This notice tells you what to expect when we collect information about individuals.

The personal information that we collect

Personal information (personal data) means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.
Because of the wide ranging nature of our work, and the different reasons why we need to use personal information, what we collect is very varied and includes:

• Identity and contact data – including name, date of birth, email address, postal address, telephone numbers, passport details and information provided or collected as part of our client take on or employee recruitment processes
• Technical and usage data – including information about how individuals use our website
• Information used to provide our services – including information provided to us by or on behalf of our clients or otherwise provided to us or generated by us in the course of providing services to our clients.

How we obtain personal information

We obtain personal information in different ways, including through:

• Direct contact – individuals may give us their personal information by corresponding with us by post, email or telephone or otherwise.
• Clients – our clients may give us personal information of individuals (for example a client’s employees) to enable us to provide our services.

Our website – we use cookies to help us to provide users with a good experience when browsing the website and allow us to improve the site. When you access this website, your computer’s browser provides us with certain electronic information (such as your IP address, browser type, and date and time of access). The website collects this information to provide you with a good user experience. We also use it to help us improve the website

How we use personal information

We use personal information in a variety of ways including:

• To provide our services to our clients
• To manage and supervise our employees and partners
• To promote our services
• To meet our legal and regulatory obligations

Generally we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing personal information other than in relation to sending direct marketing communications. Consent to receiving direct marketing communications can be withdrawn at any time, including through our website.

How long we keep personal information

We will keep personal information in accordance with our data retention practices, which apply appropriate retention periods for each category of personal information. In setting retention periods we take account of the purposes for which the personal information was collected, legal and regulatory obligations on us to retain information, limitation periods for legal action and our business purposes.

Who we share personal information with

We may share personal information with third parties including:

• In the course of providing services to our clients – for example when instructing a medical expert to produce a report or counsel to provide advice
• When we outsource certain support services – for example photocopying or IT services
• Our professional advisers – for example our auditors, bankers and insurers
• To regulatory authorities, courts, tribunals and law enforcement agencies
• Third parties to whom we transfer personal information are required to respect the security of the information and treat it in accordance with the law. We do not sell personal data to third parties.

How we protect personal information

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. We have put in place appropriate measures to inform our staff about how we collect, handle and keep information secure.
We have put in place measures to deal with any suspected personal information breach and will notify relevant individuals and the Data Protection Commission of a breach when we are legally required to do so.

Changes to this privacy notice

We keep our privacy notice under regular review and may change it from time to time.