At Donaldson Dunstall we are committed to respecting the privacy of all visitors to our website, our clients and contacts. Please read the following privacy policy to understand how we use and protect the information that you provide to us or that we obtain or hold about you and to understand what your rights are in relation to information that we hold. This policy applies to information about living identifiable individuals only.

What information do we process?

From our website

You may choose to provide personal information to us when you register with the website e.g. to request that we contact you. You may be asked to provide certain information about yourself including your name, title, postal address, telephone number and/or email address.

Automatically

We do not currently make use of cookies. In the future we may use them to collect information automatically about your usage of our websites using cookies and other technology (for full details of what we might use in the future, see the section below on "Cookies"). To that effect, we might use your IP address (a series of numbers that identifies a computer on the internet) to collect, among other things, internet traffic data and data regarding your browser type and computer. If you do not want to receive cookies, you may reject them by using your browser settings (for help with how to do this see the section below on "Cookies").

For legal work

If you seek an estimate of costs for legal work or become a client of the firm, we will also need information to confirm your identity e.g. your date of birth, your address, and contact information for you and other parties to the matter. The information that we need will be explained to you by our lawyers and/or set out in our letter of engagement depending on the nature of your matter.

From third parties

We may also receive information about you from third parties such as estate agents, accountants, banks, surveyors, medical professionals, courts, regulatory bodies and other advisors and specialists related to your matter. Our clients and matter contacts may also provide us with information about you if you are involved in a transaction or dispute with one of our clients or have a connection with them such as being a tenant or employee of a client.

How do we use this information?

We will use your information for the specific purpose(s) for which it has been provided to or collected by us e.g.:

We also use your information to administer, support, improve and develop our business generally and to enforce our legal rights.

We may also use the information that we collect about you for marketing purposes e.g.:

Information gathered through cookies and similar technologies are used to measure and analyse information on visits to our websites, to tailor the websites to make them better for visitors and to improve technical performance. We will not use the data to identify you personally or to make any decisions about you.

Processing grounds

We must have a lawful basis for processing your information; this will vary on the circumstances of how and why we have your information but typical examples include:

If we process any special categories of information i.e. information revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs or trade union membership, processing of genetic or biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying individuals, health data, or data concerning your sex life or sexual orientation, we must have a further lawful basis for the processing. This may include:

Marketing

If you become a client of the firm, we may use your personal information to send you information that we think may be of interest to you or your business. This is within our legitimate interests as a law firm to use your information in this way.

You will be given an opportunity to tell us whether or not you wish to receive direct marketing materials and communications from us either at the time you submit or provide your details to us and/or within the communication itself.

If you do not wish to receive any direct marketing material or communications after you submit or provide your details, please contact us using the details below (stating UNSUBSCRIBE in the heading of any email message) indicating if you do not wish to be contacted for one or more of these marketing purposes and/or via particular forms of communication e.g. email or telephone. Please note that the preferences that you state will override any registrations you or your organisation may have with the relevant preference organisations (such as the telephone preference services).

If you change your mind about being contacted by us in the future, or change address, or if any information that we hold about you is inaccurate or out-of-date, please let us know by: emailing us or writing to us. We may need to check your identity before amending your information.

Automated Processing/Profiling

We do not undertake any automated processing or data profiling.

Disclosure of your information

Some of the information you provide to us will be held on our computers in the UK and will only be accessed by or given to our staff working in the UK. Some of the information you provide to us may be transferred to, stored and processed by third party organisations which process data for us and on our behalf. These third parties may be based (or store or process information) in the UK or elsewhere including outside of the EEA. As with many law firms, these third parties may include third party IT platforms (including cloud based platforms), suppliers of administrative and support services and suppliers of other specialist products.

We may also transfer your information to other organisations or professional advisers with whom we are working on client matters or to whom we are referring you for additional or separate advice.

We may also be obliged to disclose data under certain laws or by court order or other competent regulatory body or may be permitted to disclose it under applicable data protection laws.

We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

Protection of your information

We have in place administrative, technical and physical measures on our website and internally designed to guard against and minimise the risk of loss, misuse or unauthorised processing or disclosure of the personal information that we hold.

Where we transfer information to third parties to enable them to process it on our behalf, we ensure that the providers meet or exceed the relevant legal or regulatory requirements for transferring data to them and keeping it secure.

We will also ensure that where information is transferred to a country or international organisation outside of the UK / EEA, we will comply with the relevant legal rules governing such transfers.

We keep your personal information no longer than is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. Information for clients is provided in our engagement letter and terms of business including details on how we keep secure personal data received from clients about their tenants, employees, third parties or similar individuals.

Your rights

You have certain rights in relation to your personal information, although those rights will not apply in all cases or to all information that we hold about you. For example, we may need to continue to hold and process information to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights. We will tell you if the rights will not apply if this is the case when you contact us.

You have the right to request that we:

We will respond to your request (including providing information on whether the rights apply in the particular circumstances) within the applicable statutory time period. If we are not sure of your identity, we may require you to provide further information in order for us to confirm who you are.

Changes to this policy

We may make changes to this policy from time to time as our business and internal practices and/or applicable laws change. We will not make any use of your personal information that is inconsistent with the original purpose(s) for which it was collected or obtained (if we intend to do so, we will notify you in advance wherever possible) or otherwise than is permitted by applicable law.

How to contact us

If you would like to get in touch to discuss this policy, how we use your personal information, to exercise your rights or to provide feedback or make a complaint about use of your information, please contact us as follows:

Patrick Donaldson
Donalson Dunstall Solicitors
48 Parkhurst Road
Bexhill-on-sea
East Sussex
TN40 1DE

Tel: 01424 216329
Email: [email protected]

You can also contact the Information Commissioner's Office via https://ico.org.uk/ for information, advice or to make a complaint.

Cookies

Cookies, also known as browsers or tracking cookies, are small text files that are added to your computer when you visit a website. They help websites to perform certain functions e.g. to know who you are if you log into a restricted part of a website, for shopping carts, and for tracking purposes.

We may decide to use cookies on our website in the future.

Manage cookies

If we do decide to use cookies in the future, shortly after arriving at our website we will add an 'opt-in' tracking cookie to your computer unless you specify otherwise. If you would like to opt-in or opt-out of using cookies then you can do so by using your cookie settings. You can review your cookie settings at any time.

If you do opt-out then an opt-out preference cookie will be added to your computer, however if you delete all your cookies or use a different device then you will need to set your cookie preference again.

If this is your first visit and you navigate away from this website page without specifying your cookies preference then, if we decide to use cookies in the future, an 'opt-in' tracking cookie with be added to your computer.

Please note that you cannot opt-out of the deployment of cookies that are necessary for delivery of our website or services to visitors.

If we decide to use cookies in the future, you will receive an on-screen warning before cookies are saved to your browser.