This privacy policy explains how The Family Law Practice Limited collects, uses, stores and shares personal data. It applies to clients and prospective clients, representatives of clients, individuals connected with matters on which we advise, visitors to our website or social media accounts, suppliers, and other individuals who deal with us. In this policy, “you” means each of those categories of individual.
1. Who we are and how to contact us
The Family Law Practice Limited is a limited company with registered address Queen Square House, 18-21 Queen Square, Bristol BS1 4NH. We process personal data as a controller for the purposes of UK data protection law, including the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
If you have any questions about this policy or how we process your personal data, please contact us at The Family Law Practice, Queen Square House, 18-21 Queen Square, Bristol BS1 4NH, by email at enquiries@thefamilylawpractice.co.uk or by telephone on 0117 925 9539.
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please tell us if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
2. Changes to this policy and third-party links
This policy will be reviewed regularly and updated when our processing activities, systems, suppliers, services or legal obligations change. We may notify you of material changes where appropriate.
This policy was last updated on 10 July 2026.
Our website, emails or social media content may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins or applications. We do not control those third parties and are not responsible for how they process personal data. You should read the privacy notice of any third-party website, app or social media platform that you use.
3. Where we get personal data from
We may collect personal data directly from you, from your organisation, from people associated with you or your matter, from other parties and professional advisers, from courts and tribunals, from regulators and public bodies, from public registers such as HM Land Registry and Companies House, from credit reference or identity-checking providers, from our website and social media accounts, and from other public sources where relevant to the services we provide.
4. The personal data we use and why
We use personal data only where we have a lawful basis to do so. The main categories of data we process, our purposes and our usual lawful bases are set out below.
| Category of personal data | How we use it | Usual lawful basis |
| Identity, contact and matter information | Opening files, communicating with you, providing legal services, managing matters, giving advice and maintaining records. | Contract, steps before entering into a contract, legitimate interests, and legal obligation. |
| Financial and payment information | Billing, credit control, client account administration, payments, accounting and debt recovery. | Contract, legitimate interests and legal obligation. |
| Identification and due diligence information | Conflict checks, identity checks, anti-money laundering checks, sanctions checks, source of funds checks and regulatory compliance. | Legal obligation and legitimate interests. |
| Information about your affairs, family, finances or dispute | Providing legal advice, preparing documents, corresponding with others, negotiating, representing you and protecting your interests. | Contract, legitimate interests and legal obligation. |
| Special category data and criminal offence data | Where relevant to a matter, we may process information about health, family circumstances, ethnicity, religious beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, criminal allegations or convictions, or other sensitive information. | Contract, legal claims, legal obligation, explicit consent where appropriate, and other applicable UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 conditions. |
| Website, social media and marketing information | Responding to enquiries, managing subscriptions, sending updates, understanding engagement and improving our services. | Consent where required, legitimate interests and compliance with PECR where applicable. |
5. Providing personal data
It is generally your choice what personal data you provide to us. However, if you withhold information that is relevant to your matter, our advice may be incomplete or we may be unable to act for you. In some circumstances, such as identity, anti-money laundering, sanctions or other regulatory checks, we may be legally required to ask for particular information before we can act or continue acting.
If we must collect personal data because of a legal or contractual requirement, we will explain this where appropriate. If you do not provide required information, we may be unable to provide services, may need to stop work, or may be required to make a report to the relevant authority where the law requires this.
6. Legal and regulatory purposes
We may process personal data to comply with professional, regulatory and legal obligations, including obligations under the SRA Standards and Regulations, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing requirements, court rules, tax and accounting requirements, professional indemnity insurance requirements, and duties relating to complaints or claims. We may also process personal data where necessary for our legitimate interests in managing our business, maintaining records, preventing fraud, obtaining insurance, defending claims, managing risk and providing legal services effectively.
7. Marketing
We may send you information about our services, legal updates, events or other content that we think may be relevant to you. We will only send electronic marketing where we are permitted to do so under UK data protection law. You can opt out of marketing at any time by using any unsubscribe option provided or by contacting us.
If we use an email marketing platform, it may provide us with delivery, open, click, unsubscribe and preference information, and may use pixels or similar technologies to help us understand engagement with our emails.
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8. Call recordings, meeting notes, AI and automated decision-making
We may use call or meeting recording tools where appropriate and proportionate. If a call or meeting is recorded, we will make this clear where required. Recordings will usually be deleted once relevant notes have been prepared and stored on the matter file, unless there is a lawful reason to retain the recording for longer.
We do not make decisions based solely on automated processing that produce legal or similarly significant effects on you. We may use approved AI tools to support our work where appropriate, but we will take reasonable steps to use them securely, check outputs, avoid using client data to train third-party models unless properly authorised, and ensure human review where AI-assisted output is used in legal work.
9. How long we keep personal data
We keep personal data only for as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, including legal, regulatory, accounting, reporting, complaints, insurance and claims purposes. Matter files are generally retained after closure for a defined retention period so that we can respond to complaints, manage risk and defend potential claims.
Where we anonymise personal data so that you can no longer be identified, we may keep and use that information indefinitely. If the firm closes or transfers work, personal data may be transferred to an insurer, successor practice or other appropriate recipient where lawful and subject to confidentiality safeguards.
10. Sharing personal data and confidentiality
We treat information about clients and their affairs as confidential. We will share personal data only where necessary to provide services, where you have authorised us to do so, where required by law, regulation, court order or professional obligation, or where necessary to protect our rights or manage our business:
- courts, tribunals, counsel, experts, mediators, barristers, other solicitors, professional advisers and other parties involved in a matter;
- regulators, law enforcement agencies, HMRC, Companies House, HM Land Registry and other public bodies where required or appropriate;
- identity-checking, credit-checking, anti-money laundering, sanctions screening, payment, banking, accounting and billing providers;
- IT support, email hosting, cloud storage, backup, archiving, document management, e-signature, transcription, call answering, conference calling, shredding and secure disposal providers;
- marketing, website, analytics and social media service providers where relevant;
- professional indemnity insurers, brokers, auditors and external advisers; and
- potential buyers, successor practices or transferees if we restructure, merge, sell or transfer part of the business, subject to appropriate confidentiality safeguards.
11. International transfers
We will not intentionally transfer personal data outside the UK unless appropriate safeguards are in place, such as a UK adequacy decision, an applicable data privacy framework, standard contractual clauses, or another lawful transfer mechanism. Email and cloud services may involve routing, storage or support outside the UK depending on the providers used.
12. Security
We help keep your personal data confidential by limiting access to people and service providers who need it for legitimate business purposes; using confidentiality obligations with staff, consultants and service providers; using secure systems, passwords, multi-factor authentication, encryption, backups and access controls where appropriate; keeping offices, papers and devices secure; using appropriate disposal and archiving procedures; training staff on data protection, confidentiality and information security; and maintaining procedures to deal with suspected personal data breaches and notifying individuals or regulators where legally required.
Information sent over the internet is not always secure. If you need to send highly confidential information, please contact your main point of contact so that suitable arrangements can be made.
13. Your rights
Depending on the circumstances, you may have rights to request access to your personal data, correction of inaccurate data, completion of incomplete data, erasure, restriction of processing, portability of data, objection to processing, and withdrawal of consent where we rely on consent. You also have the right to object to direct marketing at any time.
You will not usually have to pay a fee to exercise your rights. We may ask for proportionate information to confirm your identity and help us respond. We will usually respond within one month, although it may take longer where a request is complex or you have made a number of requests. In that case, we will tell you and keep you updated.
14. Complaints
If you are concerned about how we process your personal data, please contact us first so that we can try to resolve your concern. You do not need to use any special wording for us to treat your concern as a data protection complaint. We will acknowledge receipt of a data protection complaint within 30 days and will take appropriate steps to respond, including making enquiries, keeping you informed and telling you the outcome.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office by visiting the ICO website or calling 0303 123 1113.
15. Contact us
If you have any questions about this privacy policy or the personal data we hold about you, please contact The Family Law Practice at Queen Square House, 18-21 Queen Square, Bristol BS1 4NH, by email at enquiries@thefamilylawpractice.co.uk or by telephone on 0117 925 9539.
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