to the use of your personal information obtained by us.

How to contact us

If you have any comments or queries regarding our use of your data, please contact our Data Protection Officer, Rizwan Nawid email: rizwan.nawid@amtlawyers.co.uk or write to our Data Protection Officer at

Compliance Department

AMT Lawyers
26 Wellington Street
St Johns
Blackburn
BB1 8AF

What information do we collect about you?

We may collect personal information from you in the course of our business, including through your use of our Site, when you contact or request information from us including request made by you via social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, when you engage our legal or other services or as a result of your relationship with one or more of our staff or clients.

Our primary goal in collecting personal information from you is to help us:

• verify your identity
• deliver our Services
• enforce our agreements with you
• investigate or settle inquiries or dispute
• improve, develop and market new Services
• comply with any applicable law, court order, other judicial process, or the requirements of a regulator
• process and respond to any complaints
• carry out requests made by you on the Site or in relation to our Services
• ensure the billing of any acquired services and obtain payment
• protect the rights, property or safety of us or third parties, including our other clients and users of the Site or our Services
• with recruitment purposes, and
• Use as otherwise required or permitted by law.

To undertake these goals, we may process the following personal information:

If you are a visitor to the Site:

• • Name, contact information, email address, telephone number
  • Other information relevant to the provision of Services.

If you are an individual client in receipt of our Services or prospective individual client:

• • Name and job title.
  • Contact information including the company you work for and email address, where provided.
  • Payment information.
  • Information that you provide to us as part of us providing the Services to you, which depends on the nature of your instructions to AMT Lawyers.
  • Relevant information as required by Know Your Client and/or Anti-Money Laundering regulations and as part of our client intake procedures. This may possibly include evidence of source of funds, at the outset of and possibly from time to time throughout our relationship with clients, which we may request and/or obtain from third party sources. The sources for such verification may comprise documentation which we request from you or through the use of online sources or both.
  • Information you provide to us for the purposes of attending meetings and events, including dietary requirements which may reveal information about your health or religious beliefs.
  • Other information relevant to provision of Services.
  • Information in relation to other third parties instructed either by our own clients or other persons or companies involved with us providing the Services to our client (for instance other law firms, experts etc.).

If you are an individual whose personal information is processed by us as a result of providing the Services to others (including individual clients and corporate clients) we will process a variety of different personal information depending on the Services provided.

This may include personal information relating, without limitation, to any of our corporate clients’ or prospective clients’ officers or personnel, any opponent or vendor or purchaser personal information including personal information relating to their legal advisors, other advisors or personnel as relevant or similar.

This is a non-exhaustive list which is reflective of the varied nature of the personal information processed as part of a law firm providing legal services.

If you are a potential recruit to join AMT Lawyers:

• Name and job title.
• Contact information including email address.
• Curriculum vitae, including your age and/or gender if you provide it to us, your education, employment history and similar matters and similar information that you may provide to us.
• Other information relevant to potential recruitment to AMT Lawyers.
• Process applications for employment

How will we use the information?

We may use your information for the following purposes:

• Fulfilment of Services
  We collect and maintain personal information that you voluntarily submit to us during your use of the Site and/or our Services to enable us to perform the Services. Please note also that our Terms of Business apply when we provide the Services.

What is our legal basis?

It is necessary for us to process your information to perform our obligations in accordance with any contract that we may have with you. It is in our legitimate interest or a third party’s legitimate interest to use your personal information in such a way to ensure that we provide the very best client service we can to you or others.

• Client services
  Our Site uses various user interfaces to allow you to request information about our Services including electronic enquiry forms and a telephone enquiry service. Contact information may be requested in each case, together with details of other personal information that is relevant to your Service enquiry. This information is used in order to enable us to respond to your requests.

What is our legal basis?
It is in our legitimate interest or a third party’s legitimate interest to use your personal information in such a way to ensure that we provide the very best client service we can to you or others.

• Business administration and legal compliance
  We use your personal information for the following business administration and legal compliance purposes:
  • to comply with our legal obligations (including any Know Your Client or Anti-Money Laundering or Anti-Bribery, conflicts or similar obligations including, but without limitation, maintaining regulatory insurance);
  • to enforce our legal rights;
  • to protect the rights of third parties; and
  • in connection with a business transaction such as a merger, or a restructuring, or sale.

What is our legal basis?
Where we use your personal information in connection with a business transition, to enforce our legal rights, or to protect the rights of third parties it is in our or a third party’s legitimate interest to do so. For all other purposes described in this section, it is our legal obligation to use your personal information to comply with any legal obligations imposed upon us.

• Recruitment
  We use your personal information for the following recruitment purposes:
  • To assess your suitability for any position for which you may apply at AMT Lawyers to include any business support or services role whether such application has been received by us online, via email or by hard copy or an in-person application.
  • To review AMT Lawyers equal opportunity profile in accordance with applicable legislation to ensure that AMT Lawyers does not discriminate on the grounds of gender, race, ethnic origin, age, religion, sexual orientation, disability or any other basis covered by local legislation. All employment related decisions are made entirely on merit.
  • To fulfil contractual obligations this includes taking action before entering into a contract.

What is our legal basis?

Where we use your personal information in connection with recruitment it will be in connection with us taking steps at your request to enter a contract we may have with you or it is in our legitimate interest to use personal information in such a way to ensure that we can make the best recruitment decisions for AMT Lawyers. We will not process any special category data except where we are able to do so under applicable legislation or with your explicit consent. You date may be shared with third parties i.e. Disclosure and Barring Service, HR software providers and Payroll Accountants.

What is our legal basis to use or process your personal information

It is necessary for us to use your personal information;

• To perform our obligations in accordance with any contract that we may have with you.
• It is in our legitimate interest or a third party’s legitimate interest to use personal information in such a way to ensure that we provide the Services in the best way that we can.
• It is our legal obligation to use your personal information to comply with any legal obligations imposed upon us

Who do we share your personal information with?

We may also share personal information with a variety of the following categories of third parties as necessary:

• Our professional advisers such as lawyers and accountants.
• Third parties engaged in the course of the services we provide to clients such as counsel, arbitrators, mediators, clerks, witnesses, cost draftsmen, court, opposing party and their lawyers, document review platforms and experts such as tax advisors or values.
• Third party insurers/ATEI Insurer
• Estate agents/mortgage brokers/mortgage companies/ recommenders
• Government or regulatory authorities.
• Professional indemnity or other relevant insurers.
• Regulators/tax authorities/corporate registries.
• Third parties to whom we outsource certain services such as, without limitation, document processing and translation services, confidential waste disposal, IT systems or software providers, IT Support service providers, document and information storage providers.
• Third party service providers to assist us with client insight analytics, such as Google Analytics.
• Third party postal or courier providers who assist us in delivering our postal marketing campaigns to you, or delivering documents related to a matter.

Please note this list is non-exhaustive and there may be other examples where we need to share with other parties in order to provide the Services as effectively as we can

Your rights

You have the following rights in relation to the personal information we hold about you:

Right to access

You have the right to ask us for a copy of any personal data that we hold about you. This is known as a “Subject Access Request”. Except in exceptional circumstances (which we would discuss and agree with you in advance), you can obtain this information at no cost after 25th May 2018. We will send you a copy of the information within 30 days of your request.

Please Note – A Subject Access Request is not the same as a request for your file of papers and whether you are entitled to your file of papers will be bound by the terms of our contract or agreement with you and we can advise you further on that. We may be entitled to exercise a lien over your file of papers when our costs are unpaid and be able to charge you for copies of information that you have already been provided with.

To make Subject Access Request, please email or write to our Data Protection Officer Mr Rizwan Nawid, at the details set out above.

Right to rectification

If the personal information we hold about you is inaccurate or incomplete, you are entitled to request to have it rectified. If you are entitled to rectification and if we’ve shared your personal information with others, we’ll let them know about the rectification where possible. If you ask us, where possible and lawful to do so, we’ll also tell you who we’ve shared your personal information with so that you can contact them directly.

Right to be forgotten

You can ask that we erase all personal information that we hold about you. Where it is appropriate that we comply, your request will be fully actioned within 30 days. Please note that there may be very good reasons why we cannot comply, for instance where we need to hold your file of papers electronically after conclusion of your matter for a statutory period e.g. limitation period. For further information please contact our Data Protection Officer, who will be able to help you and advise you on your case.

You have the right to object to:

• The continued use of your data for any purpose listed above for which consent is identified as the lawful basis for processing i.e. you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.
• The continued use of your data for any purpose listed above for which the lawful basis of processing is that it has been deemed legitimate.

(e) Right to restrict processing

If you wish us to restrict the use of your data because (i) you think it is inaccurate but this will take time to validate, (ii) you believe our data processing is unlawful but you do not want your data erased, (iii) you want us to retain your data in order to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim, or (iv) you wish to object to the processing of your data, but we have yet to determine whether this is appropriate, please contact our Data Protection Officer.

Right to data portability

You have the right, in certain circumstances, to obtain personal information you’ve provided us with (in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format) and to reuse it elsewhere or to ask us to transfer this to a third party of your choice. Please contact our Data Protection Officer.

Your right to withdraw consent
If we rely on your consent (or explicit consent) as our legal basis for processing your personal information, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time.

Your right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority
If you have a concern about any aspect of our privacy practices, including the way we’ve handled your personal information, you can report it to the relevant Supervisory Authority.

Please note that some of these rights may be limited where we have an overriding interest or legal obligation to continue to process the data or where data may be exempt from disclosure due to reasons of legal professional privilege or professional secrecy obligations.

How long will we retain information for?

For Service provision to any client, we will retain relevant personal information for at least six years from the date of our last interaction with that client and in compliance with our obligations under the EU General Data Protection Regulation or similar legislation around the world, or for longer as we are required to do so according to our regulatory obligations or professional indemnity obligations. We may then destroy such files without further notice or liability.

For visitors to the Site, we will retain relevant personal information for at least three years from the date of our last interaction with you and in compliance with our obligations under the EU General Data Protection Regulation or similar legislation around the world, or for longer if we are required to do so according to our regulatory obligations or professional indemnity obligations.

If personal information is only useful for a short period e.g. for specific marketing campaigns we may delete it.

Overseas transfers

To deliver services to you, it is sometimes necessary for us to share your personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA), e.g.:

•with your and our service providers located outside the EEA;

•if you are based outside the EEA;

•where there is an international dimension to the matter in which we are advising you.

These transfers are subject to special rules under European and UK data protection law.

If you would like further information please contact us.

Data privacy and security

We are committed to keeping the personal information provided to us secure and we have implemented appropriate information security policies, rules and technical measures to protect the personal information that we have under our control from unauthorised access, improper use or disclosure, unauthorised modification and unlawful destruction or accidental loss.

All of our partners, employees, consultants, workers and data processors (i.e. those who process your personal information on our behalf, for the purposes listed above), who have access to, and are associated with the processing of personal information, are obliged to respect the confidentiality of such personal information.

Cookies

Cookies are text files placed by our website onto your computer. They collect standard internet log and visitor behavior information. Our website only uses session cookies which are temporary cookies that remain in the cookie file of your browser until you leave the site. Cookies enable us to improve our website by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. We do not collect any personal data by using cookies.

You can set your browser so it does not accept cookies. For further information please visit the websites www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time. To ensure that you are always aware of how we use your personal information we will update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect any changes to our use of your personal information. We may also make changes as required to comply with changes in applicable law or regulatory requirements. Where it is practicable, we will notify you by email of any significant changes. However, we encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically to be informed of how we use your personal information.