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 |
| Transactional Data | Details about payments to and from you and other details about services you purchase from us |
| 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 |
| Publicly Available Data | Details about you that are publicly available, such as on Companies House or elsewhere on the internet |
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 |
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Where we collect your personal information from
We may collect personal information about you from the following sources:
- Directly from you
- Third parties who may be involved in matters relevant to the complaint or legal claim
- Legal, other professional advisors and enquiry agents
- Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, the Law Society of Scotland and the Solicitors Regulation Authority
Who we share your information with
We may share your personal information with the following third parties:
- Our insurers
- Agents and service providers that we use during the course of managing your complaint or legal claim
- The police and other law enforcement agencies
- Relevant regulators, including the Information Commissioner's Office in the event of a personal data breach, the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, the Law Society of Scotland and the Solicitors Regulation Authority
- (a) Subsidiaries or affiliates of Brodies LLP and (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
If you choose not to give your personal information
If you choose not to give us your personal information, it may delay or prevent us from being able to comply with our own legal obligations. It may also result in us being unable to, or refusing to, deal effectively with your complaint.
Automated decisions
We do not envisage taking any decisions about you based solely on automated processing (i.e. without human involvement), which have a legal or similarly significant effect on you.
How long we keep your personal information
We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
Where you make a complaint or legal claim against us or any member of our staff we shall retain your personal information in relation to all matters relevant to that complaint or claim until the complaint or claim has been finally disposed of and any other matters which may give rise to the prospect of further claims have been disposed of or are time barred. The time periods concerned will vary according to the circumstances.
International transfers
We will only send your personal information outside the United Kingdom:
- where you ask us to
- where it is necessary to respond to your complaint
- where we need to do so in order to comply with a legal duty incumbent on us or you
- where the transfer is necessary for important reasons of public interest
- where the transfer is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims
- where we are using a supplier or service provider (including an expert or other professional) outside the United Kingdom.
Some of the IT systems or services that we use are hosted or provided from outside the United Kingdom or may be supported by teams located outside the United Kingdom. Where this is the case, we will usually use IT systems or services where personal information is hosted in or accessed only from 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. We may also engage experts or other professionals or service providers who host or access personal information outside the United Kingdom or an approved destination. 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:
- Online: https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/
- By phone: 0303 123 1113
- By post: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 5AF