This privacy notice contains information about individuals’ personal data collected, stored and otherwise processed and the reasons for the processing. It also tells you with whom I share this data and how to make contact if you need further information or want to exercise any relevant data subject rights.
Data controllers
I and my clerk may collect, use and be responsible for personal data about you. I and my clerk are both registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as data controllers for the personal data that we hold and process.
If you need to contact me or my clerk about your information or the processing carried out you can use the contact details below.
Clerk Lee Parkes, registered address: 1 Bell Yard, London WC2A 2JR, email [email protected], telephone 020 7293 0022.
Clerk’s ICO registration number: ZA336974
My ICO registration number: Z1579944
Information collected
I and my clerk may collect the following personal information:
- Information that you provide while instructing and communicating with me or my clerk (for example, personal details, family details, lifestyle and social circumstances, financial details, education, training and employment details).
- Information about you that may be contained in instructions, engagement letters, evidence, and privileged communications between me and other lawyers.
- Your contact details such as email address, telephone number and postal address.
How we use your personal information:
Purposes of processing
I and my clerk may use your personal information for the following purposes:
- to assist me in carrying out my professional activities, including providing legal services to my clients, carrying out wider duties and activities in my profession such as training others, communicating with third parties (for marketing and other purposes), pro-bono work or assisting charities, assisting with activities at the Inns of Court, participating in Bar Council, Bar Standards Board activities, providing references, supervising work experience, taking or defending legal or regulatory proceedings or proceedings relating to conduct or fees;
- to promote and market my services;
- to train barristers and provide work-shadowing opportunities;
- to respond to requests for references;
- to assess applications for employment, tenancy, pupillage, mini-pupillage and work-shadowing opportunities;
- to fulfil equality and diversity and other regulatory requirements;
- to procure goods and services from suppliers;
- to manage matters relating to the engagement of associated personnel;
- to publish legal judgments and decisions of courts and tribunals and information about them;
- to respond to or deal with complaints or potential complaints or make complaints;
- to comply with or facilitate compliance with my professional obligations and to check for conflicts of interest;
- to carry out anti-money laundering and terrorist financing checks;
- to pursue, establish, exercise or defend legal claims;
- for the purposes of acting in a judicial capacity; and
- as otherwise required or permitted by law.
Marketing and promotion
Personal information collected for marketing purposes consists of:
- names, contact details (including email address), and names of organisations;
- the nature of your interest in our marketing; and
- your attendance at, and registration for, events with which I or my clerk is involved.
This will be processed to provide you with information and to invite you to events.
You may opt out of receiving emails and other messages by following the instructions in those messages and you may contact us using the contact details above if you no longer wish to receive invitations or marketing information.
With whom may we share your personal information?
It may be necessary for me or my clerk to share your information with the following:
- courts, tribunals and their staff, if the relevant personal data is being processed in the context of legal proceedings;
- legal professionals (including solicitors, mediators, arbitrators and other lawyers and their employees and agents), including those acting for other parties;
- direct access clients that are instructing me;
- lay clients;
- associated administrative personnel;
- information processors, such as IT support personnel, email providers, information storage providers and telephone service providers;
- in the event of complaints, associated barristers, the Bar Standards Board and the Legal Ombudsman;
- regulatory or administrative authorities;
- education and examining bodies;
- experts and potential experts (including IT specialists and other specialists instructed in relation to litigation, whether or not intended or required to give evidence), witnesses and potential witnesses;
- prosecution authorities;
- pupil barristers, mini pupils or others carrying out placements or work experience in accordance with our confidentiality policies;
- professional advisers and professional bodies, e.g. the Bar Council;
- the intended recipient, where you have asked me to provide a reference;
- the general public in relation to the publication of public legal judgments and decisions of courts and tribunals;
- regulators, such as the Bar Standards Board, the Financial Conduct Authority or the Information Commissioner’s Office; and
- the police or intelligence services, pursuant to a court order, or otherwise where required or permitted by law.
For how long may we store your personal information?
We believe that we are entitled to hold your information for an extended period of years. The reasons and justification for this policy are outlined below.
The extended period under the Limitation Act preferred by the Bar Mutual Indemnity Fund is 15 years. Accordingly, I may store your information until at least 15 years after the case was worked on or another date relevant to the limitation period beginning to run, for example, the date on which your engagement terminates, the date of the last provision of service or goods, the date of the last payment made or received or the date on which all outstanding payments are written off, whichever is the latest.
Thereafter, future retention will be reviewed. Systems are under consideration to review the information (including historical information held at the time this notice is published) and to mark it as appropriate for deletion or reduction in live systems, archiving to secure and/or encrypted archives or retention for a further period. The timing of moving to such an archive and subsequent deletion from the archive will be considered when I retire or otherwise permanently leave practice.
The suitable period may have to be increased according to the subject information. This is because:
- clients sometimes request conflict checks to be carried out from the time when a barrister started practising; and
- information may be needed for potential legal proceedings in which the limitation period may be alleged not to have started to run until alleged damage or some other event occurred some time after advice was given or instructions acted upon.
Judgments, orders, pleadings and documents drafted by barristers which record or are examples of legal analysis, research, legal practice and other background may be kept whilst members of Chambers remain in practice because of the valuable archive of learning which they represent. This will be subject to appropriate review and assessment of risk having regard to the nature of the information.
Information which is retained for the purpose of checking for conflict of interests will be retained for the rest of my career.
Equality and diversity data may be retained for 15 years in pseudonymised form for the reasons concerning the limitation period set out above and for the purpose of research and statistics and complying with regulatory obligations in relation to the reporting of equality and diversity data.
Unless the data subject expressly requires removal consistent with the law, names and contact details held for marketing purposes will be stored indefinitely or until we become aware that the individual has ceased to be a potential client.
Personal information held for recruitment purposes or in relation to pupillage or mini- pupillage may be stored for 7 years after the end of recruitment process, the period of pupillage or mini-pupillage, as the case may be.
Your rights as a data subject
Under the GDPR, you have a number of rights that you can exercise in certain circumstances. These are generally free of charge, but may be subject to a reasonable administration fee, in particular if the request is manifestly unfounded or excessive or if further copies of data are requested after a request.
In summary, you may have the right to:
- ask for access to your personal information and other supplementary information;
- ask for correction of mistakes in your information or to complete missing information that we hold on you;
- ask for your personal information to be erased, in certain circumstances;
- receive a copy of the personal information that you have provided or have this information sent to a third party. This will be provided to you or the third party in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, for example a Word file;
- object at any time to processing of your personal information for direct marketing;
- object in certain other situations to the continued processing of your personal information; and
- restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
If you want more information about your rights under the GDPR please see the Guidance from the Information Commissioners Office.
If you want to exercise any of these rights, please use the contact details at the beginning of this document, provide proof of your identity and address and state the right or rights that you wish to exercise.
I or my clerk will try to respond to you within one month of receipt of your request.
Changes to this privacy notice
We periodically review privacy practices and may change this policy from time to time. When we do an amended privacy notice will be linked to my website at www.michaelmanningclark.com.