Privacy Policy & Your Data

We at Harper James respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you. This policy is in layered format so you can click through to the specific areas set out below.

1. Important information and who we are

Purpose of this privacy notice This privacy notice sets out the types of personal information we collect, how we collect and process that information, who we may share it with in relation to the services we provide and certain rights and options that you have in this respect.

This privacy notice applies to the following categories of individuals (collectively referred to as ‘you’ and ‘your’ in this privacy notice):

1. Website visitors
2. Prospective clients
3. Clients (including former clients)
4. Suppliers and contractors
5. All other people, including counterparties in legal matters, referrers and other business contacts

Controller
Harper James Limited (referred to as ‘Harper James’, ‘we’ ‘us’ or ‘our’ in this privacy notice) is the controller and is responsible for your personal data.  Our registered address is Floor 5, Cavendish House, 39-41 Waterloo Street, Birmingham, B2 5PP.

How to contact us

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy notice are welcomed and should be addressed to our Compliance team at compliance@harperjames.co.uk.

Third-party links

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

2. The data we collect about you

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed. This is known as anonymous data. We process your personal data differently depending on our relationship with you.

We may collect, use, store and transfer different categories of personal data about you which we have grouped together below.  The processing of the various categories of personal data will depend on your relationship with us. Please refer to the relevant sections of ‘How we use your personal data’ for further information.

Categories of personal data

• Anti-Money Laundering Data includes PEP Status, Sanction status, photographic image, proof of identity, and evidence of source of funds.
• Biometric Data includes self-portrait photograph.
• Client Profile Data includes your preferences, feedback and survey responses, your physical image (photo/video).
• Contact Data includes billing address, correspondence address, email address and telephone numbers.
• Criminal Conviction Data includes fraud alerts from third party providers.
• Due Diligence Data includes passport, driving licence, utility bills, and bank statements.
• Financial Dataincludes bank account and payment card details.
• Identity Dataincludes first name, last name, marital status, title, date of birth, job title and gender.
• Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.
• Matter Instruction Data includes personal information relevant to the matter that you have instructed us on.
• Payment and Transaction Dataincludes details about payments to and from you and other details of services you have engaged from us.
• Sensitive personal data includes information about your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union activities, physical or mental health, sexual life, or details of criminal offences, genetic or biometric data.
• Technical Dataincludes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
• Usage Dataincludes information about how you use our website, products and services.

3. How your personal data is collected

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

Direct interactions. You may give us personal data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:

• visit and/or interact with our website https://harperjames.co.uk;
• seek legal advice from us;
• apply for our services online via our contact form, enquiry form, chat function and other interactive platforms;
• subscribe to our publications such as newsletters on our website;
• request marketing to be sent to you;
• give us some feedback;
• attend our seminars, training programmes and presentation workshops; and/or
• enter a competition, prize draw or promotion.

Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources such as Technical Data including analytics providers such as Google based outside of the UK, advertising networks and search information providers.

We may receive Contact Data through online publicly available sources, eg corporate websites, corporate profile sites such as LinkedIn and government registers such as Companies House, Land Registry, HMRC, and Intellectual Property Office.

We may receive Contact Data and Identity Data from our clients where you are a witness, a counterparty, or another interested party in a matter that we have been instructed on.

4. How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to such as:

• Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
• Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests or those of a third party and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
• Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
• Where you have given your consent.
• Where the processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.
• Where the processing is necessary for the administration of justice.

Purposes for which we will use your personal data We have set out below a description of the ways we use your personal data and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so in each case. Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. The tables are arranged according to your relationship with us.

A. Website visitor

This section applies to you when you are a visitor to our website. Please see our cookies notice for additional information.

B. Prospective clients

This section applies to you if you have made an enquiry about our services and/or have begun the process of instructing us to advise you.

C. Clients (including former clients)

This section applies to you where you are personally a client of ours and/or if you are an employee, officer or representative of an organisation which is a client of ours. It also applies to former clients and their employees, officers and representatives.

D. Suppliers and contractors

E. All other people, including counterparties in legal matters, referrers and other business contacts

Change of purpose We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.  If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so. Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

5. Call recording

We  record telephone calls  and calls hosted via communications platform such as Teams . This may be in order to collect evidence, to protect our staff or otherwise to create a record of what is being said to comply our legal and professional obligations to our clients and to third parties. In the case of video recordings, we will inform you of our intention to record the call and you will be given the opportunity to object. We process your personal information comprised in that call recording on the basis that we have a legitimate interest in doing so or because we have a contract with you. Once recorded, your personal information will otherwise be processed in accordance with one or more of the preceding Sections A to E, depending on our relationship with you.

6. Cookies

For full information about how we use cookies on our website, please read our cookies policy.

7. Disclosures of your personal data

We may have to share your personal data with the third parties set out below for the purposes set above.  Please note that our external contractors and service providers are subject to strict contractual obligations to treat your personal information with the utmost sensitivity, to keep it confidential and to comply with data protection law at all times.

• Any other person who you instruct us to share your personal information with or with whom we may reasonably be expected to share it with in order to deal with your matter where you are a client of ours ie Counsel, mediators or the legal representative of a counterparty, ACAS, the Land Registry.

• We use third party service providers to carry out activities on our behalf for example: office and client administration, security, video conferencing and online training platforms; archiving; document and records management (this includes using software to help us manage large volumes of documents); confidential waste disposal; IT support and maintenance; hosting our website (including analytics); marketing campaigns; payment; carrying out surveys; obtaining feedback on our services; and providers of anti-money laundering and know your client services.
• SaaS platform providers run our case management system and other databases so that we can administer and perform our services to you. We choose platform providers that may operate a cloud service, therefore the ultimate storage of personal data can be based inside and outside of the UK.
• Regulatory and government bodies including but not limited to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), Lexcel and the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS).
• Legal directories (such as the Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners) are subject to strict obligations of confidentiality but we will not share any information revealing your identity or the nature of any work carried out for you with them unless we have received your permission for your information to be shared and/or published.
• Where you have given us permission to use any comments for testimonials and marketing purposes, your name, organisation and job title may be shared on our website and other marketing material.
• The court, which is subject to its own legal duty to maintain the confidentiality and security of your personal information.
• Professional advisers acting as processors or joint controllers including our external lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers based who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services to us.
• HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities acting as processors or joint controllers based in the UK who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
• Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy notice.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

8. International transfers

In the course of providing our legal services to you, there may be occasions where your service requires us to transfer personal data out of the UK. Similarly, where we use cloud service providers (customer relationship management systems), ultimately the storage of that data can be based outside the UK.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

• We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data.
• Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved for use in the UK which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK.
• We ensure that the data importer has Binding Corporate Rules in place.

If you are based outside the UK or the EEA, we may transfer personal data to the correspondence address you provide to us. We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that such transfers are secure. By instructing us from outside the UK or the EEA you acknowledge and agree that such transfers are necessary for us to provide services to you.

If you would like to find out more about the safeguards we rely upon to transfer your personal data outside of the UK, please contact us at compliance@harperjames.co.uk.

9. Data security

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. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, 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.

10. Data retention

How long will you use my personal data for?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

Where a minimum retention period is required by law (such as retaining records for HMRC purposes or for compliance with SRA requirements, or anti-money laundering law), we comply with that minimum period plus up to 12 months to allow time for us to anonymise or delete information in accordance with our internal data management processes.

Unless particular circumstances warrant retention for longer periods, we retain client documents in line with the National Archives' recommended best practice and (where applicable) the Law Society's recommended retention periods for client files. We apply the same rules to electronic files as to paper files. Access to archived files is restricted. Please contact compliance@harperjames.co.uk  if you would like to discuss specific retention periods applicable to your matters.

Our backup and disaster recovery service provider retains a copy of all emails and attachments for ten years. Access to this information is restricted.

If we are required to retain your information longer than our standard retention periods, we will let you know (unless we are prevented by law from doing so).

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 information indefinitely without further notice to you.

11. Your legal rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. You can:

• Request access to your personal data. This is 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 to your personal data. 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. For example, 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 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 transfer of your personal data (data portability). We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format.
• Right to withdraw consent. 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.

What we need from you

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data or to exercise any of the other rights. However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances. We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data or to exercise any of your other rights. This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally, it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us.

12. Right to complain

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (https://ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with any concerns you may have before you approach the ICO, so please contact us in the first instance at compliance@harperjames.co.uk.

Changes to the privacy notice and your duty to inform us of changes

Where we make changes to our privacy notice we shall let you know. It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

This version was last updated in December 2023