Privacy notice

Olephant Limited (company number 05422077, whose registered office is at 4 Snow Hill, London EC1A 2DJ) (trading as “Olephant Solicitors”) is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. This Privacy Notice describes how we collect and use personal information about you before, during and after your working relationship with us, in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).

Olephant Limited is a “data controller”. That means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this Privacy Notice.

Data protection principles

We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:

1. Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way;

2. Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes;

3. Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes;

4. Accurate and kept up to date;

5. Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about; and

6. Kept securely.

Type of information we hold about you

Personal data means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data). Under the legislation, there is also what is known as “special categories” of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection (on which see below).

We will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal data about you:

  • Contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses.
  • Personal details such as date of birth, gender, marital status, details of any dependents.
  • Bank account details.
  • Professional/business information.
  • Financial details.
  • Information you provide us for the purposes of us providing services to you.
  • Information from public sources.
  • Any of the above categories of information obtained from third parties such as colleagues, employees, other professional advisers, your suppliers, your customers.

We may also collect, store and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information:

  • Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation and political opinions.
  • Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.
  • Genetic data.
  • Biometric data.
  • Information about criminal convictions and offences.

How is your personal information collected?

We will collect your personal data from yourself, your authorised representatives, third parties, and through public sources.

How we will use information about you

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. We will only use your personal information in the following circumstances:

1. Where it is necessary for the entry or performance of our agreement with you;

2. Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. These include: to verify your identity, to verify your source of funds, to provide you with our services, to deal with your enquiries, to communicate with you, to establish the funding of your matter, to manage/administer your matter, to seek advice from third parties, to provide you with information about our services, to provide you with legal updates, to comply with our legal and/or professional obligations, for direct marketing purposes, to improve our services to you and for any purpose related and/or ancillary to any of the above;

3. Where we need to comply with a legal obligation;

4. Where we need to protect your interests;

5. Where it is needed in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority;

6. Where you have given your consent to the processing of your data for one or more specific purposes.

If you fail to provide personal information

If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform the agreement we have entered into with you and/or provide you with our retained services.

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated and incompatible purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

How we use particularly sensitive personal information

“Special categories” of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information. We may process special categories of personal information in the following circumstances:

1. With your explicit written consent;

2. Where it is needed for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims;

3. Where it is needed to protect your vital interests (or someone else’s) and you are not capable of giving your consent;

4. Where you have already made the information public.

5. Where it is needed in the public interest.

Data sharing

We may have to share your data with third parties, such as professional advisers, government, regulatory and/or judicial authorities, tax authorities, third parties we outsource services to (such as IT providers, document management providers, storage providers, document review providers, litigation support providers, data room providers, software providers, courier providers), third parties we engage in the course of providing services to you (such as counsel, clerks, arbitrators, mediators, witnesses, costs draftsman, court, tribunal, opposing parties and their lawyers, valuers, accountants, tax advisers, banks/building societies, insurance companies) and foreign law firms within the EU.

In the event that any of your information is shared with a third party, we will ensure they respect the security of your data, treat it in accordance with the law and do not use it for their own purposes. We will also ensure they treat it with a similar degree of protection as we do.

Data retention

How long will you use my information for?

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, and for a minimum of 7 years.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you. 

How do you safeguard my information?

We use computer safeguards such as firewalls and access controls and we enforce, where possible, physical access controls to our building to keep data safe. We require our third party storage providers to use appropriate safeguards, and all of our staff and third party providers are subject to confidentiality obligations.

Rights of access, correction, erasure, and restriction

Your duty to inform us of changes

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your working relationship with us.

Your rights in connection with personal information

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

  • Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
  • Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
  • Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
  • Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
  • Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
  • Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact Jan Mugerwa in writing at jm@olephant.com or to Olephant Solicitors, 4 Snow Hill, London EC1A 2DJ.

Fee

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

Right to withdraw consent

In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact Jan Mugerwa in writing at jm@olephant.com or to Olephant Solicitors, 4 Snow Hill, London EC1A 2DJ. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

Queries

If you have any questions, concerns or complaints about this Privacy Notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the Jan Mugerwa at jm@olephant.com or on 020 7486 9627. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.

Changes to this Privacy Notice

We reserve the right to update this Privacy Notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new Privacy Notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.

 Effective as at 1 December 2018