This Privacy and Confidentiality Policy (“Policy”) describes how Osborne Clarke collects, stores and uses Personal Information and/or other confidential information (collectively, “Personal and Confidential Information”) including information about clients, contacts, suppliers and job applicants.

In this Policy, we use the terms:

“we”, “us”, and “our” (and other similar terms) to refer to either:

• the OC Member Firm contracting party as referred to in your Engagement Letter; or

• the OC Member Firm contracting party as referred to any contract we enter into with you; or
• if you have not yet instructed an OC Member Firm, Osborne Clarke LLP (SRA reference: 619990) as owner of this website,
• In each of the above cases the relevant entity will be the data controller as prescribed in the entity’s local law (the “Data Controller”).

“OC Member Firm” to refer to any entity, including Osborne Clarke Verein, which is a member of international Osborne Clarke network (“Network Firm”) or which is a member firm of Osborne Clarke Verein, a Swiss Verein (“Osborne Clarke Verein Member Firm”).

“Network Firm” includes Osborne Clarke Services (company number: 3049484), Osborne Clarke Trustees Limited (SRA reference: 199769), Open Trustees Limited (SRA reference: 80586), Oval Nominees Limited (company number: 1865795), Ovalsec Limited (company number: 1379423) and Osborne Clarke International Services Ltd (company number: 8096377) – the registered office of each of the above companies is Halo, Counterslip, Bristol, BS1 6AJ.

“Osborne Clarke Verein Member Firm” includes (but is not limited to) those listed in the website’s Terms and Conditions. Each of the Osborne Clarke Verein Member Firm is a separately constituted and regulated legal entity or partnership which provides legal and other client services in accordance with the laws of the jurisdictions in which it operates. For the avoidance of doubt Osborne Clarke Verein is a Swiss verein which does not itself provide legal or other client services

“Engagement Letter” refers to a written document which sets out the terms and conditions of the engagement of a specific OC Member Firm and which describes the services to be provided to you by the specific entity. Such engagement terms should be relied upon in determining liability for the services provided. Unless explicit written agreement is given by both member entities involved, no Osborne Clarke member entity is responsible for the acts or omissions of, nor has any authority to obligate or otherwise bind, any other Osborne Clarke member entity.

“Personal Information” shall mean any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.

“identifiable natural person” is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identification number or to one or more factors.

“you” and “your” (and other similar terms) to refer to our clients, contacts, suppliers, job applicants and website visitors.

This Policy is an important document. We recommend that you read it carefully and print and keep a copy for your future reference. When you instruct us, interact with us, or otherwise contact us, we will assume you agree to the uses of your Personal and Confidential Information described in this Policy according to the terms and conditions described herein.

1. Your rights in relation to the data and how to exercise them

You are entitled at any time to obtain confirmation of the existence of your Personal and Confidential Information and to be informed of the contents and origin, verify its accuracy, or else request that such data be supplemented, updated or rectified according to the provisions of local law.

You also have the right to request erasure, anonymisation or blocking of any data that is processed in breach of the law as well as to object in all cases, on legitimate grounds, to processing of the data.

You also have a right free of charge to object on legitimate ground to the processing of your Personal and Confidential Information and to object to the processing of your Personal and Confidential Information for marketing purpose.

To exercise such rights and if you have any questions about how we collect, store and use Personal and Confidential Information, then please contact us using the details provided below:

Write to us: the Privacy Officer at the relevant OC Member Firm at their registered office as set out above.
E-mail us at: privacy@osborneclarke.com

2. What Personal and Confidential Information do we collect?

From initial contact through to providing you with our services or working together in other ways, we may collect various Personal and Confidential Information about you. We may collect, store and use the following Personal and Confidential Information:

• If you are a client (or prospective client) of an OC Member Firm: We may collect, store and use your personal and/or professional contact details for the purpose of contacting and corresponding with you, as well as contact details for any organisation that you represent. We may also hold confidential details about any matter on which you choose to instruct us, as well as your bank account and/or other payment details for the purpose of paying our fees or remitting any payments to or from our client accounts. In addition, we may also hold the information described in the “If you are a contact of an OC Member Firm” bullet below. As is explained at section 4 of this policy (Who Else May Have Access to Your Personal and Confidential Information), we also share client information with other OC Member Firms.
• If you are a supplier (or prospective supplier) to an OC Member Firm: We may collect, store and use your personal and/or professional contact details for the purpose of contacting and corresponding with you, as well as contact details for any organisation that you represent. We may also hold confidential details about any services that you may supply to us, as well as your bank account and/or other payment details for the purpose of paying your fees. In addition, we may also hold the information described in the “If you are a contact of an OC Member Firm” bullet below.
• If you are a contact of an OC Member Firm: We may collect, store and use your contact details, copies of any e-mail, postal or other correspondence between you and us, and recordings of any voicemails that you choose to leave. We and other OC Member Firms may also hold details of any contact preferences that you specify, such as requests to subscribe to legal updates that we may circulate from time to time, to receive news about any events we are organising or participating in, or to receive information about us and the services we provide.
• If you are a job applicant: We may collect, store and use your contact details, copies of your job application, curriculum vitae and covering letter, as well as any references provided or obtained, for the purposes of processing your application and for general recruitment and selection purposes.

We collect your Personal and Confidential Information through various means, including via our website (including our on-line job application facility), through e-mail correspondence, through direct contact (for example at marketing events and law fairs). As a client of an OC Member Firm, we may collect your Personal and Confidential Information through material you may provide to us to enable us to carry out our service for you. As a supplier of an OC Member Firm, we may collect your Personal and Confidential Information through materials you may provide to us in relation to the services you provide to us.

The provision of your Personal and Confidential Information to us is optional – save for the case in which the law requires that this is provided (e.g. to enable us to comply with anti-money laundering regulation) in which case the provision of such data is mandatory and failure to provide the same may result in our inability to provide you with the services requested and subject you to administrative fines.

3. How will we use your Personal and Confidential Information?

The ways in which we may use your Personal and Confidential Information necessarily depends on the relationship you have with us. For example, if you are a client, then we will use your Personal and Confidential Information to provide you with our services.

We use the Personal and Confidential Information that we collect for the following purposes:

• For contact and communication purposes: We may use your contact information and preferences to send you legal updates that we may circulate from time to time, news about any events we are organising or participating in, and/or other information about us and the services that we or another OC Member Firm provides. We will only contact you in accordance with the contact preferences that you have specified otherwise in accordance with our information collection notices). You can specify your contact preferences when registering online to receive communications from us (for example, through the Osborne Clarke website) or by subsequently advising us of your contact preferences using the contact details provided above.
• To provide our services to our clients: We may also use Personal and Confidential Information to provide our services to our clients. Please note that we will use and disclose their Personal and Confidential Information in such manner as we believe is reasonably necessary to provide our services to them (including as described in this Policy and our Engagement Letter).
• To receive services from our suppliers: We will use our suppliers’ Personal and Confidential Information to receive their services from them. Please note that we will use and disclose their Personal and Confidential Information in such manner as we believe is reasonably necessary to receive and to review the provision of those services from them.
• To collect our fees or costs in connection with other legal enforcement: We will use your Personal and Confidential Information to agree payment arrangements with you, and to collect our fees and costs owing to us in connection with legal enforcement.
• To make payments to our suppliers: We will use our suppliers’ Personal and Confidential Information to agree payment arrangements with our suppliers, and to make payments to them.
• For recruitment and selection purposes: If you apply for a position with an OC Member Firm, we will use your Personal and Confidential Information to process your job application and for general recruitment and selection purposes. If you are successfully recruited, the Personal and Confidential Information you provide will be stored on your personnel file.
• For compliance with anti-money laundering regulation: If you instruct us to act as your solicitors, we may use your Personal and Confidential Information (e.g. evidence of your identity) in order to fulfil our obligations to check the identity of our clients in compliance with anti-money laundering law and regulations and will share this information with any other OC Member Firm required to support that instruction.

The processing operations connected with your Personal and Confidential Information are only handled by authorised subjects or by persons appointed on each case.

4. Who else may have access to your Personal and Confidential Information?

On occasion, we may need to share your Personal and Confidential Information with third parties. Where you supply us with Personal and Confidential Information as a client, we will assume, unless you instruct us otherwise in writing, that we can disclose your Personal and Confidential Information in such manner as we believe is reasonably necessary to provide our services (including as described in this Policy and our terms of engagement), or as is required under applicable law. This might be because, for example, we need to instruct overseas counsel on your behalf, to liaise with other professional service providers in relation to matters that we are handling, or because we need to liaise with the opposing party on a matter you have instructed us on.

We may pass your Personal and Confidential Information to third parties such as:

• Credit-checking agencies: If you are a client, we may need to pass on your Personal and Confidential Information (e.g. information about your identity) to a third party credit-checking agency for credit control reasons.
• Events: We may need to pass on your Personal and Confidential Information (e.g. name, company, occupation) to a third party in connection with management of an event, in which case the details will only be used by the third party for that specific purpose.

Business partners, service providers and other affiliated third parties: To enable us to provide our services to you, we may need to share your Personal and Confidential Information with another OC Member Firm, our business partners (including other professional advisers such as accountants or auditors), external service providers and/or overseas counsel. Our arrangements with external service providers currently cover the provision of support services including IT, AML/CDD checks, events management, document production, business and legal research, secretarial services and facilities management.

OC Member firms: We also share your Personal and Confidential Information with OC Member Firms:

To provide services to you and also:

• So that they may contact you (including by email), if you have expressely agreed to receive marketing communications about legal developments, services or events which may be of interest to you;
• Through the joint use of centralised IT tools;
• To manage our international client relationships;
• To respond to your requests concerning access, rectification, objection and cancellation as regards the processing of your personal data.

Disclosures required by law or regulation: In certain circumstances, please note that we may be required to disclose Personal and Confidential Information under applicable law or regulation, including to law enforcement agencies or in connection with proposed or actual legal proceedings.

Publicity: In accordance with professional ethical conduct rules, and in keeping with market practice, unless you advise us in writing to the contrary, you consent to the disclosure of our involvement as your legal advisors for the purposes of publicising our practice. We may also provide a general description of the work we’ve done for you, or a more detailed description if this information is already in the public domain or you expressly consent to this.

5. Monitoring for quality assurance and training

We strive to ensure that the legal services we deliver to our clients are of the highest possible standard. With this aim in mind, it may sometimes be necessary for us to monitor telephone and e-mail communications between our employees and third parties for the purpose of quality assurance and training or as otherwise permitted by law.

We will only ever conduct communications monitoring in compliance with applicable law, and will at all times continue to protect the confidentiality of your communications in accordance with this Policy.

6. International transfers of Personal and Confidential Information (including to outsourced service providers)

As described above, from time to time, we may need to transfer your Personal and Confidential Information to other OC Member Firms, who may have offices that are located in territories outside of the European Economic Area (“EEA”), including in the USA in order to provide you with the services required.

Please note that the legal regimes of some territories outside of the EEA do not always offer the same standard of data protection as those inside the EEA, although we will ensure that your Personal and Confidential Information is only ever treated in accordance with this Policy and, if you are a client, our Engagement Letter.

Where necessary, we have entered into standard European Commission approved form model data protection clauses with other OC Member Firms who have offices that are located in territories outside of the EEA, to provide you with the service required and with our external service providers and business partners in relation to services that they may provide that involve processing data from locations outside of the EEA for which we are Data Controller. If you would like to discuss any aspect of our arrangements with external service providers please contact the person responsible for your work.

If you or others on your behalf give us any Personal and Confidential Information about another person, you take full responsibility for complying with any relevant data protection laws which apply to the provision of that information to us, and our use of it as explained in this Policy.

7. How we look after your Personal and Confidential Information

Personal and Confidential Information may be processed by either automated or manual methods.

We have in place appropriate technical and organisational security measures to protect your Personal and Confidential Information against unauthorised or unlawful use, and against accidental loss, damage or destruction.

We put in place strict confidentiality agreements (including data protection obligations) with our third party service providers.

8. Updates to this Policy

This Policy was last updated on 1 January 2015. Please note that for legal, business or operational reasons we may from time to time update this Policy. We will highlight any material changes that we make to this Policy on the Osborne Clarke website.

9. Links to other websites

The Osborne Clarke website may link to other, unaffiliated third party websites. Please note that Osborne Clarke is not, and cannot, control or be responsible for the content or privacy and confidentiality practices of any third party websites. You must always carefully review the privacy and confidentiality policy of any third party website that you may visit in order to understand how the operators of that website may collect, store and use your personal and confidential information.

To download a copy of this policy please click here.