This is Burgess Mee LLP’s Website Privacy Policy which Burgess Mee Family Law implemented on 25 May 2018 and was last updated by Burgess Mee LLP on 23 April 2024.

The reason we need a Privacy Policy is because on 25 May 2018 the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force in the UK.  We handle personal data and so we are required to implement an appropriate data protection policy for our website.  We have taken into account the nature, scope, context and purpose for which we handle personal data via our website. We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy describes in detail how we will use your personal information and how you can exercise your rights with respect to your personal information. 

1. Who are we?

Burgess Mee LLP (trading as Burgess Mee Family Law) is a limited liability partnership which provides English law services.  It is owned by two members, Antonia Mee and Peter Burgess.  This privacy policy is issued on behalf of both members who are responsible for processing your personal information.

When we refer to “digital services” in this privacy policy, we are referring to our website at the following URL: burgessmee.com and any other software, information and web-based applications that we make available for your use, at any time.

Burgess Mee LLP is a data controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998. We are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and registered in England and Wales with number 665174.

Our full contact information is Burgess Mee Family Law, Unit 9, 16 Porteus Place, London, SW4 0AS, DX 53255 Clapham Common (Clapham office), 288 Bishopsgate, London, EC2M 4QP (Liverpool St office) and 1Lyric Square, London, W6 0NB (West London office); telephone: +44 (0)203 824 9950; fax: +44 (0)208 712 6307; email: mail@burgessmee.com.

2. What information do we collect and from where do we get it?

Personal data or personal information is any information about you from which you can be identified. It does not include data where your identity has been removed (this is called ‘anonymous data’).

We collect and process different kinds of personal information about you and use different methods to collect it, as follows:

·      Identity and contact information: this includes your full name, contact details, (including your email address and mobile phone number), job title and address;

·      Financial and transactional data: this includes details about your financial situation such as income, expenditure, assets and liabilities, sources of wealth, bank account details and other information necessary for processing payments and fraud prevention purposes. We obtain this information through our direct interactions with you (either in person, on the phone, by email, by post or when you give this information via our digital services, and indirectly when it is provided to us by our providers of technical and payment services);

·      Personal information: this includes details about your relationships, marriage and children, which is provided to us by you for the purpose of conducting your case;

·      Technical and usage data: please see section below entitled "Personal data provided to us via this website"

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.

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 by sending an email to mail@burgessmee.com.

3. What is our legal basis for collecting and using your personal information?

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly we will use your personal data where it is necessary for our legitimate interests. Our legitimate business interest is in conducting and managing our business as a family law firm to enable us to give you using our digital services. We make sure that we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

4. How do we use your personal information?

General

We use your personal information in connection with our business activities. In particular, we may use your personal information in the following ways:

• to process any job application you may make to us (including any sensitive information you provide such as relating to your state of health or race);
• to provide legal services;
• to update client records;
• to confirm identity and ascertain credit worthiness;
• for internal business and data analysis; and
• to comply with any legal or regulatory obligation which is imposed on us.

Marketing

We may use your personal information to provide you with important services communications.

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 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.

5. With whom do we share your personal information?

How we use your data will depend on your relationship with us, for example, whether you are a client, a third party expert, a service provider or another third party. We may share your personal information with the following third parties:

• Companies and other persons who provide services to us. For example, we engage other companies to provide and improve our digital services.  We also use IT subcontractors, hosting services and payroll providers (relevant to employee data only);
• professional advisers (including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers in the UK and overseas, who provide us with consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services);
• the Court of England & Wales;
• government bodies, regulators and other authorities in the UK and overseas, who require reporting of activities in certain circumstances (for example, HMRC, Office for National Statistics etc.);
• other parties as we may be required to by law or regulation, including for the purpose of detecting and preventing fraud and criminal activity, or pursuant to a court order; and
• 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 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.

6. Where will your personal information be processed?

Some companies and other persons with whom we share your personal information are based outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.

• Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is given 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 by the European Commission;
• Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe; and
• Where we use providers based in the US, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the Privacy Shield (which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between the Europe and the US) and/or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and through the UK/US data bridge.

We have set out detailed information about the way in which we ensure that your information is safe when we transfer it outside of the EEA. Please email us at mail@burgessmee.com if you would like to see these documents or would like further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EEA.

7. Cookies

Cookies are small text files that we transfer to your computer's hard drive to enable our systems to recognize your browser and help us to track visitors to our digital services so we can better understand what portions of our digital services best serve you. 

To find out more about the types of cookies we use on our digital services, how we use them and how you can change your cookies settings, please read our Cookies policy, available at https://www.burgessmee.com/site/help/privacy_help.html.

8. Links

We may from time to time have links to the websites of third parties from our digital services. Your use of those websites is subject to the terms of use and policies (including privacy policies) available on those websites.

Please note that such third-party websites and applications are not under our control. When you click through to these websites or access these applications you leave the area controlled by us and you allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We are not responsible for the privacy statements of any third party websites, and do not accept responsibility for any and all issues arising in connection with that third party's use of your personal data.

9. Protecting your personal information

Our security procedures mean that we may occasionally request proof of identity before we are able to disclose sensitive information to you.

The transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure; this risk is common across the internet and not specific to our Digital Services. We do everything we can to ensure the security, integrity and confidentiality of your information.

It is important for you to protect against unauthorised access to your password and to your computing device. Be sure to sign off and close your browser when you have finished your user session. This will help to ensure that others do not access your personal information if you share your computing device or use a computing device in a public place such as a library or internet café.

10. For how long do we keep your data?

We only keep 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 risk of harm from it being used or disclosed without our authority, the purposes for which we process it and whether we can achieve those purposes without it. We also take into account the applicable legal requirements.

11. Your legal rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us at mail@burgessmee.com or +44 (0)203 824 9950.

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 and keep you updated.

You have the right to:

• 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 and to check that we are lawfully processing it;
• Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. 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 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 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. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with 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 products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

12. Registering a complaint

If you have a complaint or a concern about Burgess Mee LLP’s information rights practices, you can report it to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/.

13. Updating your personal data and preferences

You may change your marketing preferences or update your personal information at any time by writing to Burgess Mee Family Law, Unit 9, 16 Porteus Place, London, SW4 0AS, online via https://www.burgessmee.com/site/contact/solicitors-in-london/ or by emailing mail@burgessmee.com.

14. How to contact us

If you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact us in any of the following ways:

• Online via https://www.burgessmee.com/site/contact/solicitors-in-london/;
• By telephone on +44 (0)203 824 9950;
• By email at mail@burgessmee.com;
• By writing to us at Burgess Mee Family Law, Unit 9, 16 Porteus Place, London, SW4 0AS.

15. Personal data provided to us via this website

Our Privacy Policy tells you what will happen to any personal data that you provide to us as a result of using this website. If you are a client of ours (or become one) we process a wider range of personal data and deal with a broader range of privacy-related issues. Clients are provided detailed information about this during the engagement process.

16. Personal data you provide

Your privacy is important to us. By providing personal information such as your name and e-mail address via the forms on this website, you agree to us contacting you with regard to the information provided.

Some forms on our website also include a check box asking you for permission to add you to our mailing list. This is an opt-in mailing list and your personal information will be used solely by us (and all such emails include a link for opt-out).

17. How we use your personal data

We use the data you provide via this website to:

• communicate with you, for example: we use contact details such as email address or phone number when responding to enquiries made via online forms;
• advise you, for example, if you have completed an onboarding questionnaire which we send to you to complete before becoming a client of this firm;
• monitor website trends, for example: we use Google Analytics to help us aggregate traffic so we can monitor how the website is being used; and
• operate our business more effectively, for example: we seek feedback and use this to help improve our service

18. Our "lawful reasons" for processing your personal data

The "General Data Protection Regulation" (GDPR) is the primary piece of legislation defining your rights over our processing of your personal information. The GDPR requires us to declare which of six "lawful reasons" we are relying on when we are processing your personal data: we operate on the basis of "consent" when sending newsletters (you will not receive a newsletter unless you have explicitly opted in to receive one) and we operate on the basis of "legitimate interest" when communicating with you in other ways (e.g. when responding to your enquiry).

19. How long we keep personal data

Personal data may be stored by the website for a period of up to 90 days after which time it is removed automatically.

20. Questions or complaints

In the first instance we hope you will contact us directly with any questions or complaints (contact details are displayed prominently on this website). However, legal rights regarding privacy are the remit of the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) and you will find more information about how to complain here: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/

21. Our use of google analytics

We use Google Analytics to monitor how our website is being used so we can make improvements. Our use of Google Analytics requires us to pass to Google your IP address (but no other information) - Google uses this information to prepare site usage reports for us, but Google may also share this information with other Google services. In particular, Google may use the data collected to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.

22. Policy changes

If we decide to change this Privacy Policy, we will post the updated Privacy Policy on our digital services, so that you are always aware of what personal information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances we disclose it. The updated Privacy Policy will take effect as soon as it is posted. You can obtain historic versions of our Privacy Policy by contacting us at mail@burgessmee.com or telephone +44 (0)203 824 9950.

This Policy was last updated on 23 April 2024