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
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
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 communicate with you in the course of our professional relationship with you
  • Contractual performance
  • Legitimate interests
  • To provide our clients with legal services
  • To obtain services from you for the benefit of our clients
  • To provide legal services for the benefit of you or your clients
  • To fulfil our contractual obligations
  • For marketing and business development activities, including seeking new business, promoting our business and events management
  • Consent (where provided through our preference centre)
  • Legitimate interests
  • To develop our relationship with you and others
  • To attract new business, including bidding and tendering
  • To promote our business
  • To hold events, such as seminars or corporate hospitality to promote our business and its services
  • To seek your consent if we need it to contact you
  • For press and media relations
  • Legitimate interests
  • Consent
  • To contact you to publicise our work through press releases and other published material, subject to obligations of confidentiality
  • To run our business in an efficient and proper way. This includes managing financial administration, business capability, planning, communications, corporate governance and audit
  • To improve our products and services and develop new ones.
  • Legal obligation
  • Contractual performance
  • Legitimate interests
  • To manage our relationship with you and fulfilling our responsibilities generally
  • To improve our efficiency and provide you or your clients with new or improved products and services.

Where we collect your personal information from

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

  • Directly from you or your website
  • Companies that introduce you to us
  • Public registrars and public information repositories, such as Companies House and Registers of Scotland.
  • The internet and social networking sites such as LinkedIn
  • Other intermediaries such as (other) professional firms who know you

Who we share your information with

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

  • Clients, prospective clients and other intermediaries
  • Other solicitors, intermediaries, expert witnesses, courts, adjudicators, arbiters, third party payees and other parties with whom it is necessary for us to engage in the course of the provision of our legal services
  • Public registrars and public information repositories, such as Companies House and Registers of Scotland.
  • Subcontractors working within Brodies
  • Relevant regulators, including the Information Commissioner's Office in the event of a personal data breach
  • The police and other law enforcement agencies
  • Other companies or service providers who support our business and the provision of our services
  • (a) Subsidiaries or affiliates of Brodies LLP and (b) Brodies & Co (Trustees) Limited and any of its subsidiaries or affiliates
  • Journalists and other members of the media
  • 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

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.

In general terms, as an intermediary, we will hold your personal information so long as you remain an intermediary or other business contact that provides services that are complementary to ours.

In relation to matters in which we act for clients, we follow the guidelines issued by our regulators concerning the retention of client files which means that we will retain those files (and your personal information within them) for a basic minimum period of 10 years. In some areas of practice, such as real estate or wills, trusts and executries, the nature of the matters on which we are instructed, may require us to hold our client files (and your personal information) for longer periods because the time periods during which legal claims can arise are much longer than 10 years.

International transfers

We will only send your personal information outside the United Kingdom:

  • where you ask us to
  • where you are based outside the United Kingdom
  • where that is required to provide the legal services that we have been instructed to provide – for example, where we are providing our services to a client or another law firm or professional advisor located outside the United Kingdom 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 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 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: