Privacy and Data - Beven Legal Limited

Beven Legal Limited (trading as Beven Legal) may use your personal information (together with other information) for providing legal services, credit checks, anti-money laundering and proceeds of crime checks and reports, marketing, administration and training, and we may disclose information to our service providers and agents for these purposes.

This privacy and data policy contains important information on who we are, how and why we collect, store, use and share personal information, your rights in relation to your personal information and on how to contact us and supervisory authorities in the event you have a complaint.

This privacy and data policy forms part of our standard terms of business (subject to any letter of engagement terms to the contrary).

In this policy, “Data Protection Legislation” means (a) the UK Data Protection Act 2018, the UK General Data Protection Regulation 2021 and EU GDPR (as defined below) insofar as if forms part of domestic law in the UK by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018; (b) Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (including the “Standard Contractual Clauses” in the Annex to the said Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (“SCCs”)) (collectively, “EU GDPR”); (c) any other data protection and/or privacy laws, rules, regulations, self-regulatory guidelines or implementing legislation applicable from time to time to a party’s processing of personal data; and (d) any successor, amending and/or supplemental laws to any of the foregoing, including, in the case of the UK, the International Data Transfer Agreement (“IDTA”) and the UK Addendum to the SCCs (“UK Addendum”), and transitional provisions guidance in respect of the IDTA and UK Addendum (insofar as these may after the date of this policy become law).

Who we are

Beven Legal Limited is a recognised body which is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, authorisation no. 835228.

We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the Data Protection Legislation, and we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.

Our collection and use of your personal information

We may collect personal information about you when you access our website, register with us, contact us, send us feedback or respond to our enquiries, and when we supply our services.

We collect this personal information from you either directly, or indirectly at your request or as may be inferred.

The personal information we collect about you depends on the particular activities carried out between us. Such information may include:

your name, address and contact details
date of birth
bank account and payment details
details of any feedback you give us by phone, email, post or via social media
information about the services we provide to you.

We use this personal information to:

verify your identity
provide services to you
notify you of any changes to our services that may affect you
market out services to you
improve our services.

Our legal basis for processing your personal information

When we use your personal information we are required to have a legal basis for doing so. There are various different legal bases upon which we may rely, depending on what personal information we process and why.

The legal bases we may rely on include:

consent: where you have given us clear consent for us to process your personal information for a specific purpose
contract: where our use of your personal information is necessary for a contract we have with you (such as our engagement to provide legal services), or because you have asked us to take specific steps before entering into a contract
legal obligation: where our use of your personal information is necessary for us to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations)
vital interests: where our use of your personal information is necessary to protect you or someone else’s life
public task: where our use of your personal information is necessary for us to perform a task in the public interest or for our official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law
legitimate interests: where our use of your personal information is necessary for our legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party (unless there is a good reason to protect your personal information which overrides our legitimate interests).

Further information—the personal information we collect, when and how we use it

For further details on when we collect personal information, what we collect as well as how we use it, please see the following:

When you register interest with us to potentially become, or you become, a client, we ask for your name, address and identifying information, and documentary proof of these. We ask for this in order to discharge our legal obligations in respect of anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing (and like obligations) (together, “Know Your Client Obligations”), and to create and manage your client matter with us and to communicate with you about your matter. We rely on consent and legal obligation as the lawful basis for collecting and using your personal information. We will keep this information until (for non-clients) seven years after the enquiry process has ceased and (for clients) seven years after the matter closes (unless required by law or legal professional conduct rules to keep the information for longer, in which case we may keep this information for such longer period).
When you give us personal information in the course of our acting for you on a matter, we ask for any personal information that might be relevant. We ask for this to create and manage your client matter with us and to communicate with you about your matter. We rely on consent and legal obligation as the lawful basis for collecting and using your personal information. Disclosure to third parties will be made only for the purposes of your client matter with us and to the extent of express or implied authority from you to so disclose. We will keep this information until seven years after the matter closes (unless required by law or legal professional conduct rules to keep the information for longer, in which case we may keep this information for such longer period).

Who we share your personal information with

We may share your name and delivery address details with our third party suppliers.

This data sharing enables them to despatch any necessary documents directly to you. In the case of our accountants, this enables them to prepare our financial accounts and, if applicable, to conduct an audit of Beven Legal.

We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law.

Other than as expressly or impliedly authorised or requested by you, we will not share your personal information with any other third party.

Whether information has to be provided by you, and if so why

We require you to provide name, address and verifying documentation to enable us to be able to discharge our Know Your Client Obligations and to accept you as a client and to despatch documents as necessary. We will inform you at the point of collecting information from you, whether you are required to provide the information to us.

The impact of our use of your personal information

So far as we are aware, the use of your personal information in the manner stated above ought to have no adverse impact on you.

Cookies and similar technologies

A cookie is a small text file which may be placed onto your device (eg computer, smartphone or other electronic device) when you use a website. We may use cookies on our website. These help us recognise you and your device and store some information about your preferences or past actions. By continuing to use our website, or by becoming our client, you consent to the use of cookies.

For further information on cookies generally visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

Marketing

We would like to send you information about our services which may be of interest to you. Where we have your consent or it is in our legitimate interests to do so, we may do this by post, email, telephone, text message (SMS) or automated call. By becoming our client, you consent to receiving such information.

Where you become our client, unless stated otherwise in our letter of engagement, and subject in any event to “Your rights” below, we may disclose that you are a client of Beven Legal and may disclose the associated practice area.

For more information on your rights in relation to marketing, see “Your rights” below.

Your rights

Under the Data Protection Legislation you have a number of important rights free of charge. In summary, those include rights to:

fair processing of information and transparency over how we use your use personal information
access to your personal information and to certain other supplementary information that this privacy and data policy is already designed to address
require us to correct any mistakes in your information which we hold
require the erasure of personal information concerning you in certain situations
receive the personal information concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to a third party in certain situations
object at any time to processing of personal information concerning you for direct marketing
object to decisions being taken by automated means which produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you
object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information
otherwise restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances
if justified, claim compensation for damages caused by our breach of any data protection laws.

For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the Guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individuals rights under the Data Protection Legislation.

If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please:

email, call or write to us
let us have enough information to identify you
let us have proof of your identity and address (a copy of your driving licence or passport and a recent utility or credit card bill), and
let us know the information to which your request relates, including any account or reference numbers, if you have them.

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

If you want detailed information from Get Safe Online on how to protect your information and your computers and devices against fraud, identity theft, viruses and many other online problems, please visit www.getsafeonline.org. Get Safe Online is supported by HM Government and leading businesses.

How to complain

We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.

The Data Protection Legislation also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in particular in the European Union (or European Economic Area) state where you work, normally live or where any alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/ or telephone: 0303 123 1113.

Changes to this website privacy policy

This website privacy and data policy was published on 1 April 2022.

We may change this privacy and data policy from time to time.

How to contact us

Please contact us if you have any questions about this privacy notice or the information we hold about you.

If you wish to contact us, please send an email to raymond.beven@bevenlegal.com, or call Raymond Beven on 020 7558 8066 or 07771 972 375.