Privacy Notice

EM Law respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website, contact us or when you have agreed that we can stay in touch with you and it tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

1. Important information and who we are

Purpose of this privacy notice

This privacy notice aims to give you information on how EM Law collects and processes your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide through this website when you fill in any forms on our website and through you providing us with your personal data in other ways such as sending us emails.

This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

It is important that you read this privacy notice together with any other privacy notice or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy notice supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.

Controller

EM Law is a trading name of Emerging Law Limited. Emerging Law Limited is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as “EM Law”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice).

We have appointed a data privacy manager who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact the data privacy manager using the details set out below.

Contact details

Full name of legal entity: Emerging Law Limited.

Name of data privacy manager: Neil Williamson.

Email address: [email protected]

Postal address: White Collar Factory, 1 Old Street Yard, London EC1Y 8AF.

Telephone number: 0203 637 6374.

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

Changes to the privacy notice and your duty to inform us of changes

This version was last updated on 16 September 2024.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

Third-party links

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

2. The data we collect about you

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect, use, store and transfer the following different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

• Identity Data includes first name and last name, passport details, utility bills (used to identify your address). 
• Contact Data includes email addresses and telephone numbers.
• Matter Data includes the personal data you provide to us in respect of the matter(s) you want us to consider, or, where you are a third party, the personal data our clients or potential clients have provided to us about you.
• Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details. 
• Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other related information. 
• Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, device ID and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
• Usage Data includes information about how you interact and use our website, marketing information, and so on. 
• Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences. 
• CV Data includes information about your work or educational background as it would appear on a curriculum vitae or other media. 

We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. We do not combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you (please also refer to section 3 below).

In certain circumstances, our collection of Matter Data may include the collection of Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data). We also may collect Criminal Convictions and Offences Data within the Matter Data. 

3. Google Analytics

This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses cookies (see below), to help us analyse how users use our website. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. We have activated IP-anonymisation, which will anonymise your IP address by cutting it short. In most cases this procedure will be carried out within the UK or the area of the European Union and other parties to the European Economic Area Agreement. In exceptional cases the whole IP address will be first transferred to a Google server in the USA and then shortened there. Google will use the information on behalf of EM Law for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for us and providing us with other services relating to website activity and internet usage. The IP address that your browser conveys within the scope of Google Analytics, will not be associated with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of these cookies via the settings in your browser. You can also opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics in the future by downloading and installing Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on for your current web browser: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en. 

4. How is your personal data collected?

Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity and Contact Data by filling in forms (or, where applicable, submitting documentation to us) or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you enquire about our services, our needs, network with you or if you are looking to see if there are any staff or work experience vacancies. It also includes personal data you provide to us that relates to the matter you need assistance with before you (or your organisation) become(s) our client, or that we retain if you (or your organisation) choose(s) not to work with us. 

Indirect interactions. Our clients or potential clients may provide Matter Data about you that pertains to a legal matter they have engaged us to work on or want us to work on. 

Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect Technical Data and Usage Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, and other similar technologies. 

Our research. We may verify your identity or the information you send us by conducting research on the internet and with online platforms such as LinkedIn.

5. How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data simply to reply to an enquiry you have sent us. If the organisation that you represent becomes our supplier, we will use your personal data to work with you to receive your goods or services. We will also use your personal data to send you information about our services or to review your potential issue or matter.

See below and the Glossary to find out more about the types of lawful basis that we will rely on to process your personal data.

Purposes for which we will use your personal data 

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

Purpose/Use	Type of data	Lawful basis
To respond to your enquiry about a legal matter that you or your business is concerned with	Identity Contact Matter	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to enable to us to evaluate and respond to potential clients)
To respond to your enquiry about a legal matter that you or your business is concerned with and where you provide us with Matter Data that contains Special Category Personal Data	Matter	Lawful basis: necessary for our legitimate interests (to establish, exercise or defend your legal rights) Special condition: processing in respect of legal claims or judicial acts
To check whether we can act for you or your business as a new client or across from you as a counter party or other third party on a matter involving a new or existing client	Identity Contact	Necessary for compliance with a legal obligation
To deliver our services to our clients (or to consider the matters of potential clients, where you or your business pertains to that engagement but is not our client)	Identity Contact Matter	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to enable to us to provide services to our clients or consider the enquiries of potential clients)
To deliver our services to our clients (or to consider the matters of potential clients, where you or your business pertains to that engagement but is not our client), and that client or potential client provides us with Matter Data that contains Special Category Personal Data	Matter	Lawful basis: necessary for our legitimate interests (to establish, exercise or defend the legal rights of our clients or potential clients) Special condition: processing in respect of legal claims or judicial acts
To deliver our services to you when you provide us with Matter Data that includes Criminal Convictions	Matter	Lawful basis: necessary for our legitimate interests (to establish, exercise or defend your legal rights)  Schedule 1 condition: legal claims
To receive and pay for services from you or your organisation	Identity Contact Financial Transaction	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to enable to us to receive services from you or your organisation)
To consider whether to receive services from you or your organisation	Identity Contact CV	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to consider whether to receive services from you or your organisation)
To consider your application for a job or work experience	Identity Contact CV	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to recruit new employees or permit individuals to attend our offices on work experience)
To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data)	Identity Contact Technical	Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise)
To use data analytics to improve our website, services, customer relationships and experiences and to measure the effectiveness of our communications and marketing	Technical Usage	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy)
To send you relevant marketing communications about services that may be of interest to you	Identity Contact Technical Usage Marketing and Communications	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to carry out direct marketing, develop our services and grow our business)
To comply with legal or regulatory requests	Identity Contact Matter Financial Transaction	Necessary for compliance with a legal obligation

Marketing

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising. We have established the following personal data control mechanisms:

Promotional offers from us

We may use your personal data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which services may be relevant for you (we call this marketing).

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or if you provided us with your details when you have registered with us for updates and, in each case, you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

Third-party marketing

We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any business outside EM Law for marketing purposes although we do not and have no intention of sharing your personal data in this way.

Opting out

You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or by contacting us at any time.

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.

6. Disclosure of your personal data

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in in paragraph 5 above:

• External Third Parties as set out in the Glossary.
• Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy notice.

All third parties are required to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

7. Cookies

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites you visit. Cookies help make this website work and provide information to us about how users interact with our website. We use this information to improve our website.

The cookies we use help to provide us with anonymised, aggregated technical information. This is principally so that we can make sure that the website is easy to navigate, identify the areas that are of particular interest to visitors and generally improve the website and our services. The information that we collect in this process will not identify you as an individual. We do not seek to identify individual visitors unless they volunteer their contact details through one of the forms on the website. In some circumstances our records will identify organisations visiting our website and we may use that information in managing our relationship with those organisations, for example, in considering how to develop the services that we offer them.

By using our website, you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your device.

When you accessed this website, our cookies were sent to your web browser and stored on your computer. If you wish to remove them, you can manage this via the settings on your browser but note that this may impact your ability to utilise this and other websites. The way to clear cookies varies from one browser to another. You should look in the “help” menu of your web browser for full instructions. For your reference, please click the following links for details on how to manage cookies in each of the major web browsers:

For general information about cookies please visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

8. International transfers

We do not transfer your personal data outside the UK other than as set out below.

Like most businesses we use software to support our operations. For example, we use Microsoft as our email provider. Your personal data may therefore be transferred out of the UK as Microsoft and other major players in the software industry store some of their data in the U.S.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

• We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the ICO.
• Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved by the ICO which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.

9. Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

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. Data retention

How long will we use your personal data for?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal data are available in our retention policy which you can request from us by contacting us.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see Request erasure below for further information.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

11. Your legal rights

Under certain circumstances, you have the following rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data:

• Request access to your personal data.
• Request correction of your personal data.
• Request erasure of your personal data.
• Object to processing of your personal data.
• Request restriction of processing your personal data.
• Request transfer of your personal data.
• Right to withdraw consent.

You can find out more information about these rights in the Glossary section below.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

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

12. Glossary

LAWFUL BASIS

Legitimate interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.

Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.

SPECIAL CONDITION

Where we process special category personal data, we must identify both a lawful basis for processing that data and further identify a special condition (set out below). 

Legal claims or judicial acts means the processing of your data in the context of our establishing, exercising or defending legal rights in any way. 

SCHEDULE 1 CONDITION 

Where we process criminal convictions/offence data, we must identify both a lawful basis for processing that data and further identify a further condition set out in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 2018.  

Legal claims means the processing of your data for the purpose of establishing, exercising or defending legal rights.   

THIRD PARTIES

External Third Parties

• Service providers based in the U.S. and the UK who provide IT, marketing, analytics, and system administration services.
• Where applicable, The Justice Platform Ltd t/a Legl, who provide us with KYC and KYB verification services.
• Professional advisers who provide, for example, consultancy and legal services who are based in the UK.
• Regulators such as the Solicitors Regulation Authority and other authorities based in the UK who may require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.

YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

You have the right to:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

Object to processing of 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.

Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. 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 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 services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.