As a solicitors firm we are provided with a great deal of data, including personal data and information and we take our data protection responsibilities very seriously. Whenever you instruct us, provide documentation or personal details, such as your name, address, date of birth, copies of your passport and utility bills etc, we have a set of systems and procedures in place to keep your personal data secure and confidential.

It is important that you read this notice so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information. This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal information.

Wellers Law Group LLP (the “Partnership” and/or “Wellers”) is a limited liability partnership regulated by the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority and registered under Registration Number 525515. Details of our notification to the data protection regulator may be found in the Information Commissioner’s Office Public Register of Data Controllers at https://ico.org.uk/ under registration number Z6634632.

To the extent that we determine the manner and the purpose of processing, we acknowledge that we are a Data Controller of your Personal Data and/or Special Categories of Personal Data (as such terms are defined in the UK Data Protection Act 2018 ( the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679) (the “Regulation”)). We undertake to act in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 (and the Regulation) and any additional applicable laws at all times. (including having in place adequate levels of security in respect of such Personal Data). As noted above this Privacy Policy sets out the basis on which we will collect and process your Personal Data and that of any third party whose Personal Data you supply to us.

About you during and after your relationship with us, in accordance with data protection law.

So that we can honour our commitment to be as transparent as possible, we have put together this policy which tells you:

• what information we might collect about you when you visit our websites;
• how we might use that information;
• when we might use your details to contact you;
• what happens when you make a payment online;
• what happens if you apply for a job with us;
• what information of yours we might share with others;
• your choices about the personal information you give us.

We will regularly review the purposes for which we hold your Personal Data and will not hold it for longer than is necessary. We will also seek to minimise the Personal Data, which we hold about you wherever possible. If we intend to make use of your Personal Data for any new purposes which would be considered incompatible with the purposes for which it was originally collected, as set out in this Privacy Policy, we will notify you of such intended uses and seek your consent to such activities or provide appropriate fair processing notices and transparency literature, prior to the commencement of any such processing.

Please note that in order to access some of our services, we may need to collect personal data from you in order to provide such services. Where we need information for such purposes we will make this clear to you.

What information do you collect from me?

• When you use our sites, or contact us, we may ask you to provide certain information, so that we can assess how we can assist you. In order to fulfill our obligations to you we will collect and process the personal information that you have provided to us about yourself and information about other persons e.g. for example you may tell us information about your relationships and personal circumstances. Depending on the type of instruction we receive you may also supply to us information relating to: race or ethnicity; political opinions; religious or philosophical beliefs; trade union membership, health, sex life or sexual orientation, genetics or biometrics; criminal convictions and/or financial details.
• We will only ask you to provide such information where we have a lawful basis to do so and if it relates to fulfilling your instructions, such as the defence or exercise of your legal claims. If you choose to provide such information, please carefully consider if you wish to disclose such information to us, we will of course always process it in line with our professional obligations of confidentiality to you.
• When video conferencing is used for meetings, please be aware that we will record and retain the video of the meeting to ensure we capture your instructions accurately and protect your interests.

We may also collect information on an on-going basis about how often you visit out site(s), and information about how you use our site, for example what features of the site you use most, how long you stay on our sites and changes you make to information you supply to us, including by use of cookies (see our Cookies policy. If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence.

We also automatically collect some technical information from these devices and web browsers such as IP (internet protocol) address and device ID. We collect this to understand how you use our site(s), how we can improve it and how to make the services we provide to you better.

Sensitive information

In order to provide you with some of our services, we may need to collect personal data which is defined as ‘sensitive or ‘special’’, such as your medical data or information about criminal convictions. We will ask you to signify your explicit consent to such information being processed by us whenever we collect such information from you and the provision of such information is voluntary. Usually we would only ask for this type of information if you had specific needs such as facilities that are wheelchair friendly etc, or if it is necessary for us to have such information in order to provide you with our professional services. We don’t use this information for any other purpose, unless there is an exceptional circumstance (for example law enforcement).

Why do you use my information?

Personal information makes our website work, we need it so we can tailor our services to your needs. We’ve set out below the main reasons why we use your data so that you are clear about why we process it.

We process your information for the following purposes to fulfil our contract with you:

• in the normal course of our services, to allow us to register you to receive our services and to provide you with our services;
• to allow you to make payments on our payment portal and send confirmation of payment;
• to allow us to manage your account(s) and orders, as well as to deal with any issues with your file;
• to send you our newsletters (where you have said that you would like to receive it);
• to store your details when you return to our sites, which includes things like details of your visits to our site including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data and the resources that you access on the basis that processing is necessary in order to perform our contract with you to provide our services;
• we also make use of your details for purposes, which are in our general business interests and allow us to deliver our goods and services;
• to allow us to analyse your personal preferences and personalise our services to you so that we can provide a more tailored experience to you;
• to validate your Personal Data (and, in some cases, match it against information that has been collected by a third party) to check that the Personal Data we hold about our users is accurate, consistent and up to date on the basis that you have consented to such processing by agreeing to share your Personal Data with us for such purposes;
• to protect you and us from credit card fraud and ensure that when you make payments on our platforms, it’s secure;
• developing and/or consolidating our ventures and interests, as well as defending our legal rights and/or seeking advice from our professional advisors;
• when we process your personal information for our business interests, we will carefully consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights under data protection and any other relevant law. Our legitimate business interests do not automatically override your interests – we will not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

We will periodically check that the Personal Data we store for you is accurate. If you would like to update the Personal Data we hold about you, please see the section entitled 'What are my rights?' below.

Making Online Payments

• In order to operate our online payments system, we may collect and store personal information you submit to it via this online-payments page or which you give to Wellers in any other way (e.g. to our finance team).
• This online-payment system is provided and hosted by Wellers and WorldPay. Personal data collected as part of the payment process will be held primarily to process your payment. This data will be retained by WorldPay and distribution institutions who handle our customers card transactions and order fulfilment and may be used for any of the following purposes: accounting, billing and auditing, administrative and legal purposes, security and payment verification.
• Please protect your banking details at all times throughout your online transaction. Make sure that nobody can see over your shoulder when typing in personal information and close your browser when you have finished. We work with Worldpay to make our site as secure as possible during payment transmission. Please ensure that the computer or device that you use to make the online-payments system (via a web browser) is secure, and includes the latest operating system, software and anti-virus updates. The use of a shared computer to connect to the online-payments system could increase the risk that others will see your sensitive information.

Applying for a Job with us

• If you want to apply for one of the jobs listed on the Careers Page of our website, the information you provide by contacting us (with the strict exception of the “Equal opportunity and diversity” information which we may request and which we only process to ensure that we recruit fairly and equally), will be used for the purposes of considering your application for a position with Wellers and, in respect of partially completed applications, for assisting you with any queries you may have.
• We may, in the course of our recruitment process, undertake checks to verify the information provided by you, for example by confirming your qualifications and taking up references.
• Please note that if you submit your CV to Wellers, we reserve the right to retain your CV for up to 2 years from the date your CV is sent to us, via our website or by post. We (and our Group) will retain your details for use in connection with future vacancies and/or further applications made by you for a position with us. We may also use it to contact you about career events or other positions which we think will be of interest to you. In addition, the information collected may be used by us and our third party processing contractors for equal opportunities monitoring as well as for more general statistical and research purposes.

Who do you share my information with?

As part of using our services, we may also share your Personal Data with the following parties:

• service providers and other third parties who process and store data on our behalf;
• our online payment portal provider, WorldPay (see section 4);
• professional advisors;
• specifically, where tax and trust advice is sought, we will share your data with DMH Stallard, where Ingrid McCleave is a partner, for the purpose of providing that advice.

We may also share your Personal Data with third parties:

• in the event that our services, either in whole or in part, are acquired by a third party (in which case Personal Data about clients will be one of the transferred assets);
• with fellow professional advisors, such as accountants, financial advisers, consultants and barristers with whom we work;
• if we are under a legal duty or have a lawful ground, to disclose or share your Personal Data;
• in order to enforce any contract or debt with you;
• to protect our rights, property, or the safety of our employees, clients, constituents or others. This includes exchanging information with other organisations and local authorities for the purposes of fraud, safeguarding and crime prevention.
• Again, we will always undertake a balancing exercise when we undertake such sharing and ensure that third parties with whom we work respect your privacy too.

How long do you store my personal information for?

We only store your Personal Data provided via the website and held on our website systems for as long as necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy. In any event, we will only store your Personal Data provided held on our website systems for a period of six months from the date we receive it after which it will be deleted from our website systems.

Where do you store my information?

In order to ensure fair and transparent processing, we will, taking into account our processing activities, adopt appropriate procedures for the processing of Personal Data, which shall include implementing technical and organisational measures which take into account the harm that may be suffered, and correct inaccuracies identified in Personal Data processed, so that risk of errors are minimised and your Personal Data is processed in a fair and secure manner.

• All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet 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 our website; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.
• From time to time, service providers and organisations with whom we work to provide services to you or agencies with which we work, may be located outside the European Economic Area in countries that do not have the same standards of protection for personal data as the UK. We will, however, always use every reasonable effort to ensure sufficient protections are in place to safeguard your Personal Data. We will also ensure that our service providers enter into compliant processing agreements with us to ensure that your Personal Data is processed in accordance with applicable data protection legislation.

Marketing

• The provision of Personal Data for the purposes of direct marketing is voluntary and you do not need to provide such Personal Data in order to receive our services. You can opt out of receiving our newsletters and updates about our services, it’s entirely up to you.
• We will contact you with regards to details of our services unless you have indicated that you do not wish to receive such information by ticking the appropriate box in our Client Care letter when you first instruct us on a matter. If you are an existing subscriber we will continue to market to you unless you tell us otherwise. If you don’t want to hear from us, please let us know and we will make sure you aren’t sent further newsletters and updates.
• You can exercise the right to opt-out of receiving such marketing at any time by contacting us at enquiries@wellerslawgroup.com or selecting “unsubscribe” on the relevant marketing communication.
• Please note that there are some emails we have to send to you as they would be required in order for us to fulfil our services to you (e.g. invoices, changes to our terms, emails relating to your case etc).
• There will also be emails that are sent as ongoing client care work such as reminders to review documentation we have previously prepared for you or requests for feedback on our service. We would consider these to be in the legitimate interests of Wellers and you and we would not seek your consent to send them. 

What are your rights

Subject to our legal requirements and lawful grounds of processing, you may have the following:

• Access to your personal data: You may request access to a copy of your Personal Data, by providing details of your request.
• Right to withdraw consent: You may withdraw your consent to processing at any time, explaining why you wish to do so.
• Rectification: You may ask us to rectify inaccurate Personal Data held about you by providing the updated information.
• Erasure: You may ask us to delete your Personal Data, specifying why you would like us to delete your Personal Data.
• Portability: You may ask us to provide you with the Personal Data that we hold about you in a structured, commonly used, machine readable form, or ask for us to send such Personal Data to another data controller.
• Right to object: You may object to our processing of your Personal Data by providing details of your objection.
• Make a complaint: You may make a complaint about our data processing activities to a supervisory authority. For the UK, this is the Information Commissioner’s Office, who can be contacted via ico.org.uk.

To make enquires and/or to exercise any of your rights in this Privacy Policy please contact GDPR@wellerslawgroup.com (with ‘Data Protection Query’ in the subject line) or write to us at: Wellers Law Group, Neil Sandy (Data Protection Officer), 65 Leadenhall Street, London EC3A 2AD. Please note that we may ask you to provide a form of identification verification before we can give effect to any such request made by you and such requests will always be subject to our legal obligations and lawful grounds of processing. 

Cookies Policy

The Cookies Policy for the Wellers Law Group is available here.

IP addresses

We may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration and to report aggregate information to our advertisers. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.

Links to other websites

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from other websites. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any Personal Data to these websites.

Changes to this Privacy policy

We may modify this Privacy Policy from time to time, so please review it regularly. If we change this Privacy Policy in a way that may substantially alter the purposes for which we process your Personal Data we shall notify you by means of notice on our site homepage and where a material change to such terms, by email to the email address you have provided to us.

Contact Us

Questions, comments and requests regarding this Privacy Policy are welcomed and should be addressed to contact Neil Sandy at GDPR@wellerslawgroup.com (with ‘Data Protection Query’ in the subject line) or write to Neil Sandy (Data Protection Officer), Wellers Law Group, (Data Protection Officer), 65 Leadenhall Street, London EC3A 2AD.

The Information Commissioner

You can obtain further general information about privacy protection from the Information Commissioner’s Office by:

• calling the Data Protection help line on 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 if you prefer to use a national rate number
• visiting their website at www.ico.gov.uk;
• e-mailing the lnformation Commissioner at mail@ico.gsi.gov.uk;
• by writing to: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

You may search the Public Register of Data Controllers for our registration details at the Information Commissioner’s website, by entering “Wellers” in the field provided for the data controller’s name.