Privacy Policy

(a) Collection:

While using our Service, we may ask you to provide us with information about you and your matter to enable us to respond to your enquiry or process your legal work and this will include personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify you. Personally identifiable information may include, but is not limited to, your email address, name, phone number, postal address (“Personal Information”). It is not possible for us to process your enquiry or any legal work on your behalf without obtaining Personal Information as it will be required for normal communications, proceeding with your enquiry or matter and for regulatory checks. Please also see the sections below in respect of data collection we use through the internet, under the headings, Log Data, Cookies, Google and Remarketing services

(b) We may receive personal data from you for the purposes of our money laundering checks, such as a copy of your passport.

(c) Use:

We use the information you provide primarily for the provision of legal services to you and for related purposes including:

• If you provide us with any personal data while using this website we may use it to provide you with any information or services you have requested.
• We may also use it for any other purpose for which you give your consent. For example we may send you additional information about the firm or its services, if you have consented to us doing so.
• Communicating with you and third parties in the normal course of your enquiry or matter
• updating and enhancing client records

• analysis to help us manage our practice

• statutory returns

• legal and regulatory compliance
• Information and identity documents for anti-money laundering checks will be processed only for the purposes of preventing money laundering and terrorist financing, or as otherwise permitted by law or with your express consent.
• replying to queries or complaints

• processing enquiries received for purposes preparatory to engaging in a contract for legal services

• marketing and statistical analysis for the purposes of our business ( but we will not send you marketing material after completion of your matter without your consent)

Our use of that information is subject to your instructions, data protection law and our duty of confidentiality.

We collect information that your browser sends whenever you visit our Service (“Log Data”). This Log Data may include information such as your computer’s Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, browser type, browser version, the pages of our Service that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages and other statistics.

In addition, we may use third party services such as Google Analytics that collect, monitor and analyze this type of information in order to increase our Service’s functionality. These third party service providers have their own privacy policies addressing how they use such information.

Cookies are files with small amount of data, which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a web site and stored on your computer’s hard drive.

We use “cookies” to collect information. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Service.

Matthew Wilkinson Solicitors Limited uses remarketing services to advertise on third party web sites to you after you visited our Service. We, and our third party vendors, use cookies to inform, optimise and serve ads based on your past visits to our Service.

Google AdWords remarketing service is provided by Google Inc.

You can opt-out of Google Analytics for Display Advertising and customise the Google Display Network ads by visiting the Google Ads Settings page.Google also recommends installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on for your web browser. Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on provides visitors with the ability to prevent their data from being collected and used by Google Analytics.

For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms web page.

We may employ third party companies and individuals to facilitate our Service, to provide the Service on our behalf, to perform Service-related services or to assist us in analysing how our Service is used. This can include expert witnesses and other professional advisers such as Barristers, including sometimes advisers appointed by another party to your matter. We may also give such information to others who perform services for us, such as managing our marketing, assisting with our enquiry process and information gathering and document services including document signing, witness proofing, status enquiries, telephone, typing or photocopying. Our practice may be audited or checked by our accountants or our regulator, or by other organisations.

These third parties have access to your Personal Information only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose.

On what legal basis do we process your information?

The legal grounds for processing your information and personal data depend upon the nature of our relationship with you and the context of the processing we carry out:

1. Conducting your Matter-Processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with you. The contract or retainer is set out in our Client Care Letter, Terms of Business and any Funding Agreement, which set out the terms of our contract and the services to be provided to you.
2. Processing an Enquiry– Processing is necessary to take steps requested by you prior to entering into a contract with you.
3. Marketing analytics, Re-marketing, Cookies, Google adwords-Processing is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests in managing and promoting our business and reaching customers wishing to use our services, except where those interests are overridden by the interests, or fundamental rights or freedoms of affected individuals. In order to determine this we shall balance factors such as what you were told at the time you provided your data, what your reasonable expectations are, and the nature of the data and if you could be identified from it, how it would impact upon you.
4. Legal and Regulatory compliance-Processing is necessary for compliance with mandatory legal obligations to which we are subject.

How long will we keep your information?

We retain personal data for as long as is necessary depending upon the purpose for which it was obtained This is in order that we can respond to any queries or issues which may arise following the completion of your enquiry or  matter or to comply with our legal obligations ( e.g. there are minimum periods for anti-money laundering regulations). We also may need to retain information or files to conduct legal work, or in responding to Complaints or in establishing or defending claims which could be made against us, for example for negligence in the performance of our duties. We have to take account of the time allowed to bring complaints or to start a negligence claim including the date of knowledge provisions which can extend the usual 6 years period to 3 years from a date of knowledge, although in negligence claims this is subject to a 15 year Long Stop.

In the case of matter files, starting from the end of the matter, we may retain files for 15 years. (unless the matter was conducted on behalf of a client under the age of 18 in which case the file may be retained for 15 years from their 18th birthday). For Enquiries we may retain the information for 7 years.

With regard to Information and documents provided for Anti–Money Laundering checks you consent to us retaining such data for longer than the five year statutory period, unless you tell us otherwise and they will be stored and destroyed with the relevant matter file.