Lowe’s Legal Costs Accountants’ Privacy Notice

Who We Are
Lowe’s Legal Cost Accountants (‘we’ or ‘us’ or ‘our’) gather and process your personal information in accordance with this privacy notice and in compliance with the relevant data protection Regulation and laws. This notice provides you with the necessary information regarding your rights and our obligations, and explains how, why and when we process your personal data.

Lowe’s Legal Costs Accountants office is at 125 Baggot Street Lower, Dublin 2.

Information That We Collect
Lowe’s Legal Costs Accountants process your personal information to meet our legal, statutory and contractual obligations and to provide you with our services. We will never collect any unnecessary personal data from you and do not process your information in any way, other than as specified in this notice.

The personal data that we may collect: –
• Name
• Date of Birth
• Home Address
• Personal Email
• Business Email
• Home Telephone Number
• Mobile Telephone Number
• Special Category Data (in some cases we may be transferred Medical Reports)
• Relevant Legal Proceedings
• Relevant Legal Correspondence

We collect information in the below ways: –

We collect information from our instructing solicitors and the solicitors for opposing third parties, only.

We collect only the information that is relevant to fulfill our contractual obligation, that being the assessment of legal costs in proceedings.

How We Use Your Personal Data (Legal Basis for Processing)
Lowe’s Legal Costs Accountants takes your privacy very seriously and will never disclose, share or sell your data without your consent; unless required to do so by law. We only retain your data for as long as is necessary and for the purpose(s) specified in this notice. Where you have consented to us providing you with promotional offers and marketing, you are free to withdraw this consent at any time. The purposes and reasons for processing your personal data are detailed below: –

• Contractual Compliance: We may collect and use personal data in the performance of our contract – assessing legal costs.
• Legal Obligation: We may collect and store your personal data as part of our legal obligation for business accounting and tax purposes
• Legitimate Interest: We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal data as part of assessing the legal costs in proceedings you were a party to and/or involved in.
• Legitimate Interest: We may occasionally send you marketing information where we have assessed that it is beneficial to you as a customer and in our interests. Such information will be non-intrusive and is processed on the grounds of legitimate interests
• Consent: If you have given specific consent to your Medical Report being used in Court proceedings and the assessment of the costs of said proceedings, we may use this as part of our legal costs assessment.

Your Rights
You have the right to access any personal information that Lowe’s Legal Costs Accountants processes about you and to request information about: –
• What personal data we hold about you
• The purposes of the processing
• The categories of personal data concerned
• The recipients to whom the personal data has/will be disclosed
• How long we intend to store your personal data for
• If we did not collect the data directly from you, information about the source

If you believe that we hold any incomplete or inaccurate data about you, you have the right to ask us to correct and/or complete the information and we will strive to do so as quickly as possible; unless there is a valid reason for not doing so, at which point you will be notified.

You also have the right to request erasure of your personal data or to restrict processing (where applicable) in accordance with the data protection laws; as well as to object to any direct marketing from us.
If we receive a request from you to exercise any of the above rights, we will ask you to verify your identity before acting on the request; this is to ensure that your data is protected and kept secure.

Sharing and Disclosing Your Personal Information
We do not share or disclose any of your personal information without your consent, other than for the purposes specified in this notice or where there is a legal requirement.

Lowe’s Legal Costs Accountants uses a third party to provide cloud computing services; however, all processors acting on our behalf only process your data in accordance with instructions from us and comply fully with this privacy notice, the data protection laws and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures. We retain the right to use further third party processors, however, we will ensure our privacy policy and your rights are upheld in accordance with data protection laws.

Should there be a change of ownership and or structure of this business, all rights and obligations will be transferred to the new owner who will hold your information as securely as set out in this privacy notice.

Safeguarding Measures
Lowe’s Legal Costs Accountants takes your privacy seriously and takes every reasonable measure and precaution to protect and secure your personal data. We take security responsibilities seriously, employing the most appropriate physical and technical measures, including staff training and awareness and we review these measures regularly.
All cloud usage is via 256 bit AES encryption.
All internal devices are password protected with passwords being audited to ensure compliance.

Transfers Outside the EU
Personal data in the European Union is protected by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) but some other countries may not necessarily have the same high standard of protection for your personal data.
Lowe’s Legal Costs Accountants does not transfer or store any personal data outside the EU.

Consequences of Not Providing Your Data
You are not obligated to provide your personal information to Lowe’s Legal Costs Accountants, however, as this information is required for perform our contract with our instructing solicitor in proceedings in which you are involved, we will not be able to offer some/all our services without it.

Legitimate Interests
As noted in the ‘How We Use Your Personal Data’ section of this notice, we occasionally process your personal information under the legitimate interests’ legal basis. Where this is the case, we have carried out a thorough Legitimate Interests’ Assessment (LIA) to ensure that we have weighed your interests and any risk posed to you against our own interests; ensuring that they are proportionate and appropriate.

We use the legitimate interests’ legal basis for processing in assessing legal costs in legal proceedings you were a party in and/or involved in and have identified that our interests are to provide the services, as outlined, to our client. It must be noted that we do not do any processing of your personal data other than for assessment of legal costs on that set of proceedings.

How Long We Keep Your Data
Lowe’s Legal Costs Accountants only ever retains personal information for as long as is necessary and we have strict review and retention policies in place to meet these obligations.
We retain information (e.g. proceedings and legal correspondence) necessary for the performance of our contract only for the duration of the contract. After which, this information is returned to our instructing solicitor.
We retain information in accordance with certain legal duties (i.e Revenue and Employment law requirements).
We retain any information necessary for a possible legal defence for the appropriate period (generally 6 years after completion date).
We review this information and securely destroy any information we no longer have a specific purpose for.

Special Categories Data
Owing to the services we provide, Lowe’s Legal Costs Accountants sometimes need to process sensitive personal information (Medical Reports) about you, to provide an accurate assessment of the legal costs. Where we collect such information, we will only request and process the minimum necessary for the specified purpose and identify a compliant legal basis for doing so.
• Where you have consented for this use, this will be obtained by the solicitors firm representing you and this will be recorded and secured.
• In cases where we do not have your specific consent we will only process this information under Chapter 2, section 41 of the Data Protection Bill 2018, i.e “for purpose of, or in connection with, legal claims.”

How to contact us regarding your rights

If you wish to discuss any of the above or have a complaint or concern, please direct any queries to reception at info@lowes.ie; 01-9012086 or by post at Lowe’s Legal Costs Accountants, 125 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin 2.

Your right to complain to the Data Protection Commissioner

You have the right to complain to the Data Protection Commissioner at: info@dataprotection.ie or postal address of: Data Protection Commission, Canal House, Station Road, Portarlington, R32 AP23, Co Laois.

Updates

We may update our privacy notice from time to time. We will endeavour to notify you of any changes.

30th May 2018