IMPORTANT INFORMATION RELATING TO YOUR PERSONAL DATA
Douglas Law Solicitors are committed to ensuring the protection of your privacy. This statement (together with our General Terms and Conditions) sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from and about you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us.
Please read this notice carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and your rights in relation to same.
This statement is being provided to you in line with our obligations from 25 May 2018 under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
1. WHO WE ARE
This privacy notice provides you with details of who we are and how we collect and process your personal data.
Teresa O’Sullivan, Aoife McCarthy & Gráinne O’Donovan practising as Douglas Law Solicitors are the data controller and we are responsible for your personal data (referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice).
Our email address is: info@douglaslawsolicitors.ie
Our postal address is: 2, Barryhouse, East Village, Douglas, Cork
Our telephone number is: 021 489 7256
It is very important that the information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. Please let us know if at any time your personal information changes by emailing us at info@douglaslawsolicitors.ie
2. THE DATA THAT WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU, THE PURPOSE FOR WHICH WE COLLECT IT AND THE GROUNDS UPON WHICH WE PROCESS IT
Personal data means any information capable of identifying an individual. It does not include anonymised data.
We may process the following categories of personal data about you:
• Communication Data includes any communication that you send to us whether that be through any contact forms on our website, through email, text, social media messaging, social media posting or any other communication that you send us. We process this data for the purposes of communicating with you, for record keeping and for the establishment, pursuit or defence of legal claims. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to reply to communications sent to us, to keep records and to establish, pursue or defend legal claims.
• Personal Contact Data includes data such as your name, title, address, email address, phone number and contact details. We process this data to communicate with you, for record keeping and for the establishment, pursuit or defence of legal claims. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to reply to communications sent to us, to keep records, to grow our business and remain in contact with you and to establish, pursue or defend legal claims.
• Matter Data includes any data which you may provide to us in order to enquire whether we are in a position to act for you in relation to a matter, and, in the event that we are and are willing to do so, in order to act for you as your solicitors in relation to that matter. It also includes communication and other data generated in the course of the matter. We process this data to supply our services and to act for you as your solicitors. Our lawful grounds for processing this data are (a) the performance of a contract to which you are party and (b) providing you with legal advice in relation to that matter and acting for you as your solicitors in connection with legal claims, prospective legal claims, legal proceedings or prospective legal proceedings or otherwise for the purposes of establishing, exercising or defending legal rights in connection with that matter. We will only ever process matter data for the purpose in relation to which you instruct us to act on your behalf on that matter and to retain a record of matters to comply with our legal obligations.
• Third Party Data includes any data that we collect or create or are required to hold in order to liaise with third parties (including solicitors and barristers and other professionals acting on behalf of such third parties) on behalf of our clients. Our lawful grounds for the processing of this data is processing necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by our firm in representing our clients, providing legal advice to our clients and acting for our clients in connection with legal claims, prospective legal claims, legal proceedings or prospective legal proceeding or otherwise for the purposes of establishing, exercising or defending legal rights in connection with that matter.
• Job Applicant Data includes any data submitted to us by prospective job applicants. Our lawful grounds for the processing of this data is for the purpose of the legitimate interests of our firm in recruiting new staff. Please see the privacy notice in any particular job advertisement for further information about how we process applicant data in respect of the position advertised.
• User Data that includes data about how you use our website and any online services together with any data that you post for publication on our website or through other online services. We process this data to operate our website and ensure relevant content is provided to you, to ensure the security of our website, to maintain back- ups of our website and/or databases and to enable publication and administration of our website, other online services and business. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to enable us to properly administer our website and our business.
• Technical Data that includes data about your use of our website and online services such as your IP address, your login data, details about your browser, length of visit to pages on our website, page views and navigation paths, details about the number of times you use our website, time zone settings and other technology on the devices you use to access our website. The source of this data is from our analytics tracking system. We process this data to analyse your use of our website and other online services, to administer and protect our business and website, to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and to understand the effectiveness of our advertising. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to enable us to properly administer our website and our business and to grow our business and to decide our marketing strategy.
• Marketing Data that includes data about your preferences in receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences. We process this data to enable you to partake in our promotions such as competitions, prize draws and free give-aways, to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of this advertising. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to decide our marketing strategy.
• We may use Communication Data, Personal Contact Data, User Data, Technical Data and Marketing Data to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you (including Facebook adverts or other display advertisements) and to measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve you. Our lawful ground for this processing is legitimate interests which is to grow our business. We may also use such data to send other marketing communications to you. Our lawful ground for this processing is either consent or legitimate interests (namely to grow our business).
Special Categories of Data
Special Categories of Data refers to data that includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data and information about criminal convictions and offences.
If your Matter Data includes special categories of data such as medical or health data we will only process such special categories of data for providing you with legal advice and acting for you as your solicitors in connection with legal claims, prospective legal claims, legal proceedings or prospective legal proceedings or otherwise for the purposes of establishing, exercising or defending legal rights and for no other purpose.
Where we are required to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of the contract between us and you do not provide us with that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract (for example, to continue to act for you). If you don’t provide us with the requested data, we may have to cease to act for you but if we do, we will notify you at the time.
We will only use your personal data for a purpose it was collected for or a reasonably compatible purpose if necessary. In case we need to use your details for an unrelated new purpose we will let you know and explain the legal grounds for processing.
We may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.
We do not carry out automated decision making or any type of automated profiling.
3. HOW WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL DATA
We may collect data about you by you providing the data directly to us (for example by filling in forms on our site or by sending us emails and correspondence by post or by speaking with us on the telephone and in meetings). We may collect data from third parties who you authorise us to obtain the data from on your behalf (for example a government agency, financial institution or another professional or adviser).
We may automatically collect certain data from you as you use our website by using cookies and similar technologies. Please see below in relation to our Cookie policy
We may receive data from third parties such as analytics providers such as Google based outside the EU, advertising networks such as Facebook based outside the EU, such as search information providers such as Google based outside the EU, providers of technical, payment and delivery services, such as data brokers or aggregators.
We may also receive data from publicly availably sources such as the Companies Registration Office, the Property Registration Authority, Local Authorities and others.
4. MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
Our lawful ground of processing your personal data to send you marketing communications is either your consent or our legitimate interests (namely to grow our business).
Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, we may send you electronic marketing communications from us if
(i) you made a purchase or asked for information from us about our goods or services or
(ii) you agreed to receive marketing communications and in each case you have not opted out of receiving such communications since.
We will not share your personal data with any third party for their own marketing purposes without your express consent.
You can request us to stop sending you electronic marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you.
You can request us to stop sending you marketing message by post at any time emailing us at info@douglaslawsolicitors.ie, by writing to us at 2, Barryhouse, East Village, Douglas, Cork or by telephoning us at 021 489 7256.
If you opt out of receiving marketing communications this opt-out does not apply to personal data provided in connection with a matter on which we are acting or have acted on your behalf and are obliged to obtain a record of for the purposes of complying with our legal obligations.
5. DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA
We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below:
• Other parties involved in your matter:- to include but not limited to:- your barrister, doctor, expert witnesses and solicitors acting for the other parties in your matter, auctioneers, mortgage brokers, your mortgage provider, engineer, planning department, local authority.
• Service providers who provide IT and system administration services including cloud based services.
• Service providers who provide business administration services, including third party dictation typing and transcription services and external file storage and archiving services.
• Professional advisers including lawyers, accountants, bankers, auditors and insurers who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
• Risk management auditors and quality control companies.
• The Revenue Commissioners, the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland, the Data Protection Commission, the Central Statistics Office, the Property Registration Authority and other regulators and authorities based in Ireland and other relevant jurisdictions who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
• Third parties to whom we sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets.
We require all third parties to whom we transfer your data to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We only allow such third parties to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions. We will not knowingly or deliberately share your data with any unauthorised third party.
6. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS
Countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) do not always offer the same levels of protection to your personal data, so European law has prohibited transfers of personal data outside of the EEA unless the transfer meets certain criteria.
Many of our third parties service providers are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.
Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we do our best to ensure a similar degree of security of data by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:
We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission;
or
Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe;
or
Where we use providers based in the United States, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the EU-US Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between the Europe and the US.
7. DATA SECURITY
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know such data. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
Unfortunately, the transmission by means of the internet including through e-mail, is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to or from us by means of e-mail and any such transmission is at your own risk.
8. DATA RETENTION
We will only retain your personal data 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.
By law we have to keep data for six years after the conclusion of any matter in order to comply our regulatory and tax obligations. In addition in order to be in a position to establish, exercise and defend legal claims or prospective legal claims and obtain legal advice in relation thereto we have to keep data for seven and a half years after the conclusion of any matter.
Where you have requested information from us in relation to our services or where we have acted for you as your solicitors we will retain your Personal Contact Data for these minimum periods and for as long as you wish us to remain in contact with you thereafter.
In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see below for further information.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for legal know-how, research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
9. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. These include the right to:
• Request access to your personal data.
• Request correction of your personal data.
• Request erasure of your personal data.
• Object to processing of your personal data.
• Request restriction of processing your personal data.
• Request transfer of your personal data.
• Right to withdraw consent.
You can see more about these rights at: www.dataprotection.ie and at www.gdprandyou.ie
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please email us at info@douglaslawsolicitors.ie
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Data Protection Commission (DPC), the Irish supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.dataprotection.ie).
Please contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you.
CHANGES TO STATEMENT
We may update this privacy statement from time to time and will publish such updated version on our website, as appropriate.
COOKIES
Cookies are small text files that a site transfers to a visitor’s hard disk or browser for added functionality or for tracking site usage. In order to measure the effectiveness of our online presence, we may use cookies to determine the path users take on our site and to identify repeat visitors of our site. We do not use cookies to gather personal information such as a person’s name or e-mail address.