General

Mercatis Law Europe LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales with partnership number OC431143, t/a Mercatis Law. The Firm’s registered office is Mercatis Law Europe LLP, Suite 2, Royal Naval Club & Royal Albert Yacht Club, 17 Pembroke Road, Portsmouth, PO1 2NT, UK; and

Mercatis Law Asia LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in Singapore with unique entity number T18LL1490F and with registered office at 6A Shenton Way, #04-01 OUE Downtown Gallery, Singapore, 068815;

(together, the “Firm”).

Terms of Website Use

These terms and conditions (the ‘Terms’) set out below will govern your use of this website which can be found at http://www.mercatis.law (the ‘Website’).

References on the Website to ‘Mercatis Law’, ‘Mercatis Law Europe‘, ‘Mercatis Law Asia‘, ‘the Firm’, ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’ mean the Firm / the owners of the Firm. The term ‘Partner’ in relation to the Firm refers to a Director or Partner of the Firm or to an employee or consultant with equivalent standing and qualifications. A list of our Directors’ and Partners’ names may be inspected at the relevant registered office.

The legal information on the Website is to provide users with the Terms upon which they use the Website and to make accessible certain other legal and regulatory information which it is best practice to place in the public domain where it can be easily accessed by clients and other interested third parties. The legal information on the Website should, for clients of the Firm, be read in association with our client care letter and terms of business (the ‘Client Care Documents’) and other documents referred to in the Client Care Documents (such as the conditional fee agreement). The Client Care Documents shall take precedence over any legal notice on the Website in the event that they differ from one another.

The Website is owned and operated by the Firm. For the purposes of the Terms, the Firm includes any and all of the Firm’s subsidiary undertakings, co-branded businesses and joint ventures which may exist from time to time.

Use of the Website is governed by the following Terms which were last reviewed in August 2020. The Firm reserves the right, at its discretion, to make changes to any part of the Website or the Terms. Should the Terms be amended, the Firm will not notify you and it is your responsibility to check the Terms every time you use the Website. Specific terms may also apply to the provision of any of the services that we provide via the Website. You should check any specific terms that apply to the services which you use.

We reserve the right to alter, suspend or discontinue any part of the Website or the services provided through it, including your access to it. Whilst we make every effort to ensure that the information contained within the Website is correct, visitors should be aware that the information may have become out of date and we give no warranty or make any representation regarding the fitness for purpose, continued availability, quality, accuracy or completeness of the content of the Website. Accordingly, the materials on the Website do not give specific legal advice and should not be relied on as doing so. In particular, you should be aware that laws and regulations might be different outside England. Your use of the Website does not create a contractual or solicitor-client relationship between you and the Firm. We recommend you contact the advisers who are named in the Website for advice about particular matters. The Firm excludes all liability for any kind of loss or damage that may result to you or a third party in connection with the use, inability to use, or the results of use of the Website.

Website visitors are permitted to read the contents and to download and store on a temporary basis any of the contents of the Website provided this is for their own personal or non-commercial use. Apart from content specifically made available for download, such as court forms and publications, you may not permanently copy, store or redistribute the contents of the Website in any way. Where we make content available for downloading this is only for your personal use, or for circulation within your business and is not for commercial re-use. You may not set up links from your own websites to the Website without our prior written consent.

Any links to other websites from the Website are provided for convenience only and the Firm accepts no responsibility or liability in connection with your use or reliance on the content of any linked website. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement by the Firm of any linked website or its provider.

For further information on the use of materials from the Website, or if you experience any problems with the Website, please contact us by sending an email to paul.johnson@mercatis.law

Copyright and Intellectual Property

Copyright and other intellectual property rights in the content of the Website, including any of the Firm’s marks, logos and brands, belongs to the Firm or its licensors (who have expressly licensed content to the Firm). All rights, save as expressly granted, are reserved. If you are in doubt whether an item is copyright or a trade mark of the Firm, please contact us for clarification.

Electronic Commerce (EC) Directive Regulations 2002 and Provision of Services Regulations 2009

The following information is provided by us to ensure our compliance with the above regulations:

1. The Firm is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA ID Number: 802005) and as such is bound by the SRA Handbook 2011 and associated professional rules, which can be viewed at sra.org.uk.
2. The Firm is registered for VAT with the registration number GB 257 2382 93.
3. The Firm maintains qualifying Professional Indemnity Insurance, details of which can be provided on request.
4. The Firm is committed to providing an excellent service and operates an internal complaints procedure that can be made available on request. We are also committed to cooperating fully with the Legal Ombudsman, contact details of which can be found at legalombudsman.org.uk

Severability

If the Terms or any part of them should be determined to be illegal, invalid or otherwise unenforceable under the laws of any state or country in which the Terms are intended to be effective, then to the extent that they are so illegal, invalid or unenforceable, they shall in that state or country be treated as severed and deleted from the Terms and the remaining provisions contained within the Terms shall survive and remain in full force and effect and continue to be binding and enforceable in that state or country.

Events Beyond our Control

The Firm will not be responsible for any breach of the Terms caused by circumstances beyond its reasonable control.

Governing Law

This legal notice and all issues regarding the Website are governed by English law. Access is granted on condition that you accept all the above and agree to the jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales to settle matters in relation to the Website.

Reports of Misuse

We take feedback very seriously and are constantly looking for ways to improve the Website. If you have any comments or concerns regarding the information or the Website content generally, or would like to report any misuse of the Website, please contact us by sending an email paul.johnson@mercatis.law

Email Policy

The views and opinions expressed in any email from the Firm are those of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Firm.

All information contained in any message or attachments is intended solely for the addressee. It is confidential and may also be legally privileged. If you have received this message in error, please send it back to us, and immediately and permanently delete it. The unauthorised use, disclosure, copying or alteration of this message and/or any attachment is strictly prohibited.

It is your responsibility to scan for viruses or otherwise check any email and any attachments. All email messages and any attachments are scanned for viruses prior to leaving our network. However, the Firm does not guarantee the security of any message or any attachments and will not be responsible for any damages arising as a result of any virus being passed on or arising from any alteration of any message by a third party.

We may monitor emails sent to and from our network.

If you require verification of the content of any email message and/or attachment, or if you have any questions about this policy or our usage of email, please contact us at our offices or by sending an email to paul.johnson@mercatis.law

© Copyright 2020 Mercatis Law. All rights reserved.

This notice is intended to explain how we use your information and what your rights are in relation to how we use your information.

WHO WE ARE

Mercatis Law Europe LLP (the ‘Firm’) is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales with partnership number OC431143. The Firm’s registered office is Mercatis Law Europe LLP, Suite 2, Royal Naval Club & Royal Albert Yacht Club, 17 Pembroke Road, Portsmouth, PO1 2NT. The Firm is the ‘Controller’ for data protection purposes. This means that the Firm collects and holds your information and decides what it will be used for. The Firm is subject to the requirements of data protection legislation applicable to the UK and must use your personal data in accordance with the law. The Firm is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), with registration number ZA278837.

HOW YOU CAN CONTACT US

We have appointed Paul Johnson as our Data Protection Manager and you can contact him to discuss this privacy notice any data protection related issues or queries.

Telephone:	020 3865 2517
Email:	paul.johnson@mercatis.law
Post:	PJ Legal Europe LLP, Suite 2, Royal Naval Club & Royal Albert Yacht Club, 17 Pembroke Road, Portsmouth, PO1 2NT

IF YOU ARE A VISITOR TO OUR WEBSITE

We do not collect any personal data when you visit our website

IF YOU ARE A CLIENT

We keep your information confidential and will not disclose it to third parties unless disclosure is:

1. Authorised by you;
2. Necessary as part of the legal services we are providing to you (to perform our contract with you);
3. Required by law or our professional rules;
4. Necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests or those of a third party (in other words, we have a compelling justification for the disclosure); or
5. Necessary to protect your vital interests or those of another person i.e. to protect a life.

We use your information primarily to provide legal services to you. We also use your information for: accounting and billing purposes; to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, and to manage our business effectively. With your authority, we may also send you information about our services or events that we think may be of interest to you. We will seek your written consent to do this.

We may, on your authority, work with other professionals to progress your matter, and may need to disclose relevant information about you to them. Examples include: barristers/ counsel, experts, costs specialists, other lawyers etc. We will seek your written consent to do this.

Where there is another party(ies) to your matter (i.e. opponent in litigation, buyer/seller to a property transaction etc.), we will liaise with their legal representative (or the third party directly if they are not represented) in order to progress your matter. This may involve us disclosing relevant information about you, to this party(ies) in order for us to provide our legal services to you (to perform our contract with you). Please contact us if you have any queries about this.

Sometimes we outsource part of our work to other people or companies to improve efficiency and your client experience. We will always carry out due diligence and obtain confidentiality agreements from such outsourced providers. We will seek your written consent as to whether you are happy for us to outsource relevant aspects of your file as appropriate to our providers. If you would like more information about our outsourcing arrangements, please contact us.

We may in some cases consult credit reference agencies in order to assess your creditworthiness. If you are an individual, we will seek your written consent before we do this. Please note that if you withhold your consent, this may limit the payment options that will be available to you. Details of the credit agency we use are available on request.

The Firm may become subject to periodic checks by Law Society approved Consultants and/or Assessors and compliance specialists whose support we engage. This could mean that your file is selected for checking, in which case we would need your consent for the checking to occur. All such checks are conducted by individuals who have provided the Firm with a Confidentiality Agreement. We will seek written consent as to whether you are happy for your file to be selected for file auditing and vetting. If you refuse to give us consent to checks, your refusal will not affect the way your case is handled in any way.

We may correspond with you by email if you provide us with an email address, unless you advise us in writing that you do not wish us to do so. You acknowledge that email may not be secure.  Email will be treated as written correspondence and we are entitled to assume that the purported sender of an email is the actual sender and that any express or implied approval or authority referred to in an email has been validly given. Please be aware that the Firm may monitor and read any email correspondence travelling between you and any mail recipient at the Firm as part of its monitoring activities to ensure compliance with its Information Management & Security Policy.

We will aim to communicate with you by such method as you request. More often than not this will be in writing but may be by telephone if it is appropriate.
Where you provide us with fax or email addresses for sending material to, you are responsible for ensuring that your arrangements are sufficiently secure and confidential to protect your interests. You must tell us if this method of communication is not secure so that can use an alternative method.

The Internet is not secure and there are risks if you send sensitive information in this manner or you ask us to do so. Please be aware that the data we send by email is not routinely encrypted.

We will take reasonable steps to protect the integrity of our computer systems by screening for viruses on email sent or received. We expect you to do the same for your computer systems.

It is very unlikely that we will change our bank account details during the course of your matter. In any event, we will never contact you by email to tell you that our details have changed. If you receive any communications purporting to be from this firm, that you deem suspicious or have any concerns about (however slight), please contact our office by telephone straightaway.

During the progress of your matter, we may hold your information both electronically and in paper format. We will use all reasonable measures to ensure that your information remains confidential and will advise you immediately if we believe that any of your information has been released. We have procedures in place with our staff members to ensure that your information is only seen by members of staff who have a legitimate reason for accessing your file, such as fee earners and support staff working on your file and senior members of the firm for the purposes of supervision, checking your file for quality purposes or to deal with any complaints.

Once your matter has concluded, we will hold your files in our archive storage (paper files) or on our file management systems (electronic files) for at least 6 years from the date that the matter is closed in line with our retention periods. After that period has elapsed, we will destroy your file securely and/or delete it from our electronic records. Once that has happened, your file will no longer be available.

We transfer your personal data outside of European Economic Area (EEA) where your personal data is backed up to cloud storage provided by companies based in the US. However, our service providers are certified to the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework which means that they agree to process personal data to the standards expected by Europe. Our service providers are bound by the same data protection laws as us, meaning that they have the same obligations to keep your information safe.

IF YOU ARE A THIRD PARTY OR THE OTHER SIDE TO OUR CLIENTS’ MATTERS

We will receive information (including personal data) about third parties that are involved with our clients’ matters. For example, opponents to our clients in litigations matters, the buyer/seller in our clients’ property matters, executors and beneficiaries to a Will etc. We will primarily receive information about you from your legal representative, unless you are unrepresented and provide this to us directly.We receive this information so that we can provide legal services to our client and therefore our legal basis for processing your information is to perform the contract that we have with our client for legal services. Your legal representative (if you have one) should have informed you of their purposes for processing personal data and explained that they would need to share your information with us to progress your matter.We keep your information confidential and will not disclose it to third parties unless disclosure is:

1. Authorised by you;
2. Necessary for the performance of a contract;
3. Required by law or our professional rules;
4. Necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests or those of a third party (in other words, we have a compelling justification for the disclosure); or
5. Necessary to protect your vital interests or those of another person i.e. to protect a life.

During the progress of our clients’ matters, we may hold your information both electronically and in paper format. We will use all reasonable measures to ensure that your information remains confidential and will advise you immediately if we believe that any of your information has been released. We have procedures in place with our staff members to ensure that your information is only seen by members of staff who have a legitimate reason for accessing your file, such as fee earners and support staff working on your file and senior members of the firm for the purposes of supervision, checking your file for quality purposes or to deal with any complaints.
Once our clients’ matters have concluded, we will hold your information on our clients’ files in our archive storage  (paper files) or on our file management systems (electronic files) for at least 6 years from the date that the matter is closed in line with our retention periods. After that period has elapsed, we will destroy our clients’ files securely and/or delete it from our electronic records. Once that has happened, your information will no longer be available.

We do not send or store any of your information outside of the European Economic Area. We transfer your personal data outside of European Economic Area (EEA) where your personal data is backed up to cloud storage provided by companies based in the US such as Microsoft. However, our service providers are certified to the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework which means that they agree to process personal data to the standards expected by Europe. Our service providers are bound by the same data protection laws as us, meaning that they have the same obligations to keep your information safe.

IF YOU HAVE APPLIED TO WORK FOR US

All of the information you provide when you apply to work for us, will only be used for the purpose of progressing your application, or to fulfil legal or regulatory requirements if necessary.We will not share any of the information you provide during the recruitment process with any third parties unless authorised by you or required by law. We transfer your personal data outside of European Economic Area (EEA) where your personal data is backed up to cloud storage provided by companies based in the US such as Microsoft. However, our service providers are certified to the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework which means that they agree to process personal data to the standards expected by Europe. Our service providers are bound by the same data protection laws as us, meaning that they have the same obligations to keep your information safe.We will use the contact details you provide to us to contact you to progress your application. We will use the other information you provide to assess your suitability for the role you have applied for. You don’t have to provide what we ask for, but it might affect your application if you don’t.

Our legal basis for processing your personal data is two-fold:

• For our legitimate interests in ensuring that we have adequate recruitment procedures and undertake the right checks to ensure that we recruit the right candidate; and
• To meet our legal obligations, particularly those relating to equality and diversity.

If you are successful, the information you provide during the application process will be retained by us as part of your employee file for the duration of your employment plus 6 years following the end of your employment.

If you are unsuccessful at any stage of the process, the information you have provided until that point will be retained for 6 months from the closure of the vacancy.

Information generated throughout the assessment process, for example interview notes, is retained by us for 6 months following the closure of the campaign.

Equal opportunities information is retained for 6 months following the closure of the campaign whether you are successful or not.

IF YOU ARE A CURRENT EMPLOYEE OR A FORMER EMPLOYEE

We obtain your personal information for the following purposes:

• Contact details;
• Bank details;
• Pension details;
• Tax details;
• Pay details;
• Annual leave details;
• Sick leave details;
• Performance details;
• Qualifications;
• Employment history;
• Ethnicity details;
• Disability details;
• Training records;

We keep your information confidential and will not disclose it to third parties unless disclosure is:

1. Authorised by you;
2. Necessary for the performance of a contract;
3. Required by law or our professional rules;
4. Necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests or those of a third party (in other words, we have a compelling justification for the disclosure); or
5. Necessary to protect your vital interests or those of another person i.e. to protect a life.

Our legal basis for processing your personal data is two-fold:

• For our legitimate interests in ensuring that we have adequate personnel records; and
• To meet our legal obligations as employers.

We will share your information with the following third parties:

• HMRC;
• The firm’s pension provider;
• The firm’s payroll provider;
• The firm’s IT support provider;
• Solicitors Regulation Authority (as applicable)

Employee records are held in a cloud based electronic system.

Your employee file will be kept for the duration of your employment plus 6 years following the end of your employment.

YOUR RIGHTS

If you are an individual, you have the following rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):

1. Right to access personal data – you can request details from us of the personal data that we hold about you;
2. Right to object to processing – you can tell us that you want us to stop processing your personal data;
3. Right to rectification – you can ask us to correct personal data that we hold because you believe it is inaccurate;
4. Right to erasure – you can ask us to delete the personal data that we hold about you;
5. Right to restrict processing – you can tell us that you only want us to use the personal data for a specific reason.

Please note that these rights are not absolute rights (they are not rights that will be automatically granted), as we have to consider whether there are any reasons why we cannot meet your request. For example, we will not be able to delete data that we are legally obliged to keep. We will let you know if we not able to meet your request and the reason why (where it is appropriate to disclose this information to you).

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you are not happy with the way that we handle your personal data. You can contact the ICO at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF or by calling the ICO’s helpline on 0303 123 1113.

Please note that where you provide consent to us using your personal data, you are entitled to withdraw that consent at any time. You can do this by informing your file handler or contacting our designated Data Protection Manager.

LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES

This Privacy Notice does not cover any links to other websites that have been included on our website. Please read the Privacy Notices on the other websites that you visit.

CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY

This privacy notice is reviewed regularly and was last updated in August 2020.

This is the personal data protection statement of Mercatis Law Asia LLP which we may update from time to time. Provision of personal data is not required to browse our website.

COLLECTION, USE AND DISCLOSURE OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA

The personal data we collect from you will be used in the following ways:

Provision of services to you: Where you have engaged us to provide services to you, your personal data may be collected, used and disclosed by Mercatis Law Asia LLP and its affiliates, service providers and agents to enable Mercatis Law Asia LLP and its affiliates, service providers and agents to properly provide services to or for you, and to enable Mercatis Law Asia LLP and its affiliates, services providers and agents to comply with applicable laws, regulations, industry codes and guidelines, and for internal audit.

Mercatis LawAsia LLP publications: Where you have requested to be on our mailing list to receive Mercatis Law Asia LLP’s complimentary electronic publications (including bulletins, updates, alerts, reviews, invitations and announcements) via our electronic subscription form or otherwise, we will use your personal data to send such publications to you.

Cookies: We use cookies for web analytics. Disabling cookies in your browser will not affect your user experience.

Contact us: If you have any enquiries, comments or suggestions about our collection or use of your personal data or this statement, we would be pleased to receive them if you contact our Data Protection Officer by email at justin.boyd@mercatis.law

If you would like to receive information about the personal data we have in relation to you, to update such personal data or to withdraw any consent you have provided to us previously, please contact our Data Protection Officer by email at  justin.boyd@mercatis.law

The complaints procedure for Mercatis Law Europe Limited is available here.