What we need

Blair & Bryden, Solicitors will be a “controller” of the personal information that you provide to us when you instruct us to act on your behalf or through accessing our website.

When you become a client of Blair & Bryden, we will collect, store and use the personal information that you provide to us in your instructions and during the course of our solicitor / client relationship. We may ask you for additional personal information during the course of our client / solicitor relationship, which shall be collected, stored and used in accordance with this privacy notice.

Why we need your personal information – contractual purposes

We need to collect our clients’ personal information so that we can perform our service agreement with you or work in which you instruct us. We will use our clients’ personal information to:

  • provide you with Estate Agency, letting or legal advice, including for example communicating with you by email, letter and/or telephone, etc.;
  • represent you as your solicitors in connection with any matter instructed by you such as Court matters, conveyancing, estate agency
  • respond to and communicate with clients regarding your questions, comments, support needs or complaints, concerns or allegations in relation to any relevant complaints and disciplinary procedures, for example we will use your personal information to investigate your complaint, take disciplinary action etc; and

If you do not provide us with all of the personal information that we need to collect then this may affect our ability to provide you with legal advice and / or represent you as your solicitors.

Why we need your personal information – legitimate purposes

Individual clients’ personal data:

We also process our clients’ personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interests to:

  • promote our services by sending clients communications with information for upcoming events and legal updates;
  • invite our clients as guests to our events; and

Where we process your personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interests, you have the right to object to us using your personal information for the above purposes. If you wish to object to any of the above processing, please contact us on Tel: (01475)558420. If we comply with your objection, this may affect our ability to undertake the tasks above for the benefit of you as a client.

Why we need your personal information – legal obligations

We are under a legal obligation to process certain personal information relating to our clients for the purposes of complying with our obligations under:

  • the Law Society of Scotland requirements for solicitors;
  • all and any applicable AML requirements; and

Other uses of your personal information

We may ask you if we can process your personal information for additional purposes. Where we do so, we will provide you with an additional privacy notice with information on how we will use your information for these additional purposes.

Who we share your personal information with

We may be required to share personal information with statutory or regulatory authorities and organisations to comply with statutory obligations. Such organisations include [for example – the Law Society of Scotland, HMRC, etc.] [We may also share personal data with our professional advisors for the purposes of taking advice. Such obligations include for example, The Law Society of Scotland, HMRC, etc]

Blair & Bryden employs third party suppliers to provide services, including [IT, payroll, etc.]. These suppliers may process personal data on our behalf as “processors” and are subject to written contractual conditions to only process that personal data under our instructions and protect it.

In the event that we do share personal data with external third parties, we will only share such personal data strictly required for the specific purposes and take reasonable steps to ensure that recipients shall only process the disclosed personal data in accordance with those purposes.

How we protect your personal information

Your personal information is stored on our electronic filing system and our servers based in the [UK / EU], or in secure premises and is accessed by our [staff] for the purposes set out above.

How long we keep your personal information

We keep our clients’ personal data for the relevant periods set out in the Guidelines of the Law Society of Scotland. A copy of the relevant Guidelines can be produced upon request by contacting us at our Head Office.

Your rights

You can exercise any of the following rights by writing to us at Blair & Bryden, Solicitors, 4 Cathcart Square Greenock PA15 1BS (greenockproperty@blair-bryden.co.uk)

Your rights in relation to your personal information are:

  • you have a right to request access to the personal information that we hold about you by making a “subject access request”;
  • if you believe that any of your personal information is inaccurate or incomplete, you have a right to request that we correct or complete your personal information;
  • you have a right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal information for specific purposes; and
  • if you wish us to delete your personal information, you may request that we do so.

Any requests received by Blair & Bryden will be considered under applicable data protection legislation. If you remain dissatisfied, you have a right to raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ico.org.uk