This notice explains when and why we collect personal information about you; how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.

For clients of this firm, you should read this notice alongside our general terms and conditions which provide further information on confidentiality, data privacy etc.

This notice does not apply to any websites that may have a link to, or from, ours.

Who we are
Children / Minors
What we need
Sources of information
Why we need it
Who has access to it
How do we protect your personal data
How long we keep it for
What are your rights?
Complaints about the use of personal data
Marketing data

Who we are

Data is collected, processed and stored by Habsburg Legal Services Ltd; and we are what is known as the ‘data controller’ of the personal information you provide to us.

Habsburg Legal Services is limited company registered in the UK with company number 12809926. 

Children / Minors

Our website and services are not aimed specifically at children (minors) because in legal work children are generally represented by their parent or guardians. If you are a child and need further advice or explanation about how we would use your data, please email hls@habsburg-legal-services.com.

What we need

The exact information we will request from you will depend on what you have asked us to do or what we are contracted to do for you.

There are two types of personal data (personal information) that you may provide to us:

• Personal data: is the general information that you supply about yourself – such as your name, address, gender, date of birth, contact details, financial information etc. 
   
• Sensitive personal data: is, by its nature, more sensitive information and may include your racial or ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation, political opinions, health data, trade union membership, philosophical views, biometric and genetic data.

In the majority of cases personal data will be restricted to basic information and information needed to complete ID checks. However for the work we do we may require more personal data such as place of birth, nationality, residency history, etc, and we will then ask you for more sensitive information.

Sources of information

Information about you may be obtained from a number of sources; including:

• You may volunteer the information about yourself
• You may authorise us to request such information on your behalf from third parties like family members, immigration and other governmental authorities, etc.
• You may provide information relating to someone else – if you have the authority to do so
• Information may be passed to us by third parties in order that we can undertake your legal work on your behalf. Typically these organisations can be:
  • Banks or building societies
  • Panel providers who allocate legal work to law firms
  • Organisations that have referred work to us
  • Medical or financial institutions – who provide your personal records / information

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Registered Users and their Profile

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

Why we need it 

The primary reason for asking you to provide us with your personal data, is to allow us to carry out your requests – which will ordinarily be to represent you and carry out your legal work.

The following are some examples, although not exhaustive, of what we may use your information for:

• Verifying your identity
• Verifying source of funds
• Communicating with you
• To establish funding of your matter or transaction
• Obtaining insurance policies on your behalf
• Processing your legal transaction including:
  • Providing you with advice; representing your interests to authorities, organisations or individuals; carrying out litigation on your behalf; attending hearings on your behalf; preparing documents or to complete transactions
• Keeping financial records of your transactions and the transactions we make on your behalf
• Seeking advice from third parties; such as legal and non-legal experts
• Responding to any complaint or allegations against us

Who has access to it

We have a data protection regime in place to oversee the effective and secure processing of your personal data. We will not sell or rent your information to third parties. We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Generally, we will only use your information within Habsburg Legal Services Ltd. However there may be circumstances, in carrying out your legal work, where we may need to disclose some information to third parties; for example:

• Immigration and governmental authorities, domestic and foreign
• Solicitors / lawyers, legal workers and others, domestic and foreign, contracted by Habsburg Legal Services Ltd to represent your interest/instructions
• Solicitors acting on the other side
• Asking an independent Barrister or Counsel for advice; or to represent you
• Non legal experts to obtain advice or assistance
• HM Land Registry to register a property
• HM Revenue & Customs; e.g. for Stamp Duty Liability
• Court or Tribunal
• Translation Agencies
• Settify online Family and Wills services
• Contracted Suppliers
• External auditors or our Regulator; e.g. Lexcel, SRA, ICO etc.
• Bank or Building Society; or other financial institutions
• Insurance Companies
• Providers of identity verification
• Any disclosure required by law or regulation; such as the prevention of financial crime and terrorism
• If there is an emergency and we think you or others are at risk

In the event any of your information is shared with the aforementioned third parties, or others, we ensure that they comply, strictly and confidentially, with our instructions and they do not use your personal information for their own purposes unless you have explicitly consented to them doing so.

There may be some uses of personal data that may require your specific consent. If this is the case we will contact you separately to ask for your consent which you are free to withdraw at any time.

Where else we, our systems, may send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. Our website may use systems and programs which securely passes your details to, for the purpose of the website to work, these systems. As such emails and messages through contact forms will securely pass third party servers which may be based in other countries or in the digital cloud.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

How do we protect your personal data

We recognise that your information is valuable and we take all reasonable measures to protect it whilst it is in our care.

We use technology and operational security in order to protect personally identifiable data from loss, misuse, alteration or destruction. Similarly, we adopt a high threshold when it comes to confidentiality obligations and both internal and external parties have agreed to protect confidentiality of all information; to ensure all personal data is handled and processed in line with our stringent confidentiality and data protection policies.

We use computer safeguards and we enforce, where possible, physical access controls to our buildings and files to keep data safe.

We ensure that you give us approval to use your email address for communication with respect to your legal case and any other communication from us. We do not contact or copy in third parties unless you have given us explicit consent to write/copy to these email addresses in (case specific) communications.

How long will we keep it for

Your personal information will be retained, usually in computer or manual files, for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which the information was collected; or as required by law; or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you may hold with us. For example:

• As long as necessary to carry out your legal work
• For a minimum of 7 years from the conclusion or closure of your legal work; in case you, or we, need to re-open your case for the purpose of defending complaints or claims against us
• For the duration of a trust
• Some information or matters may be kept for 16 years – such as commercial transactions, sales of leasehold purchases, matrimonial matters (financial orders or maintenance agreements etc.)
• Probate matters where there is a surviving spouse or civil partner may be retained until the survivor has died in order to deal with the transferable Inheritance Tax allowance
• Wills and related documents may be kept indefinitely
• Deeds related to unregistered property may be kept indefinitely as they evidence ownership
• Personal injury matters which involve lifetime awards or PI Trusts may be kept indefinitely
• If you leave a comment or testimonial its metadata are retained indefinitely.

In the unforeseen eventuality of the dissolution of the company we may not be able to hold your files/details. In which case we will endeavour to contact you and ask you to keep the documentation yourself, or you can instruct us to pass this on to a third party you approve us. Alternatively you can allow us to pass the documents on to another legal company chosen by us, which will secure and keep your files and details confidential. Where we can’t reach you, or you fail to instruct us, you agree now that you leave the decision to us.

In case of damage or loss by fire or nature, where we can reach you, we will inform you as soon as possible.

Ultimately, however well intended we are, we can not offer a guarantee (no one can) for the safe keeping, on the long term, of your files and details and advise that where possible you keep original documents yourself.

What are your rights?

Under GDPR, you are entitled to access your personal data (otherwise known as a ‘right to access’). If you wish to make a request, please do so in writing addressed to our office; or contact the person dealing with your matter.

A request for access to your personal data means you are entitled to a copy of the data we hold on you – such as your name, address, contact details, date of birth, information regarding your health etc.- but it does not mean you are entitled to the documents that contain this data. 

Under certain circumstances, in addition to the entitlement to ‘access your data’, you have the following rights:

1. The right to be informed: which is fulfilled by way of this privacy notice and our transparent explanation as to how we use your personal data

2. The right to rectification: you are entitled to have personal data rectified if it is inaccurate or incomplete

3. The right to erasure / ‘right to be forgotten’: you have the right to request the deletion or removal of your personal data where there is no compelling reason for its continued processing. This right only applies in the following specific circumstances:

• Where the personal data is no longer necessary in regards to the purpose for which it was originally collected
• Where consent is relied upon as the lawful basis for holding your data and you withdraw your consent
• Where you object to the processing and there is no overriding legitimate interest for continuing the processing
• The personal data was unlawfully processed
• Where you object to the processing for direct marketing purposes

4.       The right to object: you have the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests; and direct marketing. This right only applies in the following circumstances:

• An objection to stop processing personal data for direct marketing purposes is absolute – there are no exemptions or grounds to refuse – we must stop processing in this context
• You must have an objection on grounds relating to your particular situation
• We must stop processing your personal data unless:
  • We can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override your interests, rights and freedoms; or
  • The processing is for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.

5. The right to restrict processing: you have the right to request the restriction or suppression of your data. When processing is restricted, we can store the data but not use it. This right only applies in the following circumstances:

• Where you contest the accuracy of the personal data – we should restrict the processing until we have verified the accuracy of that data
• Where you object to the processing (where it was necessary for the performance of a public interest or purpose of legitimate interests), and we are considering whether our organisation’s legitimate grounds override your right
• Where processing is unlawful and you request restriction
• If we no longer need the personal data but you require the data to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim

Complaints about the use of personal data

If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact our office and we will investigate further.

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are not processing your personal data in accordance with the law, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Marketing data

We may contact you for the purpose of direct marketing. This means that we may use your personal data that we have collected in accordance with this privacy policy to contact you about our products or services, events etc. which we feel may interest you. The direct marketing communications may be provided to you by social media channels, email or post. We will never send marketing communications via SMS or call you without your specific consent; nor do we ever pass on or sell your details to a third party.

How we collect personal data

The following are examples, although not exhaustive, of how we collect your personal information:

• Sign-up to receive one of our newsletters
• Submitting an online enquiry
• Following/liking/subscribing to our social media channels
• Take part in one of the competitions or promotions we run on the website or on our social media channels
• Agree to fill in a questionnaire or survey on our website
• Ask us a question or submit any queries or concerns you have via email or on social media channels
• Post information to the our website or social media channels, for example when we offer the option for you to comment on, or join, discussions
• When you leave a review about us on third party websites and other channels

Whenever we collect your personal data, you will be provided the opportunity to ‘opt in’ to receiving marketing communications from us. We hope you will provide this information so you find our communications useful but if you choose not to this will have no effect on accessing our legal services.

Habsburg Legal Services Ltd handles enquires at different stages and we group those enquiries in three main ways. We will take the following steps in each instance:

Prospects: Consent will need to be recorded before being added to marketing campaigns.

Fixed fee clients: Legitimate interest will be the legal basis. Relevant marketing communication by email will be sent during the case and once the case has been closed. Clients have the option to exclude themselves from marketing, where available by clicking on the unsubscribe link on all of our emails, on the telephone when speaking to an advisor or contacting Habsburg Legal Services Ltd through email or on social media.

Retainer clients: Legitimate interest will be the legal basis. Relevant marketing communication by email will be sent during the case and once the case has been closed. Clients have the option to exclude themselves from marketing, where available by clicking on the unsubscribe link on all of our emails, on the telephone when speaking to an advisor or contacting Habsburg Legal Services Ltd through email or on social media.

How we may use your details

The following are examples, although not exhaustive, of how we may use your personal information for our legitimate business interests:

• the legal work you asked us to do
• fraud prevention
• direct marketing
• network and information systems security
• data /analytics /enhancing, modifying or improving our services
• identifying usage trends
• determining the effectiveness of promotional campaigns and advertising.

We may use your personal information for legitimate interests such as direct marketing or under reasonable expectation to provide you with information you would expect to receive or that would benefit and enhance our relationship. This information will help us review and improve our products, services and offers.

Your rights

You have the right to object to this processing. Should you wish to do so please contact us.

How we protect your personal information

We will use personal information to target individuals with marketing materials. We may use personalisation to collect analytics to inform marketing and produce relevant content for the marketing strategy to enable it to enhance and personalise the “consumer experience”.

If you do not wish us to continue to contact you in this way, you can either, where available, follow the unsubscribe instructions on any of our communications to you or contact us with your name and email address. Your details will be removed as soon as possible. Once unsubscribed, you may still receive transactional emails from us regarding your legal case.

Any questions regarding this notice and our privacy practices should be sent to our office by email.