Cookies & Privacy Policy

At Your Legal Costs we take your privacy seriously and this privacy statement explains what personal data or information we collect from you, and from people who visit our website, and how we use it. We would encourage you to read the information below.

Who are we?

Your Legal Costs is a Limited Company registered in England and Wales 13725512. Our registered address 4th Floor Building 8, Princes Parade, Liverpool, England, L3 1DL. Your Legal Costs is a registered data controller. The ICO number for Your Legal Cost is ZB289991.

What personal data or information do we collect?

We may collect personal data about clients, prospective clients, job applicants, our current and former employees, suppliers, and external experts. The personal information we collect may include your name, address, email address, IP address, and information regarding what pages you access on this website and when.

How do we collect data or information from you?

We collect personal information about you when you:

Instruct us to act on your behalf
Make an enquiry via the forms on our website or via the telephone
Use our website
Enquire about a job opportunity
Work for or with the firm
Exchange business cards with a member of the firm
Attend one of our networking events

How is your information used?

We collect your personal data or information to operate the firm effectively and provide you with a high-quality service. We may use your information:
To deliver legal services to you on your instruction.
To answer enquiries that you make prior to any formal instruction.
To avoid any conflict of interest as we represent you
To keep you informed about our services, our insight into industry trends and best practice, if you have opted-in to receive these communications
To invite you to our networking events with expert speakers on topics which we believe will be of interest to you.
To process a job application
To fulfil our obligations as an employer
To provide benefits to you as an employee
To maintain security of our office and IT infrastructure
To invoice you, and to track payments you make or payments made to you
To send you information which we believe may be of interest
We will process special categories of personal data (for example your health information / medical records) only when processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims (e.g. road traffic accident claims or holiday sickness). We believe that all these purposes are justified on the basis of our legitimate interests in running and promoting the firm, our contractual requirements to deliver the agreed legal services to you, and our legal obligations, both as a Limited Company and responsible employer. The exception is for sending email marketing about our services, which we carry out on the basis of consent.

If you would like to know more, please read below:

Clients

Prospective Clients
Job Applicants, Our Current and Former Employees
External Experts
Event attendees

Clients

As a client, we will hold the following information about you:

Name, date of birth, and contact information.
National insurance number
Information relating to your legal matter, for clinical negligence and personal injury matters this will include your medical records
Financial details
Demographic information such as postcode
Information and documents relating to the service we are providing, including communications with you.
Billing and payment information.
We store your information in our practice management system and our accounting system on our secure servers based in the UK. We also hold paper copies of your information in the client matter files, stored in our offices and in a secure, offsite storage archive, managed by Restore.

We will retain your client matter file for the duration of our relationship with you, then for 7 years if you are an adult, or 7 years from your 18th birthday if you are a child. Where there are specific retention periods relating to your matter file, we will make you aware of these at the time we open and close the file. We will retain financial records for 6 years, following the end of the current financial year.

Where we identify that you may be eligible to benefit from other products or services offered by the Your Legal Services Group, we may contact you by email, phone or letter to let you know. It is in our legitimate interest as a business to grow our business through existing clients, and we believe that it is also in your interest as you may benefit financially from that product or service. If you disagree and would prefer that we do not contact you about those products or services, you can opt-out at any time. We will remind you how to opt-out in any communication we send you, or you can contact us on: info@yourlegalcosts.co.uk

Prospective Clients

As a prospective client, we may hold the following information about you:

Name, date of birth, and contact information.
National insurance number
Financial Information
Brief information relating to your legal matter
Demographic information such as postcode
Signposting information we may have provided to you if we are unable to provide you with a service
We store your information in our practice management system on our secure servers based in the UK. Communications with you relating to your initial enquiry may also be stored in our email system for a period of 6 years. We will retain minimal personal information about you to enable us to conduct conflict of interest checks.

The information we collect as part of your enquiry can help us identify that you may be eligible to benefit from other products or services offered by the Your Legal Services Group Limited. If this is the case, we may contact you by email, phone or letter to let you know. It is in our legitimate interest as a business to do so, and we believe that it is in your interest as you may benefit financially from that product or service. If you disagree and would prefer that we do not to contact you about those products or services, you can opt-out at any time. We will remind you how to opt-out in any communication we send you, or you can contact us on: info@yourlegalcosts.co.uk

Job Applicants

When you apply for a job with us, we may hold the following information about you:

Name, date of birth, and contact information.
Information relating to your qualifications and experience
Demographic information such as postcode References where we take them up
Information and documents relating to the review, interview and selection process, including communications with you.
We store your information in our practice management system on our secure servers based in the UK. We will also store communications with you relating to the interview process on our email server, based in the UK. We will retain your personal data relating to the review, interview and selection process for a period of 2 years after the interview date.

Current and Former Employees

When you work for us, we may hold the following information about you:

Name, date of birth, and contact information
National insurance number and Unique Tax Reference (UTR)
Information relating to your qualifications and experience
Demographic information such as postcode
Information and documents relating to your performance and supervision as an employee of the firm, including communications with you
Your photograph, including Passport and Driving Licence
Financial information, such as bank details, pension scheme and salary details
Information about your next of kin
Health information
We store your information in our practice management system on our secure servers based in the UK and in hard copy in a secure filing cabinet in the office.
We will also store communications with you on our email server, based in the UK. We will retain your personal data for the duration of your employment and
for a period of 6 years after you leave the firm. We may store your hard copy file in our offsite storage location, managed by Restore. Beyond this point, we only
retain minimal information about you to confirm the period of time you were employed by the firm for reference purposes. We share your information with
HMRC, and our chosen pension / private healthcare providers.

External Experts

When you work with us to provide expertise to matters we are working on, we may hold the following information about you:

Name and contact information.
Information relating to your specialism, qualifications and experience
Demographic information such as postcode
Information and documents relating to the service you provide us with, including communications with you.
Feedback about your performance
We store your information in our local secure server and our accounting system on our secure servers based in the UK. We will also store communications with
you on our email server, based in the UK. We will retain your personal data for the time you are available as an expert and for a maximum of 1 year after you
are no longer available.

Event Attendees

When you work with us to provide expertise to matters we are working on, we may hold the following information about you:

Name and business contact information.
Information relating to your business activities
Demographic information such as postcode, preferences and interests
Information relating to you which helps ensure you enjoy the event, such as your dietary or access requirements and including our communications with you.
Billing and payment information
We will store your information on our secure servers hosted in the UK. We may also store communications with you after you have signed up in our email
system on our secure servers hosted in the UK.

Who has access to your information?

We do not sell or rent your personal data or information to any third party or share your information with third parties for their marketing purposes.

We will disclose your data or information if required by law, for example by a court order or for the prevention of fraud or other crime.

We may pass information about your matter to the prosecution and to other parties within the justice system (e.g. Counsel, Barristers) as required to provide legal services to you.

We may pass your information on to third party service providers, agents or subcontractors for the purposes of completing a task or providing services to you on our behalf (e.g. to provide external expertise in your matter). However, we disclose only the personal information necessary to deliver that service and have
a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for other purposes.
Transfers outside of the European Economic Area

Your personal information in the European Economic Area (EEA) is protected by data protection laws, but other countries do not necessarily protect your
personal information in the same way. The EEA covers all countries in the EU plus Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland. PURE Business Group do not store
personal data on any servers outside of the EEA.

Your rights

You have certain rights over the processing of your personal information by Your Legal Costs Limited. These are:

The right to be informed, which is what this privacy policy is for
The right to access the data we hold about you
The right to object to direct marketing
The right to object to processing carried out on the basis of legitimate interests
The right to erasure (in some circumstances)
The right to data portability
The right to have your data rectified if it is inaccurate
The right to have your data restricted or blocked from processing
We do not undertake direct marketing activities, so you will not receive such information from us.

How you can update your information

The accuracy of your information is important to us. If you change your contact details or if you want to update any of the information we hold on you, please
email us at: info@yourlegalcosts.co.uk or by post at 4th Floor Building 8, Princes Parade, Liverpool, England, L3 1DL.

How you can access your personal information

You have the right to ask for a copy of the personal information Your Legal Costs Limited hold relating to you. To do this please contact
info@yourlegalcosts.co.uk to or by post at 4th Floor Building 8, Princes Parade, Liverpool, England, L3 1DL.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint about our processing of your personal data with the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office

Keeping your data secure

When you give us personal information we take steps to ensure that it’s treated securely and strive to protect it on our internal systems. Our secure server systems encrypt your information.

Contacting us via email

We use Office 365 to encrypt and protect email traffic in line with GDPR. If your email service does not support Office 365, you should be aware that any emails we send or receive may not be protected in transit.

We will also monitor any emails sent to us, including file attachments, for viruses or malicious software. Please be aware that you have a responsibility to ensure that any email you send is within the bounds of the law.

Visitors to our Website

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have
been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more
efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site. Unless you have set your browser to block cookies, this site will place the following
cookies on your computer. We use the following cookies on our websites

Internet Protocol (IP) address, Mobile Advertising ID (MAID) (which allows mobile app developers to identify who is using their mobile apps), mobile application
ID, browser type, browser language, type of operating system, and the date and time the End User visited a Publisher Site or Toolbar User used the Toolbar;
Behaviour on a Publisher Site, such as how long the End User visited the Publisher Site, End User sharing behaviour of content on a Publisher Site, and scrolling
behaviour of an End User on a Publisher Site;
The referring URL and the web search the End User used to locate and navigate to a

Keywords entered into the AddThis Toolbar search functionality, and whether and when the Toolbar User downloads, installs, or uninstalls the AddThis Toolbar;
Information regarding how often an End User uses the AddThis Tools and how often a Toolbar User uses the AddThis Toolbar; and Geo-location data derived from an End User’s and Toolbar User’s IP address. Google Analytics, Adwords, Tag Manager

Collects URL and Title of the page being visited, Browser Name, Size of Browser Window, Screen Resolution, Flash version, whether Java is enabled, location and language settings. The location is figured out from the IP Address though this is not stored as it is personally identifiable information which would violate the terms of Google Analytics. You can view the Google’s Privacy and Terms here. Our websites are hosted on UK-based secure servers.