PRIVACY POLICY

THIS PRIVACY POLICY CONTAINS DETAILS ABOUT THE USE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION. PLEASE READ IT CAREFULLY BEFORE USING OUR WEBSITE

Last updated on 10 June 2022.

Founders Law is a company registered in England and Wales (Company number 11866392) whose registered office is at Hamilton House, 1 Temple Avenue, Temple, London EC4Y 0HA.

This policy applies to people who visit our website, whether prospective clients, suppliers or other third parties (these individuals are referred to as “you” and “your“). This policy does not apply to our clients or suppliers (please refer to the data protection provisions in our terms of engagement with you) or employees. We also recommend that you store this document in a safe place.

This privacy policy (this “Policy”) together with our terms of use (“Terms of Use”) (and any other documents referred to in it) sets out the basis on how we collect, store, process, transfer, share and use your personal information, and which rights and options you may have in this respect. By using our website, you accept the practices described in this Policy.

Personal information means any information or data relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (“Personal Information”).

For the purpose of the European Union General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (“GDPR“) and the UK Data Protection Act 2018 ( “UK GDPR“), Founders Law is a controller of Personal information.

We may amend this Policy at any time and without notice to you. You agree it is your responsibility to monitor these changes on our website. Please review this Policy each time you visit our website as it may have been updated since your last visit.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our privacy practices, please contact us in the following ways:

Full name of legal entity: Founders Law

Email address: hello@founders-law.co.uk

Postal address: Hamilton House, 1 Temple Avenue, Temple, London EC4Y 0HA

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk) or any other competent data protection authority in the relevant jurisdiction. We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO, or the other relevant authority so please contact us in the first instance.

WHO ARE YOU?

Please click on the category that applies to you to be directed to the correct section of this privacy policy.

A visitor to our website?

A prospective client or supplier?

None of the above but you have made any other enquiry or complaint (including by completing a form on our website, emailing us, writing to us or calling us)

VISITORS TO OUR WEBSITE

Personal Information we collect: With regard to each of your visits to our website, we will automatically collect technical information about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns, including the Internet Protocol (IP) address used to facilitate your connection to the Internet, 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.

We collect this Personal Information by using cookies. For more information regarding our Cookie Policy please see: https://founders-law.co.uk/cookies-policy/.

Using your Personal Information: We will only use your Personal Information when the law allows us to. More commonly, we will use this information for the following legitimate interests (whether ours or a third party’s):

maintaining our website and keep it safe and secure;
protecting the rights, property, or safety of Founders Law, our clients, suppliers, contacts or others;
using data analytics to improve our website, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences;
complying with a legal obligation;
for internal operations (including, but not limited to troubleshooting and testing); and
dealing with any issues you have reported with our website.

Sharing your Personal Information: Our staff will be given access to Personal Information, but their use shall be limited to the performance of their duties and in line with the reason for processing. Furthermore, we will only share Personal Information with third parties in the following instances:

to enable our website hosting supplier to maintain and host our website;
in connection with any prospective or actual legal proceedings; and/or
where we are required by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (“SRA”) or otherwise by any regulation or law to do so.

Retaining your Personal Information: We will only retain your Personal Information for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. Following this, we will delete your Personal Information, unless:

if we are required by the SRA or by any regulation or law to retain it for longer, we will retain it for the required period; and/or
the Personal Information is being used in connection with legal proceedings (including prospective legal proceedings) it will be retained for the duration of those legal (and any enforcement) proceedings.

Your rights: Please see Your rights below.

CLIENTS, SUPPLIERS AND ANY OTHER THIRD PARTIES

Personal Information we collect: If you contact us or we contact you (by post, phone, email, completing a form on our website or otherwise), we will hold the following Personal Information:

basic data, such as your name, date of birth, gender, title, organisation, job responsibilities, phone number, email address, contact details, and any other details you give us when you make an enquiry about our services;
Personal Information contained in documents, correspondence or other materials provided by you in regard to your business activities;
information available on your public social media platforms and any Personal Information that we can collect, in accordance with your privacy settings on those platforms, when you contact or interact with us; and
Personal Information contained in documents or any other materials that we obtain about you and your business from publicly available information (e.g. your website, social media and Companies House) when we carry out research.

Using your Personal Information: We will only use your Personal Information when the law allows us to. More commonly, we will use this information to:

provide you with the information you have requested from us so that we can both decide whether to enter into a contract;
meet our regulatory and legal obligations which may involve carrying out identification checks and obtaining necessary financial information in order to prevent fraud, money laundering, crime and terrorist funding; and
take reasonable steps to protect the rights, property, or safety of Founders Law, our clients, suppliers, contactors or others (we will also use your Personal Information to pursue our, or a third party’s, legitimate interests).

Sharing your Personal Information: Our staff, together with our shareholders, will be given access to Personal Information, but their use shall be limited to the performance of their duties and in line with the reason for processing. We share Personal Information with third parties in the following instances:

when information about you is stored in our third-party document management system (Office365). Please see Microsoft’s privacy policy here;
in connection with any actual or prospective legal proceedings;
where we are required by the SRA or otherwise by any regulation or law to do so; and/or
with suppliers and service providers. These include, for example, our telephony supplier (which would get to see phone numbers if we call you) and our broadband supplier (which could see email addresses (but not the content of what you send us, if you encrypt it)).

Retaining your Personal Information:

When we either decide:

to enter into a contract, your Personal Information will be kept for the duration of your relationship with us, then seven (7) years post termination. Identification verification will be kept for the duration of your relationship with us, then five (5) years post termination. Our standard terms of business (which will be provided upon our engagement), will set out our views and practices regarding use of a client’s (and their employees) Personal Information, not this policy; or
not to enter into a contract, your Personal Information will be kept for the duration of your enquiry and for up to one (1) year thereafter or, if we are required by the SRA or by law to retain for longer, we will retain it for the required period and/or where the information is being used in connection with legal proceedings (including prospective legal proceedings) it will be retained for the duration of those legal (and any enforcement) proceedings.

YOUR RIGHTS

In relation to Personal Information we hold about you, you have the following rights:

Access: you have the right to request and receive a copy of the Personal Information that we hold and process about you;
Rectification: you have the right to ask us to correct any Personal Information that is incomplete or inaccurate;
Deletion: you have the right to ask us, in certain instances, to erase your Personal Information or to cease processing it. We may not be able to comply with a request for erasure if we are required to retain that Personal Information in order to comply with a legal obligation or to maintain it for the purpose of any prospective or actual legal proceedings;
Withdraw consent: you have the right to object to us processing your Personal Information for direct marketing purposes. You can exercise this right by clicking on the “unsubscribe” or “opt-out” link in the marketing e-mails we send you;
Objection: where we are processing your Personal Information by relying on our, or a third party’s, legitimate interest, you have the right to object to such processing. However, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds for processing which override your interests and rights;
Restriction of processing: you have the right to ask us, in certain instances, to restrict processing Personal Information to merely storing;
Portability: you have the right to ask us, in certain instances, to request that some of your Personal Information is provided to you or to another data controller, in a commonly used, machine-readable format;
Damages: you have the right to prevent processing that is likely to cause substantial damage or distress to you (eg: financial damage) and seek compensation from us for any damages caused to you by us breaching the UK GDPR;
Notification: you have the right to be notified of a Personal Information breach which is likely to result in high risk to your rights and freedoms; and
Complaints: you have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant data protection authority if you believe that we have not complied with the applicable data protection laws.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us at hello@founders-law.co.uk.

At our discretion, we may request you to prove your identity before providing you with the requested services and/or information.

INTERNATIONAL DATA TRANSFERS

We may transfer your Personal Information to other countries, and in such a case we will use, share and safeguard that information as described herein. To provide legal and other services, we may transfer the Personal Information we collect to countries outside of the UK or EEA which do not provide the same level of data protection as the country in which you reside and are not recognised by the European Commission as providing an adequate level of data protection. We only transfer Personal Information to these countries when it is necessary for the services we provide you, or it is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims or subject to safeguards that assure the protection of your Personal Information, such as the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses (“SCCs”). If you have questions about, or need further information concerning, international data transfers, please send an email to hello@founders-law.co.uk.

HOW WE PROTECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

To help protect the privacy of Personal Information you transmit, we maintain physical, technical and administrative safeguards. We update and test our security technology on an ongoing basis. In addition, we undergo training about the importance of confidentiality and maintaining the privacy and security of your Personal Information. However, as you will be aware, the transmission of information via the internet isn’t guaranteed to be secure. Although we will do our best to protect your Personal Information, we can’t ensure the security of your Personal Information transmitted to our website; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your Personal Information, we will use reasonable procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES

Our website may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of third-party websites. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites are out of our control, and they have their own privacy policies. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for other websites’ privacy policies. Please check these policies before you submit any Personal Information to these websites.

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