Website Privacy Notice

1 Important information and who we are

This website belongs to and is maintained by Lows Orkney Ltd a company incorporated in Scotland (Company No. SC3672531) and we have our registered office at 5 Broad Street, Kirkwall, Orkney, KW15 1DH ("we", "us", "Lows"). We also trade as “Lows” and our main area of business is the provision of legal advice services. Our legal practice is regulated by the Law Society of Scotland (https://www.lawscot.org.uk/).

We strive to safeguard the privacy of our website visitors and this privacy notice sets out how we will collect, use, and protect personal data about you when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from), and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

We are a controller under data protection laws and our ICO data protection registration number is Z2427299.

Contacting Us

We have appointed a data protection officer ("DPO"). If you have any questions about this privacy notice, the use of your personal data, or wish to exercise any of your legal rights please contact our DPO by writing to us by email to [email protected] or by post to: Data Protection Officer, Lows Orkney Ltd, 5 Broad Street, Kirkwall, Orkney, KW15 1DH.

2 Types of personal data we collect, and how we use personal data generally

Personal data means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. There are many different types of personal data. We may collect, use and store different kinds of personal data about you depending on how you interact with us, and what services we provide you.

In general terms, we collect and use personal data to deliver our services and meet our regulatory obligations, but also to:

• verify your identity where this is required
• contact you by post, email or telephone
• maintain our records where this is required
• process financial transactions
• prevent and detect crime, fraud or corruption

The information we may collect includes:

3 How is your personal data collected?

We may use different methods to collect your personal data, including:

• From you directly: You may give us your personal data by filing in online forms on our website, or by corresponding with us by post, email or telephone.
• From third parties: We may receive your information from other organisations that refer you to us, such as other law firms, financial institutions, and title agents. We may also be provided with financial data about you by credit reference agencies and fraud prevention agencies. We may also receive information from solicitors, courts, and other third partes that we engage (or have engaged us) to help deliver the services we provide to you.
• From publicly accessible resources: We may use information from public registers such as Companies House or the Registers of Scotland to verify information you have given us or validate your details.
• From automated technologies: As you interact with our website, we automatically collect technical data about your browsing activity and usage. We collect this personal data by using cookies. You can read more about our use of cookies by checking our Cookies Policy at paragraph 12 below.

4 How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us. We are required under data protection law to have a legal basis for collecting and using your personal data. Such legal bases include:

• Contractual performance: To provide you services in line with a contract we have entered with you.
• Legitimate interest: We can use your personal data where it is necessary to conduct our business and pursue our legitimate interests. If we rely on legitimate interest to process your information, we will always be sure to balance any potential impact on you and your rights (both positive and negative) before we process your information.
• Legal obligation: We may use your personal data where it is necessary for us to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
• Consent: We can process your information with your explicit consent for a specific purpose.

The legal basis we rely on depends on the type of personal data, and what we need to do with it.

We have set out below, in table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

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 you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

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.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

5 Who we share your personal data with

We may share your personal data with any of our directors, shareholders, employees, officers, agents, suppliers or sub-contractors insofar as is reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice.

In particular, we may share your information with:

• any body with which we are required (either by law or regulation) to share such information, such as the police, HMRC and other governmental bodies.
• our anti-money laundering service providers.
• any third party we use or engage with whilst providing our services, such as other solicitors, counsel, expert witnesses, courts.
• the purchaser (or prospective purchaser) of any business or asset which we are (or are contemplating) selling to.
• the counterparties to any transaction with which we are assisting, which could include other individuals, solicitors, courts or organisations.
• We may use the following third-party service providers named below to process and store your data:

6 If you choose not to give your personal data

If we have requested your personal data to meet our legal obligations (for example, to complete mandatory anti-money laundering checks) and you fail to provide the information requested, it may delay or prevent us from providing the services we had discussed. In some cases, refusal to provide the personal data we request may lead to us being unable to act for you, or to withdraw from acting.

7 How long we keep your personal data for

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. However different retention rules apply to different types of personal data and these rules can be complex.

We follow the guidelines issued by the Law Society of Scotland concerning the retention of client files. This means we generally retain client files (and any of your personal data within them) for a minimum period of ten years. In some areas of practice (such as wills, executries, and property transactions) we may need to hold client files for longer periods because the time periods for which legal claims can arise are much longer than 10 years.

If you wish to know how long we may hold your personal data in relation to a particular matter, please contact us.

8 International Data Transfers

This website is hosted in the United Kingdom.

We may also use outsourced services in countries outside the European Union from time to time in other aspects of our business.

Accordingly, data obtained within the UK or any other country could be processed outside the European Union.

For example, some of the software our website uses may have been developed in the United States of America or in Australia.

We use the following safeguards with respect to data transferred outside the European Union:

• the processor is bound to data protection requirements within their own country – for example the US/EU Privacy Shield, the Canadian Privacy Act, the Australian Privacy Act etc.
• the data protection clauses in our contracts with data processors include transfer clauses written by or approved by a supervisory authority in the European Union, specifically that in the country of the United Kingdom
• we comply with a code of conduct approved by a supervisory authority in the European Union, specifically that in the country of the United Kingdom

9 Security of your personal data

We have put in place, and will take, appropriate technical and organisational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or unauthorised alteration of your personal data. We will store all the personal data you provide on our secure password and firewall protected servers. You accept that data transmission over the internet is inherently insecure and as such that we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet. You are at all times responsible for keeping your password and user details confidential. We will not ask you for any password except when requested to enable you to log into our website.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

10 Your legal rights

Under data protection law you have various rights in respect of any personal data that we hold about you. Please contact us if you would like to exercise any of these rights.

• Access to your information: You may request us to provide you with a copy of any personal data we hold about you. Sometimes, we are entitled to withhold some information under law but we will always tell you if this applies.
• Updating your information: We want to ensure the personal data we hold about you is up to date at all times. If you wish to correct or update the personal data which we hold, please contact us.
• Deleting your information: You have the right to request us to delete personal data we hold about you. Sometimes, we are bound by law and our regulatory obligations to keep copies of your personal data for minimum time periods (see above at Section 7 How long we keep your personal data for) which would prevent deletion, but we will notify you if this is the case at the time of your request.
• Objecting to how we use your information: You may instruct us not to process 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.
• Restricting how we use your information: In some cases, you may ask us to restrict how we use your personal data. This may occur for example, where there is no longer a legal basis for using your personal data, but you don't want us to delete the data. Where this right is validly exercised, we may only use the relevant personal data with your consent, for legal claims or where there are other public interest grounds to do so.
• Requesting the transfer of your information: You can request your personal data to be transferred to a third party you have chosen. 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: You can 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.

No fee usually required

You will not normally have to pay a fee to make any of the above requests, however we may charge you a fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive, or excessive. Alternatively, we can refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances, however we would always detail our decision to you in writing.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could 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.

11 Third-party and linked websites

Our website may contain links to other websites which we feel may be of interest to website users. We are not responsible for the privacy notices or practices of any third party websites or the content thereof.

12 Use of cookies

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer's hard drive by your web browser when you visit any website. They allow information gathered on one web page to be stored until it is needed for use on another, allowing a website to provide you with a personalised experience and the website owner with statistics about how you use the website so that it can be improved.

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. Please see our Cookies Policy for further information about the types of cookies which we use on this website.

Some cookies may last for a defined period of time, such as one day or until you close your browser. Others last indefinitely.

Our website uses cookies. They are placed by software that operates on our servers, and by software operated by third parties whose services we use.

Some examples of how cookies may be used:

• to track how you use our website
• to record what is held in a shopping basket
• to record whether you have seen specific messages we display on our website
• to record your answers to surveys and questionnaires on our site while you complete them.

Local storage is a component of the Web storage application programming interface. It is a method by which Web pages locally store named key/value pairs inside a client's Web browser. Similar to cookies, this saved data exists even when you close a browser tab, surf away from the current website or close the main browser.

You can find more information about the individual cookie and local storage data we use and the purposes for which we use them below:

Your web browser should allow you to delete any cookies or local storage that you choose. It also should allow you to prevent or limit their use.

If you choose to prevent the use of cookies through your browser settings, you will not be able to use all the functionality of our website.

13 Personal identifiers from your browsing activity

Requests by your web browser to our servers for web pages and other content on our website are recorded.

We record information such as your geographical location, your Internet service provider and your IP address. We also record information about the software you are using to browse our website, such as the type of computer or device and the screen resolution.

We use this information in aggregate to assess webpage popularity and server performance.

If combined with other information we know about you from previous visits, the data possibly could be used to identify you personally, even if you are not signed in to our website.

14 Changes to our privacy notice

We reserve the right to update and amend this privacy notice from time to time by posting a new version on our website. We recommend that you check this page occasionally to ensure that you are happy with our privacy notice as applying from time to time.

This privacy notice was last updated: May 2024.

15 Complaints

If you have any concerns about our handling of your personal data, we encourage you to contact our DPO directly (see Section 1 of this privacy notice on how you can contact us) to allow us an opportunity to resolve matters in the first instance.

Notwithstanding this, you also have a right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office ("ICO"), the UK regulator for data protection issues (Online: https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/www.ico.org.uk; Phone: 0303 123 1113; By post: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 5AF)