Privacy Policy

Simons Muirhead Burton LLP (registered number OC404188) (“us”, “our”, “we”, “SMB”) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This privacy policy (the “Policy”) sets out the types of personal data we collect and use when you access and visit www.smab.co.uk (the “Website”) and how we may use that data.

1. Introduction

This Policy covers our collection, processing and use of personal data when you use our Website.

When you supply any personal data to us we have legal obligations towards you in the way we use that data. For ease of reading, we have divided this Policy into several sections:

  1. Introduction
  2. What is personal data and what do we collect
  3. How and why do we use/share your personal data
  4. For how long do we keep your personal data
  5. Security & International Data Transfers
  6. Your Rights
  7. Contact Details

It is important that you read this Policy together with any other privacy notice or fair processing notices that we may provide on the Website at or around the time that we collect or process personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using that data.

This Policy supplements other notices including our Website Terms and Conditions and our Cookies Policy and is not intended to override or replace them.

By visiting or otherwise using our Website, you are agreeing to the practices set out in this Policy. If, for any reason, you do not agree to the terms of this Policy, please stop using this Website.

We reserve the right to revise or amend this Policy at any time to reflect changes to our business or changes in the law. Where these changes are significant we will endeavour to let users of the Websites know. However, it is your responsibility to regularly check this Policy – for ease of reference the top of this Policy indicates the date on which it was last updated.

Please note that our Website is not directed at children under the age of 13 (each “Child” together “Children”) and we do not knowingly collect personal data about Children via the Website. If you believe we have collected personal data about your Child, you may contact us at mail@smab.co.uk and request that we cease processing data about your Child.

2. What is Personal Data and what do we collect?

What is personal data?
Where this Policy refers to ‘personal data’ it is referring to data about you from which you could be identified – such as your name, your date of birth, your contact details and even your IP address.

By law all organisations in the UK are obliged to process your personal data in certain ways and to ensure that you are given an appropriate amount of information about how they use it. You also have various rights to seek information from those organisations about how they are using your data, and to prevent them from processing it unlawfully. For more information about these rights, please see the ‘Your Rights ’ section of this Policy.

Data we collect from you when you use the Website

Voluntary Provision of Data
When you voluntarily supply your personal data to us, for example where you use the Website to upload or send personal data (by contacting us via our Website about our professional services, submitting applications for vacancies, or similar activities in which your volunteer data about yourself) contact us by post, telephone, email or SMS, report a problem with a Website, we may collect, store and use the personal data that you disclose to us.

The personal data we collect from you may include your title, name, address, e-mail address, company, job title, employment history and phone number– but will depend on precisely what details you volunteer to us as you interact with the Website.

Automated Collection of Data
We may also collect personal data about you when you visit the Website through the use of technologies such as cookies. The following are examples of data we may collect:

  • information about your device, browser or operating system;
  • your IP address;
  • information about links that you click and pages you view on our Website
  • length of visits to certain pages;
  • subjects you viewed or searched for;
  • page response times;
  • records of download errors and/or broken links;
  • page interaction information (such as details of your scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs);
  • methods used to browse away from the page; and
  • the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from this Website (including date and time).

We use the data described above for several different reasons. Firstly we use it to ensure that the Websites work properly and that you are able to receive the full benefit of them. Second, we use the data to monitor online traffic and audience participation across the Website. We undertake both of these activities because we have a legitimate interest in doing so.

Cookies
For details of the cookies that we use on the Website, what those cookies do, and the privacy policies of the third parties which provide them (where relevant) please see our Cookies Policy.

Please note that we only use cookies which are strictly necessary for the operation of our website and the monitoring of web audience data, accordingly we rely on our legitimate interests as our condition for delivering those cookies and processing your personal data on the basis set out in this section.

You are able to remove Cookies from your computer at any time, for more information see our Cookies Policy.

3. How and why do we use/share your personal data

Sharing your personal data
Depending on how and why you provide us with your personal data we may share it in the following ways:

  • we may share your personal data with any member of our company group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006;
  • with selected third parties who we sub-contract to provide various services and/or aspects of the Website’s functionality, such as where third party plugins provide functionality such as image hosting services (see “Service Providers ” below); and
  • with analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of this Website as described above.

We will not share your personal data with third parties in order for that third party to provide direct marketing communications to you, unless it relates to a specific activity which we are undertaking with a third party and you have provided your consent for that use. Such activity may have its own terms and conditions relating to the way in which your personal data may be used, which you will be notified of at the relevant time.

We may also disclose your personal data to third parties in the following events:

  • if we were to sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we might disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets as part of that sale;
  • if SMB or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by us about our clients and Website users may be transferrable assets;
  • if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation (or a regulatory obligation imposed upon us by the Solicitors Regulation Authority), or if we are asked to provide your details to a lawful authority in order to aid in the investigation of crime or disorder;
  • if we are obliged to do so as part of a court imposed disclosure exercise which relates to the legal services that we may provide to you from time to time;
  • in order to enforce or apply our Website’s terms of use or terms and conditions ; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our firm, our clients, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Service Providers
Our service providers provide us with a variety of administrative, statistical, and technical services. We will only provide service providers with the minimum amount of personal data they need to fulfil the services we request, and we stipulate that they protect this data and do not use it for any other purpose. We take these relationships seriously and oblige all of our data processors to sign contracts with us that clearly set out their commitment to respecting individual rights, and their commitments to assisting us to help you exercise your rights as a data subject. In particular, we may share your personal data with FX Digital Limited, our website developers who assist us in maintaining and updating this Website.

Links to third party sites
Where we provide links to third party websites that are not affiliated with www.smab.co.uk such sites are out of our control and are not covered by this Policy. If you access third party sites using the links provided, the operators of these sites may collect personal data from you that could be used by them, in accordance with their own privacy policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to those websites.

4. For how long do we keep your personal data?

We will hold your personal data on our systems only for as long as required to provide you with the services you have requested or to perform the purpose for which that data was collected.

If you engage us to provide you with legal services we may retain copies of files and papers relating to those services after the matter in respect of which you have instructed us is finalised. Details of how and for how long we will store those details will be made clear to you in our terms of engagement, which will be provided to you before you formally engage us as your legal advisors.

Where you sign up to receive e-mail marketing from us we will retain your e-mail address on file should you ever ‘opt-out’ of receiving e-mails from us. We will retain your e-mail address in this way in order to ensure that we continue to honour and respect that opt-out request.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see ‘Your Rights ’ below for further information.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this data indefinitely without further notice to you.

5. Security & International Data Transfers

SMB takes the protection of your personal data very seriously. We use encryption (SSL) to protect your personal data when appropriate, and all the data provided to us electronically is stored on secure servers once we receive it.

SMB may store your personal data on secure servers either on our premises or in secure third party data centres.

Please note that some of our service providers may be based outside of the European Economic Area (the “EEA”). These service providers may work for us or for one of our suppliers and may be engaged in, among other things, the provision of support services. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. Where we transfer your data to a service provider that is outside of the EEA we seek to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to make sure that your personal data is held securely and that your rights as a data subject are upheld. Where an international transfer of your personal data occurs, we will ensure that an adequate safeguard is in place to ensure that transfer is secure and lawful – this will usually be the ‘Standard Contract Clauses’. If you would like more information about how the mechanism via which your personal data is transferred, please contact mail@smab.co.uk.

6. Your Rights

As a data subject you have a number of rights in relation to your personal data. Below, we have described the various rights that you have, as well as how you can exercise them.

Right of Access
You may, at any time, request access to the personal data that we hold which relates to you (you may have heard of this right being described as a “subject access request”).

Please note that this right entitles you to receive a copy of the personal data that we hold about you in order to enable you to check that it is correct and to ensure that we are processing that personal data lawfully. It is not a right that allows you to request personal data about other people, or a right to request specific documents from us that do not relate to your personal data.

You can exercise this right at any time by writing to us using the contact details set out here and telling us that you are making a subject access request. You do not have to fill in a specific form to make this kind of request.

Your Right to Rectification and Erasure
You may, at any time, request that we correct personal data that we hold about you which you believe is incorrect or inaccurate. You may also ask us to erase personal data if you do not believe that we need to continue retaining it (you may have heard of this right described as the “right to be forgotten”).

Please note that we may ask you to verify any new data that you provide to us and may take our own steps to check that the new data you have supplied us with is right. Further, we are not always obliged to erase personal data when asked to do so; if for any reason we believe that we have a good legal reason to continue processing personal data that you ask us to erase we will tell you what that reason is at the time we respond to your request.

You can exercise this right at any time by writing to us using the contact details set out here and telling us that you are making a request to have your personal data rectified or erased and on what basis you are making that request. If you want us to replace inaccurate data with new data, you should tell us what that new data is. You do not have to fill in a specific form to make this kind of request.

Your Right to Restrict Processing
Where we process your personal data on the basis of a legitimate interest (see the sections of this Policy which explain how and why we use your information) you are entitled to ask us to stop processing it in that way if you feel that our continuing to do so impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms or if you feel that those legitimate interests are not valid.
SMB may process your data on the basis of a legitimate interest in the following ways:

  • to optimise our website content;
  • to monitor which sections of our website are most frequently viewed or visited;
  • where it is lawful for us to do so, to provide you with relevant commercial communications from time to time.

You may also ask us to stop processing your personal data (a) if you dispute the accuracy of that personal data and want us verify that data’s accuracy; (b) where it has been established that our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where we no longer need to process your personal data (and would otherwise dispose of it) but you wish for us to continue storing it in order to enable you to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

Please note that if for any reason we believe that we have a good legal reason to continue processing personal data that you ask us to stop processing, we will tell you what that reason is, either at the time we first respond to your request or after we have had the opportunity to consider and investigate it.

You can exercise this right at any time by writing to us using the contact details set out here and telling us that you are making a request to have us stop processing the relevant aspect of your personal data and describing which of the above conditions you believe is relevant to that request. You do not have to fill in a specific form to make this kind of request.

Your Right to Portability
Where you wish to transfer certain personal data that we hold about you, which is processed by automated means, to a third party you may write to us and ask us to provide it to you in a commonly used machine-readable format.

Because of the kind of work that we do and the systems that we use, we do not envisage this right being particularly relevant to the majority of individuals with whom we interact.

However, if you wish to transfer your data from us to a third party we are happy to consider such requests.

Your Right to stop receiving communications
Where we send you e-mail marketing communications (or other regulated electronic messages) you have the right to opt-out at any time. You can do this by using the ‘unsubscribe’ link that appears in the footer of each communication (or the equivalent mechanism in those communications).

Alternatively, if for any reason you cannot use those links, or if you would prefer to contact us directly – you can unsubscribe by writing to us at mail@smab.co.uk and telling us which communications you would like us to stop sending you.

Your Right to object to automated decision making and profiling
You have the right to be informed about the existence of any automated decision making and profiling of your personal data, and where appropriate, be provided with meaningful information about the logic involved, as well as the significance and the envisaged consequences of such processing that affects you.

Exercising your rights
When you write to us making a request to exercise your rights we are entitled to ask you to prove that you are who you say you are. We may ask you to provide copies of relevant ID documents to help us to verify your identity.

It will help us to process your request if you clearly state which right you wish to exercise and, where relevant, why it is that you are exercising it. The clearer and more specific you can be, the faster and more efficiently we can deal with your request. If you do not provide us with sufficient information then we may delay actioning your request until you have provided us with additional information (and where this is the case we will tell you).

7. Contact Details

If you have any queries regarding this Policy, if you wish to exercise any of your rights set out above or if you think that the Policy has not been followed, please contact us at:

FAO: Data Protection Manager
Simons Muirhead Burton LLP
87-91 Newman Street
London
W1T 3EY

Alternatively you can email us at mail@smab.co.uk.