When we say 'Brodies', 'we' or 'us' in this statement, it means Brodies LLP. Brodies LLP is the 'controller' of your personal information.

We collect, use and store different types of personal information about you, which we have grouped together as follows:

Types of personal information Description
Identity Data ID information including your name, marital status, title, date of birth, gender and National Insurance Number
Contact Data Where you live and how to contact you
Financial Data Your financial position, status and history, including bank details and credit rating
Contractual Data Information obtained by providing legal services to you
Communications Data What we learn about you from letters, emails, call recordings and conversations between us
Social Relationships Data Details about your family, friends and other relationships
Publicly Available Data Details about you that are publicly available, such as on Companies House or elsewhere on the internet
Marketing Data Details about your preferences in receiving marketing communications from us and our third parties
Consents Data Any permissions, consents or preferences that you give us
Usage Data Information about how you use our website, products and services

How we use your information

The table below outlines how we use your personal information and our reasons. Where these reasons include legitimate interests, we explain what these legitimate interests are.

What we use your information for Our reasons Our legitimate interests
  • To send marketing communications to you
  • Consent (where provided through our preference centre)
  • Soft opt-in (i.e. where we have an existing relationship that allows us to send electronic marketing communications to you on an opt-out basis)
  • Legitimate interests
  • To promote our goods and services and keep you up to date with relevant news and developments
  • For other marketing and business development activities, including to seek new business, promote our business and events management
  • Consent (where provided through our preference centre)
  • Soft opt-in (i.e. where we have an existing relationship that allows us to send electronic marketing communications to you on an opt-out basis)
  • Legitimate interests
  • To develop our relationship with you and others
  • To attract new business, including bidding and tendering
  • To promote our business
  • To tell you about new legal services and developments that might interest you
  • To seek your consent if we need it to contact you
  • For events management
  • Consent (where provided through our preference centre)
  • Soft opt-in (i.e. where we have an existing relationship that allows us to send electronic marketing communications to you on an opt-out basis)
  • Legitimate interests
  • To hold events, such as seminars or corporate hospitality to promote our business and its services
  • To manage the systems that contain our marketing database
  • To manage marketing preferences and keep our records up to date
  • Legitimate interests
  • For data management for marketing and business development purposes
  • To improve our systems and services
  • To seek feedback
  • To seek your consent when we need it to contact you
  • For data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes
  • For analytical purposes relating to electronic marketing communications that we issue (for more information on our use of email tracking please see our Cookies Statement)
  • Legitimate interests
  • Consent (where required by law)
  • To understand how our communications are used and what content is accessed by those who receive them
  • Data management for marketing and business development purposes
  • To assess which of our services may be of interest to you and to tell you about them
  • Improving our systems and services

Marketing communications

You can update your preferences at any time by visiting our preference centre.

Where you have provided us with your contact details in the course of signing up to attend a meeting, conference or other event we will send you marketing communications in relation to the products or services that we offer and which we think you might be interested in.

If you opt out at the point we collect your details we will not contact you again with unsolicited marketing communications unless you ask us to, although we will still communicate with you for other purposes in the normal course of any other relationship we may have with you. For example, we will still send you communications about the event you have signed up for.


Where we collect your personal information from

We may collect personal information about you from the following sources:

  • Directly from you
  • Organisations or other people who know you
  • Events companies
  • Reputable marketing companies
  • Publicly available sources
  • The internet and social networking sites such as LinkedIn
  • Intermediaries we know and with whom you deal

Who we share your information with

We only share your personal information with the following third parties:

  • Our agents and service providers who we use to help us with marketing and providing legal services, such as Workshare Limited (trading as Litera), Peppermint Technology, Microsoft, Aderant and Google Analytics
  • Event organisers (if we are organising an external event which you are attending)
  • Relevant regulators, including the Information Commissioner's Office in the event of a personal data breach
  • (a) Subsidiaries or affiliates of Brodies LLP and/or (b) Brodies & Co (Trustees) Limited and any of its subsidiaries or affiliates 
  • Potential or actual purchasers of any part of our business or assets, or other third parties in the context of a possible transfer or restructuring of our business

How long we keep your personal information

Where we use your personal information for marketing purposes we will retain your personal information for so long as we have your consent to do so (where we use your personal information with your consent in order to send you marketing messages) or, in other cases, for so long as we have a legitimate business or commercial reason to do so (unless you ask us to stop).

Where you withdraw your consent to receiving marketing materials or otherwise ask us to stop marketing we will add your details to a suppression list which ensures that we remember not to contact you again.

For further information as to how to withdraw your consent or to ask us to stop other marketing activities see Withdrawing consent using your information and Objecting to how we may use your information in our privacy statement.

If you withdraw your consent to receiving marketing materials or ask us to stop our marketing activities, we will still communicate with you for other purposes in the normal course of any other relationship we may have with you.

International transfers

We work with agents and service providers who we use to help us with marketing and providing legal services, such as Workshare Limited (trading as Litera), Peppermint Technology, Microsoft, Aderant and Google Analytics, who may host your personal information on our behalf outside the United Kingdom or be supported by teams outside the United Kingdom.

If your personal information is to be processed outside the United Kingdom, then we will usually use service providers and agents in countries or territories that are recognised under data protection law as providing an adequate level of protection for personal information (an approved destination) but we may process personal information in other countries or territories as well. In all cases where we process personal information outside the United Kingdom or an approved destination then we will use appropriate safeguards in accordance with the requirements of data protection law, such as a contract with the recipient that requires them to protect that information to the same standards as if the information were being processed within the United Kingdom.

The safeguards we use will depend on the location of the recipient, the function they are performing and the personal information being transferred.

Complaints

We seek to resolve directly all complaints about how we handle personal information. If you have a complaint about how your personal information has been handled, please follow our complaints process outlined here.

In your complaint, please include your name and contact details, whether you are a client or not, the nature of the complaint and any relevant documents and background information to help us make appropriate enquiries. Please also tell us the outcome you are seeking. Please note that in appropriate cases, we may need to ask you to verify your identity as part of this process, especially if you are not an existing client.

If you submitted a complaint, we will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within 2 working days and provide you with a unique customer number to quote in future correspondence.

We aim to provide you with a substantive response to your complaint within 28 days of receiving all of the information we need to understand and investigate with your complaint. If we are unable to respond within 28 days we will advise you of this as soon as possible and explain why it has not been possible to respond within that timescale.

If you remain dissatisfied, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK's Information Commissioner's Office: