Privacy policy

PNC Legal is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This policy sets out the basis upon which we will process any personal data we collect from you through this website (“the Site”) or that you provide to us. Please read it carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

Our role as data controller

The data controller is PNC Legal Limited, whose registered office is TW8a Knoll Business Centre, 325-327 Old Shoreham Road, Hove BN3 7GS.

When we use personal data about you or others in connection with promoting and administering our business and providing our services we do so as data controller.

Your role in keeping your personal data up to date

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes.

Contact details of our Privacy Manager

We do not meet the criteria for a mandatory appointment of a Data Protection Officer under the General Data Protection Regulation. We have allocated informal responsibility to a person in our business who can deal with any data protection related matters. You can contact our Privacy Manager by email at: mail@pnclegal.com marking the subject line, ‘For the attention of the Privacy Manager’.

Categories of personal data obtained

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about a living individual from which that person can be identified, directly or indirectly. We may collect different kinds of personal data about you when you interact with us, including via the Site, social media, email, telephone, post or in person. We may also receive this information from third parties (for example, a publicly available source or from someone who has recommended us to you and given us your contact details). We have grouped this information together as follows:

  • Identity Data, such as your name.
  • Contact Data, such as your email address, telephone/fax number, address and other contact details.
  • Enquiry Data, such as your enquiries about engaging us for legal advice.
  • Correspondence Data, such as any correspondence between us and you about an enquiry.
  • Technical Data, such as your IP address, operating system, browser type and version, location and other information about how you use the Site.
  • Marketing and Communications Data, such as your communications preferences and how you have responded to our marketing communications.
  • Tracking Data, such as information we or others collect about you from cookies and similar tracking technologies, such as web beacons, pixels, and other digital identifiers.

We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Technical Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific feature on the Site, or we may aggregate your Marketing and Communications Data to calculate the percentage of recipients who open our email newsletter. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

We do not usually collect any special categories of personal data about you, but you may choose to disclose this data to us. Special categories of personal data include details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data. Unless we are required to do so to comply with a legal obligation, or as an integral part of providing relevant legal services to you, we do not usually collect any personal data about you relating to criminal convictions or offences.

Use of personal data

Our core purposes for processing personal data are to promote and operate our business, to provide legal services to our clients, to maintain our client and business records and to comply with the law and regulations.

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

  • Where it is necessary for us in order to perform a contract which 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 (for example, to monitor our IT systems and protect them).
  • Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
  • Where we have your consent to do so (for example, if you are not a client and you ask us to sign you up for news and updates by email).

(Under the General Data Protection Regulation there are additional lawful bases, but these are the most relevant.)

Lawful basis, and any legitimate interests, for the processing

The table below sets out the lawful basis upon which we rely to process personal data, depending on the category of personal data and the reason we are processing it. Please note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful basis, depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data.

Purpose/activity Type of data Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest
To provide the Site to you (a) Technical Data Legitimate interests (to promote our business and services via the web)
To use data analytics to improve the Site and the client experience (a) Identity Data(b) Technical Data

(c) Tracking Data

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform and deliver our marketing strategy)
To respond to your enquiries and register you as a new client of PNC Legal and/or Keystone Law (a) Identity Data(b) Contact Data

(c) Enquiry Data

(d) Correspondence Data

(a) Performance of a contract with you(b) Legitimate interests, including the pursuit of an opportunity to provide services to you as a new client before ground (a) above applies
To register you as a recipient of our newsletters and updates (a) Identity Data(b) Contact Data

(c) Technical Data

(d) Marketing and Communications Data

(a) Legitimate interests, including for any soft opt-in (to undertake direct marketing to promote our business and services)(b) In the limited circumstances where the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations mandate that consent is required for electronic marketing, and we are not relying on your opt-in, the lawful basis will be consent
To manage our relationship with you which may include:(a) Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy

(b) Asking for feedback

(a) Identity Data(b) Contact Data

(c) Enquiry Data

(d) Correspondence Data

(e) Marketing and Communications Data

(a) Performance of a contract with you(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation

(c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated

To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you (a) Identity Data(b) Contact Data

(c) Enquiry Data

(d) Correspondence Data

(e) Technical Data

(f) Tracking Data

(g) Marketing and Communications Data

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to inform our marketing strategy)
To administer and protect our business and our Site (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data) (a) Identity Data(b) Contact Data

(c) Enquiry Data

(d) Correspondence Data

(e) Technical Data

(f) Marketing and Communications Data

(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation, group restructuring exercise or sale of our business)(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation

Sharing your personal data

We will keep the affairs of our clients and prospective clients confidential unless disclosure is required or permitted by law or consent. We may allow our officers, employees or self-employed consultants (“colleagues”) or those of Keystone Law to access your data where we believe this is necessary.

We may disclose personal data to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (“SRA”), HM Revenue & Customs (“HMRC”), Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) and any other regulators and other authorities who require reporting or disclosure of processing activities, or other personal data, in certain circumstances.

We may share your data with third parties to whom we have outsourced certain tasks, such as IT, business administration or marketing and analytics services.

We may share your personal data with our insurers, our professional advisers (including our lawyers, bankers, auditors, corporate financiers and brokers) in connection with services they provide to us.

We may share personal data with the following third parties for advertising and analytics purposes:

  • Google
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook

We may also share data with 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 Policy.

We require all third parties to respect the security of 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.

We will not otherwise share personal information with any third party except where we are permitted to under data protection laws or required to by law.

Advertising, marketing and your communications preferences

We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical and Tracking Data to form a picture of what we think may be of relevance to you.

However, you may also see adverts which are not derived from using personal data. If you see our adverts on websites and in social media, these may not be directed specifically at you, and we may just have bid for the space.

We also work with partners to try and promote the reach of our adverts and use analytics and retargeting for this reason. We use Tracking Data to deliver relevant online advertising, including via websites and social media. Tracking Data, and in particular cookies, help us to deliver website and social advertising that we believe is most relevant to you and to potential new clients. The cookies used for this purpose are often placed on our website by specialist organisations – and this is also why when you have been on the Site, you might see an advert for us quite soon afterwards.

Cookies can also tell us if you have seen a specific advert, and how long it has been since you have seen it. This is helpful, because it means we can control the effectiveness of our adverts and control the number of times people might be shown our adverts. Cookies also help us understand if you have opened a marketing email, because we prefer not to send you correspondence you prefer not to read.

Almost all the cookies that relate to advertising are part of third-party online advertising networks. If you would like to read about how you can control which adverts you see online, see opt-out programs established by the Digital Advertising Alliance (United States) and the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance (Europe).

Unfortunately, because the technical rules are not yet standardised, the Site currently does not respond to a Do Not Track signal.

Cookies

We use cookies to help the Site work better and provide help in the background to make the process of using the Site easier. Cookies are also a tool that we use for advertising.

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of the Site may become inaccessible or not function properly.

Safeguarding personal data

We have put in place appropriate technical and organisational measures to safeguard your personal data including using systems which are encrypted.

Retaining personal data

We will only keep your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, 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. We also consider the applicable legal requirements.

Your rights

We set out below a summary of the rights you may have under data protection laws in relation to your personal data.

  • 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.
  • Request correction of 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 our 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. Please 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 our legitimate interests (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. Please note that this right only applies to automated information which we were originally using with your consent or on account of our need to perform a contract with you. This may not be all the information we hold about 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 services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above please contact the Privacy Manager.

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 may 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.

Supervisory authority

We are supervised by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). You can find out more about the ICO through its website: www.ico.org.uk.

We would be happy to answer your questions and address your concerns regarding our use of your data. Please email us at mail@pnclegal.com and mark your email for the attention of the Data Manager. Please also use that address for any requests to exercise your legal rights or if you have a complaint. Alternatively, you can make a complaint to the ICO at any time, but we prefer you to contact us first. We should be able to resolve the matter quickly and to your satisfaction.

Third-party links

The Site 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.

Updating our Privacy Policy

We regularly update this Privacy Policy. The latest version is always displayed on the Site and is available on request.

We have experience of resolving claims against a wide range of professionals.

Using the links below you can learn more about specific professions and some of the common mistakes that give rise to negligence claims against them.