This notice explains the data protection practices of Clear Solicitors in connection with our client services. We respect your right to privacy, and we will keep your personal information secure and process it in accordance with EU and Irish data protection law.

Who we are:

We are Clear Solicitors of 42 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2 and 1 Main Street, Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow. You can contact us at these addresses by post or by email at info@clearsolicitors.ie.

Our data protection representative is Kerry Clear.

Our data protection representative may be contacted by email – kerry@clearsolicitors.ie.

How we use Personal Information

For our Clients and Related Individuals

If you are a client (prospective, current or former) of Clear Solicitors, we will collect and process your personal data as part of our services. If you are an officer, shareholder, employee or partner of one of our corporate clients, or a family member of an individual client, then we might also collect and process your personal data as part of our services to the client. The data we hold will include any personal data provided to us by the client during the engagement and may include your name, contact information, a copy of your passport or other ID, bank account information for payments, and details about the matter in which the client has engaged us to represent them. We will only process your data in order to provide our legal or consulting services to our client. Our legal bases for this processing are that it is necessary to perform our contractual obligations to the client, and is in our legitimate interest in the administration and operation of our firm.

We will retain your data for a period of [7] years because we believe we have a legal responsibility to retain client files for this period.

Why we process your data, the lawful basis for processing your data and who we share it with

A. For people who view and interact with our website, we process data:

• to respond to your query when sent through our ‘contact us’ form and
• to facilitate your payment of an invoice through online payment via a third party payment provider.

The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interest in the administration and operation of our legal services as well as our legitimate interest in marketing and promoting our firm’s legal services.

We share this data with our client relationship management system provider. They may only process this data for the purpose of providing us with their services, and no other purpose.

We will retain this data for such period as we deem necessary in the circumstances.

B. For our current clients and potential clients, we share your Personal Information with:

• Our employees and contractors who need to access personal information to provide legal services;
• Our IT, cloud and e-mail service providers
• Other third parties necessary to provide our client services and meet regulatory requirement

This provider is not permitted to use this data other than on our behalf.

The legal basis for the processing of this data is processing necessary for the purpose of the legitimate interests of our firm.

We will retain this data for such period as we deem necessary in the circumstances.

C. For solicitors and barristers that we liaise with on client matters, we process data:

• In order to liaise with you about our client matters

The legal basis for the processing of this data is processing necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by our firm in representing our clients.

We share the information you provide with our practice management system in order to store your contact information with our client file. We may also send you emails through our email service provider.

We will retain this data for such period as we deem necessary in the circumstances.

D. For job applicants to the firm, we process data:

• to recruit new employees
• to ascertain your suitability for a specific role

The legal basis for this processing is processing necessary for the purpose of the legitimate interests of our firm in recruiting new staff.

We share the information you provide in your application with our contracted recruiter in order to make a shortlist of candidates. This recruiter is not permitted to use this data other than on our behalf. We may also send you emails about your application through our email service provider.

We will retain this data for such period as we deem necessary in the circumstances.

Transfers of data outside the European Economic Area

If we transfer data relating our payroll/case management system to a service provider outside the EU. The safeguard we have put in place for this transfer is to enter into European Commission approved standard contractual clauses with the provider.

Information received from third parties and the source of that data

Department of Social Protection, Revenue Commissioners or such other regulatory mandatory authority necessary for our business.

Your rights relating to personal data

You have the following rights under the GDPR, in certain circumstances and subject to certain exemptions, in relation to your personal data:

• right to access the data – you have the right to request a copy of the personal data that we hold about you, together with other information about our processing of that personal data.
• right to rectification- you have the right to request that any inaccurate data that is held about you is corrected, or if we have incomplete information you may request that we update the information such that it is complete.
• right to erasure – you have the right to request us to delete personal data that we hold about you. This is sometimes referred to as the right to be forgotten.
• right to restriction of processing or to object to processing – you have the right to request that we no longer process your personal data for particular purposes, or to object to our processing of your personal data for particular purposes.
• right to data portability – you have the right to request us to provide you, or a third party, with a copy of your personal data in a structured, commonly used machine readable format.

In order to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us at the contact details at the start of this privacy notice.

If we are processing personal data based on your consent, you may withdraw that consent at any time. This does not affect the lawfulness of processing which took place prior to its withdrawal.

If you are unhappy with how we process personal data, we ask you to contact us so that we can rectify the situation.

You may lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. The Irish supervisory authority is the Data Protection Commission.

6. Requirement to process personal data

You may browse our website without providing us with any personal data and this will not affect your ability to view our website.

If you do not provide us with your information for the purposes described above, we cannot respond to your queries sent through our contact us form, liaise with you on client matters, or assess your suitability for a role within our firm.

7. Automated decision-making and profiling

We do not use any personal data for the purpose of automated decision-making or profiling.