Privacy Policy

Who we are

This is the privacy policy of Field Seymour Parkes LLP, a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales (number OC370344) whose registered office is at 1 London Street, Reading RG1 4PN.

We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This privacy policy explains what personal information we collect and how we will use it.

When do we collect personal information and what personal information do we collect?

We may collect personal information about you as follows:

  • If you fill in any of the forms on our website (including our residential conveyancing quote calculator), we will collect your contact details and the other information you provide in the form.
  • If you pay any of our invoices via our website, we will collect your name, email address, the amount you wish to pay and the invoice number.
  • If you contact us by any other means (e.g. email or telephone), we may keep a record of that contact and the information you provide us at that time.
  • If you instruct us to provide legal services, we will collect a range of information relating to you which is outlined in more detail in our terms of business which are available on request.
  • When your instructions are complete, we will ask you to complete an online feedback questionnaire from which we will collect your contact details and the other information you provide in the form.
  • When your instructions are complete we will also ask if you would like to be added to our marketing database and if you agree, or if you ask to be added to our marketing database in any other circumstances (e.g. by signing up via our website), we will collect your name, the name of your company/organisation (if any), email address and your preferences as to the types of marketing information you would like to receive from us. The emails that we send you via our marketing database may contain tracking facilities, which may include the opening of emails, forwarding of emails, the clicking of links within the email content, times, dates and frequency of activity and other data relevant to the production of an enhanced user experience.
  • We may collect personal data relating to third parties in the course of providing legal services to our clients, including professional contact information, information relating to persons involved in the relevant legal matter, dispute or transaction and contact details of suppliers to us or our clients.
  • If you apply for employment with us or for work experience, we will collect a range of information relating to you which is outlined in more detail in our candidate/work experience privacy notice.
  • We only collect special category personal data (previously referred to as sensitive data) from our clients, our staff, job candidates and work experience placements. We have additional procedures and policies in place to ensure we process and protect special category data lawfully. We provide separate privacy information to the individuals from whom we collect special category data.
  • If you visit our premises, we may collect images of you via the CCTV cameras positioned outside our premises and in our reception area. More information about this is set out in our CCTV policy which is available on request.

Other information collected via our website and cookies

If you visit our website, we will collect information about your visit, namely IP address, traffic data, location data and the resources that you access.

Our website uses a limited number of cookies, namely:

  • A cookie which stores your acceptance to the use of cookies on our website.
  • Cookies required by Google Analytics in order to collect the information about your website visit as described above.
  • A session cookie set by the ASP.NET web framework.

For more information about the cookies we use on our website, please see our cookies policy.

Links to other websites

Our website may, from time to time, contain links to other websites which may be of interest to you.  If you follow a link, please note that the other website will have its own privacy policy and you should check this before you submit any personal information to that website. We are not responsible for the content of other websites or their use of your personal information.

How do we use your personal information?

  • If you visit our website, we will use information about your visit to help us make our website experience as user-friendly for as many visitors as possible on the basis that we have a legitimate interest to do so.
  • If you fill in forms on our website (including our residential conveyancing quote calculator), or if you contact us by any other means, we use the information you provide to respond to your enquiry or contact on the basis that we have a legitimate interest to do so.
  • If you pay any of our invoices via our website, once you have input your details into our website you will be directed to a Barclays SmartPay page hosted away from our website where you will be invited to enter your bank details before confirming the payment.
  • If you ask to be added to our marketing database, we will use the information you provide to send you information about our organisation and services in accordance with your stated preferences.  Any information obtained via the tracking of marketing emails is used to refine future email campaigns and supply you with more relevant content based around their activity.  We will do so on the basis that you have consented to us processing your personal information in this way. You can stop receiving marketing information from us at any time as these communications provide easy ways to unsubscribe or update your preferences.
  • Occasionally we may send marketing information to clients and contacts (in particular to individuals holding in-house legal counsel roles and to members of the STIR and START networks) on the basis that we have a legitimate interest in doing so but any such communications we send to you will include easy ways to unsubscribe or update your preferences.
  • If you instruct us to provide legal services, we will use the information you provide to carry out our contractual obligations to you and to fulfil our legal obligations arising from your instructions. This may include sharing the information with trusted third-party suppliers we use to help us provide our services. Information will only be shared if we have adequate safeguards in place to ensure your information is kept confidential and secure and is only processed in accordance with our instructions.
  • If you instruct us to provide legal services, we may also use the information you provide to provide you with follow-up reminders (for example, by reminding private clients who instruct us to write their wills of the need to review their wills periodically) and/or to notify you about changes in our organisation. We will do so on the basis that this use of your information is compatible with our original use of your information and that we have a legitimate interest in doing so.
  • We will use any feedback you provide on our services to help improve our service delivery and, if you consent, to publicise any positive feedback you give.
  • We will use any third-party personal data collected in the course of providing legal services on the basis we have a legitimate interest to do so, namely to carry out our contractual obligations to our client and to fulfil our legal obligations arising from such instructions.
  • If you are one of our suppliers, or work for one of our supplier organisations, we may retain your personal information in the internal register of approved counsel and other experts we are required to maintain as part of our Lexcel accreditation on the basis that we have a legitimate interest in doing so.

We will not use your personal information for any purpose not explained in this privacy policy, our terms of business and/or the privacy notices that apply to our staff, job candidates and work experience placements.

Where do we store your personal information and how it is kept secure?

Some of the information you provide to us will be transmitted electronically, e.g. information provided via our website or by email. We would remind you that information transmitted via the internet is not completely secure and although we will do our best to protect any information transmitted in this way, we cannot guarantee its complete security.

Except as described below, all information you provide to us is stored on our premises or EU cloud services, and no information you provide to us is transferred to, or stored at, a destination outside  the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area.

When you provide information to us via any of the forms on our website or make a payment via our website, we use the Global Edge Security (or GES) security and performance suite provided by Automattic Inc T/A WordPress and Cloudflare Inc to help prevent distributed denial of service (or DDoS) attacks. This means that the information you provide to us via our website is transferred by Cloudflare Inc to the United States utilizing the UK data transfer addendum. Further information about Cloudflare’s commitment to GDPR compliance can be found at:  https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/gdpr/introduction/

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data being accidentally lost, accessed or used in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed.

In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those staff, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

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

Who do we share your personal information with?

We may disclose your personal information to third parties if we are under a duty to disclose or share it in order to comply with any legal obligation (for example our auditors, our insurers, HMRC and the Solicitors Regulatory Authority) or if we have a legitimate interest in doing so (for example if we need to share client information with trusted third-party suppliers as described above or if personal information about you is disclosed to us by or on behalf of a client and we need to disclose it to a third party to fulfil our contractual obligations to our client) or with your consent.

How long do we keep your personal information?

We will keep your personal information for the following periods of time, subject to our email data retention policy:

Circumstances in which personal information was providedHow long do we keep it?
Information submitted via website form
This includes information submitted via our residential conveyancing quote calculator unless you instruct us to act for you, in which case the retention period for personal information provided in the course of providing legal services will apply (please see below)
12 months
Information submitted when paying invoices via our website7 years
Contact by any other means (e.g. email or telephone) which does not lead to instructions to provide legal services3 years
To be added to our marketing databaseOnline consent: For the duration of your consent (to be deleted upon consent being withdrawn) or if it becomes evident to us that your personal information is no longer up to date
In the course of providing legal servicesUsually 7 years from the closure of the file unless we inform you otherwise

Your rights in relation to the personal information we hold

You have the right to:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data 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 data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

Object to processing of your personal data 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 as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

Contacting us

If you would like to communicate with our Data Protection Officer about any of the rights mentioned above, or if you have any other queries about the matters mentioned in this privacy policy, please contact us using one of the following options:

Complaints

You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner about the way in which we collect and use your personal data: www.ico.org.uk/concerns or telephone 0303 123 1113.

Changes to this privacy policy

This policy is effective from January 2023. We may change this privacy policy from time to time by updating this webpage.