Privacy Policy

​This is about your right as an individual to be informed about the processing of your personal data by and on behalf of HLS. 

 

Who we are and how to contact us

We are Hamilton Law Scientific Limited (HLS). Our registered address is 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, England, WC2H 9JQ. But you can’t reach us there, it’s just a virtual office address.

HLS is responsible for your personal data and is the data controller under applicable data protection laws.

You can contact us at hello@hamiltonlawscientific.com or 07860359763.

Our website is hamiltonlawscientific.com. You can also contact us through the form on the website.   

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, you can make a complaint to us using these contact details. You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.

The ICO’s address is: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. Helpline number: 0303 123 1113. ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk.

You can also seek a remedy through the courts, although we hope it won’t get to that. 

 

The notice

This notice explains how we and our employees and connected third parties collect and process your personal data, what we do with it, and what rights you have. It applies to each person identified by or identifiable using the personal data we collect or use in connection with: (a) the provision by us (and, on our behalf, our staff and subcontractors) of services; and (b) supporting activities relating to our services, including initial queries and proposals, relationship management, marketing activities and the engagement of suppliers of goods and services. We use the term “data subject” to refer to any person that meets that description. 

If we need to update this notice (to change our processing activity or to meet new legal requirements, for example), we will issue an updated version of it and send it to the data subject using the contact details they have specified or a client or supplier of HLS has specified on their behalf. Alternatively, we may publish it on hamiltonlawscientific.com and may, if appropriate, let the relevant clients, suppliers or data subjects know that it has been updated. In any event, you should check our website regularly to confirm. 

 

What information?

We collect and process the following information: 

• Contact details for individuals, including name, email addresses, telephone numbers, signatures, office addresses, job title and role.

• Identity documents and copies of them, such as passports, driving licences and utility bills.

• Financial information relating to billing, payment and the creditworthiness of a person. 

• Records, such as notes or recordings, of things said and done during interactions with HLS and its staff and contractors.

• Corporate authorisation, capacity and consents (and evidence of exercising any corporate authority), and powers of attorney.

• Documents containing evidence of ownership of property or involvement in financial transactions.

• Communications to and from clients and third parties and documents containing information about matters on which HLS is instructed, which may include incidental information concerning individuals identified in those communications and documents.

• Information about access to and use of hamiltonlawscientific.com.

• Employment documents.

• Information relating to criminal convictions and offences. 

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How do we get the information?

This information normally comes to us because the individual works for a current or prospective client or supplier of HLS and has decided or been asked to deal with HLS in relation to an agreement or prospective agreement. Otherwise, in relation to legal support services, we may have been tasked by a client to collect information or assess information shared with us by that client, so that information may come to us from the client or public sources. We may make a request for identity and financial information as part of our client acceptance procedure, which is then provided directly to us by the relevant individual or indirectly through a credit reference agency or similar organisation.

HLS sometimes sends out general legal knowledge and puts on events, so we may receive your information directly from you because you wish to (or you do) receive information or attend an event.

 

What we do with it

The information we collect or receive will be used to support HLS client and supplier relationships and agreements and to help us attract instructions from existing and new clients and otherwise promote HLS. This includes fulfilling a contract or taking related steps, and operating HLS’s business and pursuing HLS legitimate interests. 

Processing connected to this notice is carried out in the particular context of an agreement or prospective agreement with: (a) a client in relation to a matter requiring agreed legal support services or (b) a supplier in relation to required supplies for HLS. 

With respect to our legal support services, these are the main purposes for processing personal data: new client set up, answering initial enquiries and issuing proposals, identity checks, forming and managing a relationship in which we provide services to a client, providing and liaising in relation to services, pro bono support, sending and seeking responses to surveys and requests for information, improving HLS services and published material, resolving complaints, requesting and arranging attendance at events, providing information on HLS developments, services, offers, promotions, events, contact details and consultants, and providing knowledge on areas of HLS expertise and experience.

For data subjects that we consider may be interested in purchasing legal services for themselves or on behalf of their employers or clients, we may send direct marketing messages before, during or after the services we provide, which could include invitations to events or to contribute to or receive legal knowledge or other communications, legal knowledge, information on recent HLS developments and experience, networking messages and introductions, details of fees and business models, offers and promotions.

This is by and for HLS only – we do not give information to any third party to allow them to send you marketing material.

 

Who actually does the processing?

When we say “we process”, we mean that we, our staff and subcontractors and certain other third parties will process personal data. The third parties include relevant clients and suppliers, the organisations that are involved in storing and conveying information and communications or operating the systems that facilitate our business relationships (what we would call “IT organisations”), consultants who are engaged by us as contractors, legal specialists such as law firms for obtaining specialist or foreign legal advice, service providers who we purchase services from to help us provide services, and our professional advisors. We share your personal information with these organisations as required, always with our professional and other confidentiality obligations and privilege in mind. 

In certain circumstances, if we deal with third parties on your behalf, then those third parties may process your personal data, but we will only provide personal data to them if required to allow us to perform the relevant services (for example, to set up a video conference involving us, the data subject and the relevant third party, or to provide evidence to support a legal argument the relevant client wants us to make to the third party). The third parties to which this would apply could include, for example, counterparties, regulators, professional bodies, and their professional advisors and IT

organisations.

 

About our efforts to protect personal information

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

We have also 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.

Contact us for more information. 

 

Storage 

We will keep your personal data for as long as we still need it in relation to the purpose we collected it for, including our compliance with any related legal, accounting or reporting requirements. This normally means keeping it for as long as it is relevant to the legal support services or supplies it relates to. For general business contacts, we will keep information in a collection of contacts until we think it is unlikely that the relevant individual remains relevant to current or future client or supplier relationships. 

Your information is securely stored using Microsoft Office based storage.

As a default position, if we need to keep the data for longer than suggested above, we keep all types of personal data for a 10 year retention period, subject to annual review, unless we are subject to a legal or regulatory obligation to hold it for a different period. 

Once it is not required, or at the end of the retention period, we will dispose of your information securely and in accordance with applicable laws and regulatory requirements (in general, this means deleting it from our Microsoft Office based storage).

 

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, in general, you have rights including:

• Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information, which is subject to certain exemptions. In some cases we may not be able to give you access to personal information we hold regarding you if making such a disclosure would breach our legal obligations to our client or if prevented by any applicable law or regulation.

• Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete. 

• Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances. 

• Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances. 

• Your right to object to processing - You have the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

• Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances. The right only applies if we are processing information based on your consent or under, or in talks about entering into, a contract and the processing is automated. You are entitled to certain data in a commonly used, machine-readable format. 

You can also withdraw your consent, if applicable. If we receive notice of withdrawal, we won’t process your information any more in reliance on consent. There may be other lawful grounds for processing you information.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

 

In all cases, our intention is to act fairly and in accordance with the law, and we

urge you to get in contact if you have any concerns.