Privacy & Cookie policy

The General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) applies to both automated personal data and to manual filing systems, where personal data is accessible according to specific criteria, as well as to chronologically ordered data and pseudonymised data.

Data referred to in the GDPR as ‘special categories of personal data’ (previously termed ‘Sensitive Personal Data’) specifically includes the processing of genetic data, biometric data and data concerning health matters.

“Personal information” is therefore any information that can be used to identify you or that we can link to you and which we at M&T have in our possession or control.

Information that you provide to M&T

We will process personal information that you give to M&T including when you email us or contact us through various methods as follows:

• Signing up for M&T services: when you book a room with us, sign up for our newsletters, webinars, events or obtain any of our services, or when you contact us with queries, or respond to our communications the personal information you provide may include your full name, title, telephone number, email address and additional content, date and time of your email correspondence.
• When providing M&T services: if you are a client, partner or preferred supplier of M&T you will provide us with personal information when you, or the company you represent, become a client , partner or preferred supplier with us. If you are not a client, partner or Page 2 of 6 Privacy Policy preferred supplier we may still collect or receive your personal information because you are involved in one of our client’s matters.
• When participating in recruitment activities: when you apply for any role with us, or with a client of ours if we are acting on their behalf, you may provide us with your full name, date of birth, nationality, education and qualification details, your gender, your CV, photograph, passport details, marital status, home address and home telephone number, mobile telephone number and other details set out in your communications to us.
• To enable processing of payments and fraud prevention: Financial and Payment Data including bank account and other data necessary for processing payments and fraud prevention, including credit/debit card numbers, security code numbers and other related billing information.
• To enable equality and monitoring: When applying or joining M&T then your sensitive personal data (that is, information about your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union activities, physical or mental health, sexual life, or details of criminal offences, or genetic or biometric data) may be collected in order to carry out monitoring and comply with the legal obligations.
• Applying for placements and work experience: When you apply to us you for any potential work placement you may provide us with details such as your name, email address, postal address and employment details.

M&T use various technologies to collect and store information when you communicate with us or visit our websites. We may, for example, collect information about the type of device you use to access the websites, your IP address and your geographic location, the operating system and version, your browser type, the content you view and features you access on our websites, the web pages and the search terms you enter on our websites. For information about how we use Cookies and the choices you may have, please see our Cookies Policy below.

• If you apply for a position with any part of the M&T, or in response to a managed recruitment campaign M&T conducts on behalf of a client, we may collect personal information relating to past employment, qualifications and education, opinions from relevant third parties about you, past employment history and other details about you, which may be provided to us by a third party that provides background screening services on our behalf.
• If we collect or receive your personal information in the relation to our provision of any of M&T services we might also receive information from third parties such as your employer, other parties relevant to the services we are providing (e.g. other parties involved in a matter) and others such as regulators and authorities. That information could include your name, contact details, employment details and other information relevant to the legal services that we are providing to our client.

• Use it to provide M&T services to a relevant client.
• Use it to engage in marketing and business development activity in relation to our group services. This may include sending you newsletters, legal, human resources and health and safety updates, marketing communications and other information that we believe may be of interest to you.
• Where you have applied for a position with us or with our clients that we are representing, to review and process your application.
• To comply with legal and regulatory obligations that we have a duty to discharge.
• Use it to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights or for the purpose of legal proceedings.
• To record and monitor your use of our websites, social media or our other services for M&T business purposes. This may include analysis of usage, measurement of website performance and generation of marketing reports.
• Use it for our legitimate business interests, such as for undertaking business research and analysis, managing the operation of our business and improving our websites and interfaces.
• Use it to look into any complaints, concerns or issues you may have.
• Use it to prevent and respond to actual or potential fraud or illegal activities.

M&T may also collate, process and share any statistics based on an accumulation of information held by us provided that any individual is not identified from the resulting analysis and the collation, processing and dissemination of such information is permitted by law.

• Consent: M&T may in some circumstances need your consent to use your personal information. You can withdraw your consent by contacting us.
• Obligations of a contract: M&T may need to collect and use your personal information to enter into a contract with you or to perform our obligations under a contract with you.
• Legitimate interest: M&T may use your personal information for what we identify as our legitimate interests.
• Compliance with the law: we may use your personal information as necessary to comply with applicable laws and regulations.

• Third party agents/suppliers or contractors, bound by obligations of confidentiality, in connection with the processing of your personal information for the purposes described in this Policy. This may include, but is not limited to, our IT and communications service providers, and insurance, pension or benefit providers if you are employed by us.
• Third parties relevant to the services that we provide. This may include, but is not limited to, counterparties to transactions or litigation, other professional service providers, regulators, authorities, governmental institutions.
• To the extent required by law, regulation or court order, for example, if we are under a duty to disclose your personal information in order to comply with any legal obligation.

Your personal information may in some circumstances be transferred to locations outside of the European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) as well as within it for the purposes previously described above. We do not transfer your personal information outside the Europe as a matter of course however, where we have a requirement to transfer your personal information outside the EU/EEA, we will ensure that it is protected and transferred in a manner consistent with legal requirements applicable to the information by for instance:

• The country to which we send the personal information may be approved by the European Commission
• The recipient may have signed a contract based on “contractual clauses” approved by the European Commission, obliging them to protect the personal information , or
• Where the recipient is located in the US, it may be a certified member of the EU-US Privacy Shield scheme.

In other circumstances, the law itself may permit us to otherwise transfer your personal information outside Europe. In all cases, however, any transfer of your personal information will be compliant with the applicable data protection law in place.

• The purpose for which we are using your personal information – we will need to keep the information for as long as is necessary for the relevant purpose
• Legal obligations – laws or regulation may set a minimum period for which we have to keep your personal information

M&T will retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes that we collected it for and for M&T to assert or defend against legal claims. The appropriate retention period is determined by the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, the purposes for which we process and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

Upon expiry of the applicable retention period we securely destroy your personal data in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. M&T ensures that the personal information that we hold is subject to the appropriate security measures.

These rights include:

• Obtaining or accessing your data: Regarding the processing of your personal information and access to the personal information which we hold about you. Please note that there may be circumstances in which we are entitled to refuse requests for access to copies of your personal information. In particular, information that is subject to legal professional privilege will not be disclosed other than to our client and as authorised by our client.
• Correcting your data: Requesting that we correct your personal information if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Erasure of your data: Requesting that we erase your personal information in certain circumstances. Please note that there may be circumstances where you ask us to erase your personal information but we are legally entitled to retain it.
• Objecting/Restricting us processing: Requesting that we restrict, our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances. Again, there may be circumstances where you object to, or ask us to restrict, our processing of your personal information but we are legally entitled to refuse that request.
• Portability/Moving your data: In some circumstances, receiving some personal information in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and/or requesting that we transmit that information to a third party where this is technically feasible. Please note that this right only applies to personal information which you have provided to us.
• Withdrawing your consent: In certain circumstances it may be lawful for us to continue processing without your consent if we have another legitimate reason (other than consent) for doing so.
• Lodging a complaint about processing: Complaining to the relevant data protection supervising authority (e.g. The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) in the UK), if you think that any of your rights have been infringed by us.

If you would like further information on the collection, use, disclosure, transfer or processing of your personal information by M&T. or the exercise of any of the rights listed above, please contact us. You can do this by:

• Writing to us: Michels & Taylor (London) Ltd, Suite 3 Caspian House, The Waterfront, Elstree Road, Elstree, WD6 3BS
• Emailing us: gdpr@michelsandtaylor.com
• Telephone us: 0208 905 2500

• Single session cookies. These enable the Sites to keep track of your movement from page to page in order to ensure that you will not be asked for the same information you have previously given during your visit to the Sites. Cookies allow you to proceed through the Sites quickly and easily without having to authenticate or reprocess each new area you visit. We may use the cookies to analyse user behaviour, such as which pages have been visited during the session, in order to improve your overall experience, for example enabling us to determine and display more relevant content.
• Remember me cookies. These cookies enable the Sites to remember your personal preferences such as log in details in order to improve the user experience for example by avoiding you having to re-enter these details on each visit to the Sites.
• Remember my language cookies. These enable the Sites to retain your language preference for future visits in order to improve the user experience. In addition, this cookie will set the language in which the non-content aspects of emails received from the Sites will be displayed in.
• Persistent cookies. These cookies enable us to collect information such as number of visitors to the sites and pages visited in order to analyse user behaviour. This information is collected in an anonymous form and will be collated with similar information received from other users to enable us to compile reports in order to develop and improve user experience by displaying more tailored and relevant content for example.

Cookies remain in the cookies file of your browser after the closing of the browser, and will become active again when the Site is reopened, until removed. The cookie(s) will not collect any information when you are not accessing the Site.

This behaviour is analysed to provide an improved user experience. The information collected is not linked to personally identifiable information.

M&T also use Google Analytics to help analyse use of Sites. Google Analytics generate statistical and other information about website use by means of cookies, which are stored by users’ web browsers on their computer. The information generated relating to our website is used to create reports about the use of the website. Google hold this information and provide us access to it. Google’s privacy policy is at http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html