AA Law Policies
LEGAL STATUS
NAME:
AA Law
Criminal Defence Solicitors
ADDRESS:
MAIN OFFICE, Skegness AURA Business Centre, Heath Road, Skegness PE25 3SJ
CONTACT:
TEL: 01754 896970
FAX: 01754 896971
EMAIL: info@aalaw.co.uk or secretary@aalaw.co.uk
BRANCH OFFICE:
Oak House, Witham Park, Waterside South, Lincoln LN5 7FB
Tel: 01522 839583
Email: secretary@aalaw.co.uk
REGULATED AA Law are authorised and regulated by The Solicitors Regulation Authority
Solicitor's Registration Number: 472813
VAT Regulation Number: 972 3705 08
The Solicitor Regulation Authority Rules can be found on their website (https://www.sra.org.uk/home/home.page)
CONTACT:
AA Law have offices in both Skegness and Lincoln City. We operate throughout Lincolnshire.
You can call into our offices, by telephone or, by email - if an emergency and you need assistance, please call our 24 hour number, which is 01754 896970, or you may complete the online enquiry form and that is info@aalaw.co.uk and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
WEBSITE PRIVACY POLICY
Any data that you submit to us using our webform infor@aalaw.co.uk will be held by AA Law Solicitors as data controller, held in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation.
Your data is personal and will not be disclosed to any third parties without your consent or, as otherwise allowed for relevant Data Protection legislation and will only be used for responding to your query.
You have the right to be informed about what data we hold about you, along with other rights set in legislation. Further information about your rights under the Data Protection legislation can be found on http://www.ico.org.uk.
DATA AND PRIVACY NOTICE
Our Privacy Policy
In Accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation a notice explains in detail the types of personal data we may collect about you when you interact with us. It also explains how we will store and handle that data and make sure that it is kept safe.
We are aware that there is a lot of information here, but would like you to be fully informed about your rights and how our firm uses your data. We hope the following sections will be helpful and, we hope that they will answer questions that you may have. If you are unsure, please do get in touch with us.
CONDITIONS FOR PROCESSING DATA
We are only entitled to hold and process your data where the law allows us to do so. The law sets out a number of different reasons for which a law firm may collect and process personal data and these include the following:
1. Contractual Obligations
The main purpose for holding any data is to provide you with legal services under the agreement that we have with you. This agreement is a contract between us and you and, the law allows us to process your data for the purposes of performing a contract. We may also may process your data to meet our contractual obligations to the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) where you receive public funding, should you be entitled.
2. Legal Compliance
If the law requires us to, we may need to collect and process your data. For example, we may pass off people involved in fraud or other criminal activity (money laundering).
3. Legitimate Interests
In certain situations, we may require your data to pursue our legitimate interests in a way which might be expected as part of running our business and which does not materially impact your rights, this may include to satisfy our external quality auditors and the regulators.
4. Consent
In some situations, we may collect and process your data with your consent. For example, when you receive email newsletters, when collecting your personal data, we will always make clear to you what data is necessary in connection with a particular service.
5. What do we Collect?
We normally collect your data when you provide it to us or, when it is provided to us by others (your opponents' solicitors), for example during a case or the Crown Prosecution Service etc. You may give us your data by email; through the webform; over the telephone; face to face or, indeed by post.
6. What sort of data do we collect?
We collect your name and contact details. This may include asking for and keeping a copy of your passport/driving licence and, proof of address.
We may also gather details of your age, ethnicity, gender, medical problems etc if required to do so by the Legal Aid Agency if you are in receipt of legal aid. Where you have legal aid, we may also gather financial information from you that we collect and, of course, hold this information about your case or, any legal problem.
7. How do we use your Data?
We only use your data for the purposes of providing you with advice, assistance and, representation. Your data may also be used by those who are regulating our services, for instance the Legal Aid Agency and any specialist quality mark auditors.
We may use your data to notify you of our other services, but only where we have your consent to do so.
8. How do we protect your Data?
We take protecting your data extremely seriously. The data that you give may be the subject of legal professional privilege and is often extremely sensitive and confidential information.
With that in mind, we treat your data with total care and make sure that all appropriate steps to protect that data and information. Our data protection policies and systems are regularly assessed as part of our standards and compliance process.
We protect our IT system from any outside cyber-attack. Access to your personal data is password protected, sensitive data is secured by encryption and by the secure CJSM which is between inter party court users.
We regularly monitor our system for possible attacks and weaknesses and, we carry out regular interval checks to make sure that our systems cannot be attacked and, of course, to identify ways to further strengthen the IT security systems.
9. How long should we keep your Data?
We only keep your data for as long as necessary for the purpose(s) for which it was provided. In any event, it is not kept for beyond 6 years after your case or matter ends.
A 6 year period is a regulatory necessity and we have to, therefore, make sure that we keep our clients' files for that period of time in case there are any issues need to be addressed at some point later.
For some cases, we may in certain circumstances decide that it may be appropriate to keep the data for a longer period than 6 years and, if so, we will notify you if we have any reason to believe that your matter falls into this category.
10. Who do we share your personal data with?
We sometimes share your personal data with trusted third parties, such as outsourcing agencies, experts, crown prosecution service, barristers and so on. We only do this where it is absolutely necessary, providing where it is necessary to further your matter and to provide you with legal services or for the effective operation of our legal practice.
The police that we apply to those organisations as mentioned above is to ensure that they keep your data safe and, of course, protect your privacy:
1. Information that is passed to them is to further your specific legal activity service by them;
2. The data given is for the exact purposes that we specify in our contract with them by way of a brief or instructions;
3. Ensure that your privacy is respected and protected at all time and, of course, we work closely alongside them in such a matter; and
4. Should we cease to use their services, any of your data held by them will either be deleted or ended anonymous.
11. Where is your data processed?
Your data is stored and processed within the European economic area. If we ever have to share your personal data with any third parties and supplies outside the European economic area, we will seek your specific consent prior to any sharing.
The EEA includes all EU member countries, as well as Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.
12. What are your rights?
You have rights under the General Data Protection Regulation and these include:
1. The right to be informed of what information we hold about you. In particular, you have the right to request access to the personal data that we may hold, free of charge in most cases.
2. The correction of your personal data when incorrect out of date or being incomplete; and
3. That we stop any consent-based processing of their personal data after they have withdrawn their instructions or, we have revoked any contract and, certainly once the purpose for which we hold has come to an end.
You also have the right to request a copy of the information about you that we hold at any time.
If we choose not to action your request, we will explain to you the reasons why for refusing.
Contact details for information on how your information is used, how we maintain the security of our information and, your rights to access information that we hold on you, please contact us. Similarly, if you believe the information we hold is wrong, out of date, please let us know and we will update it. The person who is responsible for data protection is Asad Aziz and enquiries and requests can be sent to him at asadaziz@btinternet.com or, of course, in writing to AA Law Solicitors, Skegness Aura Business Centre, Heath Road, Skegness PE25 3SJ.
Your right to withdraw consent whenever you have given us your consent to use your personal data, you have the right to change your mind at any time and withdraw any consent.
Where we rely on our legitimate interest, in cases where we are processing your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interest, you can stop for reasons connected to your individual situation. We must do so unless we believe we have a legitimate overriding reason to continue processing your data.
13. The Regulator
If you feel that your data has not been handled correctly or, you are unhappy with our response to any requests that you have made to us regarding the use of your personal data, you do have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). You may contact them by contacting 031231113 or, go online to www.ico.org.uk.
COMPLAINTS HANDLING
We at AA Law want to make sure that you have the best possible service that we can provide. However, if at any time you become unsatisfied or unhappy about the service we are providing, then you should inform us immediately so that we can do something about it and hopefully be able to resolve any issue.
We would ask that, in the first instance, it may be helpful to contact the person who is handling and has conduct of your file to discuss any particular concerns and, we will do our best to hopefully resolve those issues at this stage. However, should this matter not be resolvable, you may make a formal complaint. The formal complaint would need to be sent to Mr Asad Aziz who is the senior principal of the firm. You may contact him on his email address which is asadaziz@btinternet.com.
WHAT TO DO IF WE CANNOT RESOLVE YOUR COMPLAINT
In the event that your complaint cannot be satisfactory resolved, you may choose to contact the Legal Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman will consider your complaint independently and it will not affect how we handle your case.
Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have indeed tried resolving your complaint with us first. If you have, then you may take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within 6 months of receiving a final response to your complaint and, no more than 6 years' from the date of any act or omission or, no more than 3 years from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for some concern. If you would like more information about the Legal Ombudsman, then you should contact the service on the following site, please visit www.legalombudsman.org.uk the contact number is 0300 555 0333 between 9.00am and 5.00pm. the address is Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6806 Wolverhampton WV1 9W.
Finally, for completeness, should there be any issues that are not amicably resolvable, you can contact the Solicitor's Regulation Authority (SRA) who may be able to help. They would consider cases such as solicitors acting dishonestly, taking or losing client's money or, where one feels that they are being treated unfairly or prejudiced due to their age, colour, ethnicity, background, disability etc. You may raise your concern with the Solicitor's Regulation Authority.
LEGAL STATUS
NAME:
AA Law
Criminal Defence Solicitors
ADDRESS:
MAIN OFFICE, Skegness AURA Business Centre, Heath Road, Skegness PE25 3SJ
CONTACT:
TEL: 01754 896970
FAX: 01754 896971
EMAIL: info@aalaw.co.uk or secretary@aalaw.co.uk
BRANCH OFFICE:
Oak House, Witham Park, Waterside South, Lincoln LN5 7FB
Tel: 01522 839583
Email: secretary@aalaw.co.uk
REGULATED AA Law are authorised and regulated by The Solicitors Regulation Authority
Solicitor's Registration Number: 472813
VAT Regulation Number: 972 3705 08
The Solicitor Regulation Authority Rules can be found on their website (https://www.sra.org.uk/home/home.page)
CONTACT:
AA Law have offices in both Skegness and Lincoln City. We operate throughout Lincolnshire.
You can call into our offices, by telephone or, by email - if an emergency and you need assistance, please call our 24 hour number, which is 01754 896970, or you may complete the online enquiry form and that is info@aalaw.co.uk and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
WEBSITE PRIVACY POLICY
Any data that you submit to us using our webform infor@aalaw.co.uk will be held by AA Law Solicitors as data controller, held in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation.
Your data is personal and will not be disclosed to any third parties without your consent or, as otherwise allowed for relevant Data Protection legislation and will only be used for responding to your query.
You have the right to be informed about what data we hold about you, along with other rights set in legislation. Further information about your rights under the Data Protection legislation can be found on http://www.ico.org.uk.
DATA AND PRIVACY NOTICE
Our Privacy Policy
In Accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation a notice explains in detail the types of personal data we may collect about you when you interact with us. It also explains how we will store and handle that data and make sure that it is kept safe.
We are aware that there is a lot of information here, but would like you to be fully informed about your rights and how our firm uses your data. We hope the following sections will be helpful and, we hope that they will answer questions that you may have. If you are unsure, please do get in touch with us.
CONDITIONS FOR PROCESSING DATA
We are only entitled to hold and process your data where the law allows us to do so. The law sets out a number of different reasons for which a law firm may collect and process personal data and these include the following:
1. Contractual Obligations
The main purpose for holding any data is to provide you with legal services under the agreement that we have with you. This agreement is a contract between us and you and, the law allows us to process your data for the purposes of performing a contract. We may also may process your data to meet our contractual obligations to the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) where you receive public funding, should you be entitled.
2. Legal Compliance
If the law requires us to, we may need to collect and process your data. For example, we may pass off people involved in fraud or other criminal activity (money laundering).
3. Legitimate Interests
In certain situations, we may require your data to pursue our legitimate interests in a way which might be expected as part of running our business and which does not materially impact your rights, this may include to satisfy our external quality auditors and the regulators.
4. Consent
In some situations, we may collect and process your data with your consent. For example, when you receive email newsletters, when collecting your personal data, we will always make clear to you what data is necessary in connection with a particular service.
5. What do we Collect?
We normally collect your data when you provide it to us or, when it is provided to us by others (your opponents' solicitors), for example during a case or the Crown Prosecution Service etc. You may give us your data by email; through the webform; over the telephone; face to face or, indeed by post.
6. What sort of data do we collect?
We collect your name and contact details. This may include asking for and keeping a copy of your passport/driving licence and, proof of address.
We may also gather details of your age, ethnicity, gender, medical problems etc if required to do so by the Legal Aid Agency if you are in receipt of legal aid. Where you have legal aid, we may also gather financial information from you that we collect and, of course, hold this information about your case or, any legal problem.
7. How do we use your Data?
We only use your data for the purposes of providing you with advice, assistance and, representation. Your data may also be used by those who are regulating our services, for instance the Legal Aid Agency and any specialist quality mark auditors.
We may use your data to notify you of our other services, but only where we have your consent to do so.
8. How do we protect your Data?
We take protecting your data extremely seriously. The data that you give may be the subject of legal professional privilege and is often extremely sensitive and confidential information.
With that in mind, we treat your data with total care and make sure that all appropriate steps to protect that data and information. Our data protection policies and systems are regularly assessed as part of our standards and compliance process.
We protect our IT system from any outside cyber-attack. Access to your personal data is password protected, sensitive data is secured by encryption and by the secure CJSM which is between inter party court users.
We regularly monitor our system for possible attacks and weaknesses and, we carry out regular interval checks to make sure that our systems cannot be attacked and, of course, to identify ways to further strengthen the IT security systems.
9. How long should we keep your Data?
We only keep your data for as long as necessary for the purpose(s) for which it was provided. In any event, it is not kept for beyond 6 years after your case or matter ends.
A 6 year period is a regulatory necessity and we have to, therefore, make sure that we keep our clients' files for that period of time in case there are any issues need to be addressed at some point later.
For some cases, we may in certain circumstances decide that it may be appropriate to keep the data for a longer period than 6 years and, if so, we will notify you if we have any reason to believe that your matter falls into this category.
10. Who do we share your personal data with?
We sometimes share your personal data with trusted third parties, such as outsourcing agencies, experts, crown prosecution service, barristers and so on. We only do this where it is absolutely necessary, providing where it is necessary to further your matter and to provide you with legal services or for the effective operation of our legal practice.
The police that we apply to those organisations as mentioned above is to ensure that they keep your data safe and, of course, protect your privacy:
1. Information that is passed to them is to further your specific legal activity service by them;
2. The data given is for the exact purposes that we specify in our contract with them by way of a brief or instructions;
3. Ensure that your privacy is respected and protected at all time and, of course, we work closely alongside them in such a matter; and
4. Should we cease to use their services, any of your data held by them will either be deleted or ended anonymous.
11. Where is your data processed?
Your data is stored and processed within the European economic area. If we ever have to share your personal data with any third parties and supplies outside the European economic area, we will seek your specific consent prior to any sharing.
The EEA includes all EU member countries, as well as Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.
12. What are your rights?
You have rights under the General Data Protection Regulation and these include:
1. The right to be informed of what information we hold about you. In particular, you have the right to request access to the personal data that we may hold, free of charge in most cases.
2. The correction of your personal data when incorrect out of date or being incomplete; and
3. That we stop any consent-based processing of their personal data after they have withdrawn their instructions or, we have revoked any contract and, certainly once the purpose for which we hold has come to an end.
You also have the right to request a copy of the information about you that we hold at any time.
If we choose not to action your request, we will explain to you the reasons why for refusing.
Contact details for information on how your information is used, how we maintain the security of our information and, your rights to access information that we hold on you, please contact us. Similarly, if you believe the information we hold is wrong, out of date, please let us know and we will update it. The person who is responsible for data protection is Asad Aziz and enquiries and requests can be sent to him at asadaziz@btinternet.com or, of course, in writing to AA Law Solicitors, Skegness Aura Business Centre, Heath Road, Skegness PE25 3SJ.
Your right to withdraw consent whenever you have given us your consent to use your personal data, you have the right to change your mind at any time and withdraw any consent.
Where we rely on our legitimate interest, in cases where we are processing your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interest, you can stop for reasons connected to your individual situation. We must do so unless we believe we have a legitimate overriding reason to continue processing your data.
13. The Regulator
If you feel that your data has not been handled correctly or, you are unhappy with our response to any requests that you have made to us regarding the use of your personal data, you do have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). You may contact them by contacting 031231113 or, go online to www.ico.org.uk.
COMPLAINTS HANDLING
We at AA Law want to make sure that you have the best possible service that we can provide. However, if at any time you become unsatisfied or unhappy about the service we are providing, then you should inform us immediately so that we can do something about it and hopefully be able to resolve any issue.
We would ask that, in the first instance, it may be helpful to contact the person who is handling and has conduct of your file to discuss any particular concerns and, we will do our best to hopefully resolve those issues at this stage. However, should this matter not be resolvable, you may make a formal complaint. The formal complaint would need to be sent to Mr Asad Aziz who is the senior principal of the firm. You may contact him on his email address which is asadaziz@btinternet.com.
WHAT TO DO IF WE CANNOT RESOLVE YOUR COMPLAINT
In the event that your complaint cannot be satisfactory resolved, you may choose to contact the Legal Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman will consider your complaint independently and it will not affect how we handle your case.
Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have indeed tried resolving your complaint with us first. If you have, then you may take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within 6 months of receiving a final response to your complaint and, no more than 6 years' from the date of any act or omission or, no more than 3 years from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for some concern. If you would like more information about the Legal Ombudsman, then you should contact the service on the following site, please visit www.legalombudsman.org.uk the contact number is 0300 555 0333 between 9.00am and 5.00pm. the address is Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6806 Wolverhampton WV1 9W.
Finally, for completeness, should there be any issues that are not amicably resolvable, you can contact the Solicitor's Regulation Authority (SRA) who may be able to help. They would consider cases such as solicitors acting dishonestly, taking or losing client's money or, where one feels that they are being treated unfairly or prejudiced due to their age, colour, ethnicity, background, disability etc. You may raise your concern with the Solicitor's Regulation Authority.
© 2018 AA Law Solicitors Skegness