Terms of use

Your use of our website

We hope that you found our website informative and if you have any further questions about our services, please contact us at info@probertlegal.com .

When you use our website we expect you to comply with our rules which we have put together to protect you, us and our other users. So please make sure that you read these terms of use and comply with them.

There are also three other documents containing important information which applies to your use of our website:

Our Privacy Policy, which tells you how we process any personal data we collect from you. (Located in the Privacy Policy tab)

Our Cookie Statement  gives details of the cookies that we use on our website, how they work and what information they collect.(Located in the Cookies policy tab)

Our Blog Guidelines gives you information on what comments and other input we consider to be acceptable when commenting on our blog. (Located in the Blogs policy tab)

Who are we?

We are Probert Legal Limited an English law firm authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority in the United Kingdom, registration number 484950. Our firm is a member of the Law Society of England and Wales. You can write to us at 20A Magdalen Road, Exeter, EX2 4TD.

Changes to these terms

We may change these terms at any time and the most up to date version will be available on our website.

Changes to our website

We will update our website and its content from time to time. We do not always tell users before doing so.

Whilst we do our best to make sure that information on our website is accurate, but we cannot guarantee that the website or its content will be free from mistakes and we do not have to update any information on our website.

Your Access to our website

Access to our home page and the of the information on our website is available to all visitors, however please note that our services relate to the laws of England and Wales only and so if you are visiting our website from another country please bear this in mind.

Due to the nature of technology and the internet, we cannot promise that our website or any content on it will always be available or be uninterrupted. We are not obliged to fix or support our website.

Your access to our website is permitted on a temporary basis and we may, withdraw all or any part of our website without telling you first. We will not be liable to you if our website is unavailable at any time.

You are responsible for your own internet access and making sure that any person who accesses our website through your internet connection complies with these terms.

Who owns the content on our website?

We own (or licence) the copyright and other rights in our website and in the material which we published on it.  All such rights are reserved.

You must not use any part of the content on our website for commercial purposes without our written permission.

If you print off, copy or download any part of our website in breach of these terms of use, your right to use our website will end immediately and you must return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made if requested.

Accuracy of website content

The content on our website is provided for general information purposes only. It is not intended to be advice on which you should rely. You must obtain your own advice before taking (or not taking) any action on the basis of information you read on our website.

Although we make reasonable efforts to update the information on our website, we make no guarantee (whether expressed or implied) that the content on our website is accurate or up-to-date.

Our blog

We welcome and comments and your input on our blog articles, but if you do wish to contribute please ensure that you comply with our Blog Rules which can be accessed here

Our liability

We do not exclude any liability that English Law does not permitted us to exclude.

Where we are permitted by law, we exclude all conditions, warranties, representations or other terms which may apply to our website or any content on it, whether expressed or implied.

We will not be liable to any user for any loss or damage if you are unable to use our website or if you rely on any content displayed on our website.

We will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by a virus or other technologically harmful material that may infect your computer equipment or programs due to your use of our website or to your downloading of any content on it, or on any website linked to it.

We assume no responsibility for the content of websites linked on our website. We will not be liable for any loss or damage that may arise if you use them.

Viruses

Whilst we take reasonable steps to ensure that our website is reliable and provides a fast service, we do not guarantee that our website will free from bugs or viruses.  You are responsible for using your own virus protection software.

You must not misuse our website by knowingly introducing any material which is malicious or technologically harmful.

You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our website, the server on which our website is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our website.

You must not attack our website via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack. To do so could be a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 and we will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities to help identify you.

Linking to our website

You may link to our home page if you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it. You must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement from us.

We may remove any links to our website that we do not consider to be suitable for any reason.

Links to other websites

If we provide links to other websites these links are for information only.  We have no control over the contents of those websites or resources.

Stop using our website

Things change, we may have to go our separate ways and immediately end our agreement and your use of our website.  If at any time you do not feel that you can agree to our terms or you are not happy with our website, you must stop using it.

We may also end your use of our website if you fail to use the it in the way it was intended, or ways in which are not compliant with our terms, against the spirit or intent of our website or to breach any law or regulation. If we do end your use of our website, we will tell you and you must immediately stop using it. We will not offer you compensation for any losses at the time we end your use of the website.

What law applies?

These terms of use are governed by English law and this means that the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

Privacy policy

What is the purpose of a Privacy Policy?

Our website is designed to give you more information about our services and help you find a lawyer that can advise you on your specific requirements.

In order for us to provide you with our website and services we may need to collect personal information about you. We will always be open with you about how we use your information, so we have written this Privacy Policy to tell you:

  • What personal information we collect about you when you use the Website or our services
  • How we use your personal information
  • Who we may share your personal information with
  • Any transfer of personal information outside of the EEA
  • How long we keep your personal information
  • What we do to protect your personal information
  • What choices you have in relation to your personal information

This website is owned and operated by Probert Legal Limited. We are a company registered in England and Wales under the company number 08474055 and our registered address is 20a Magdalen Road, Exeter, EX2 4TD. We are an English law firm regulated and authorised by the Solicitors Regulation Authority in the United Kingdom under registration number 484950.

We you have any comments or queries about this website please contact admin@probertlegal.com .

We last updated this Privacy Statement on 22 May 2018.

 

What information we collect about you

We may collect the following information about you:

  • your name and contact details;
  • details of your business and personal circumstances;
  • communications with you, and advice/information provided;
  • financial and payment details;
  • information confirming your identity and (if applicable) those of your directors and shareholders;
  • personal data of your staff, customers, suppliers and other contacts; and other business information

 

Personal Information you give us

We may collect personal information about you when you:

  • Contact us to via email or telephone to enquire about our services
  • Click on the contact us link on our website
  • Contact us to arrange an initial meeting
  • Provide us with information about yourself in order for us to provide you with the services that you have requested
  • If you submit a comment to our blog

 

Personal Information we collect automatically

When you visit our website or use our services, we may collect certain information automatically such as:

  • IP addresses (the name your computer uses to identify itself to us)
  • how you found our website
  • dates and times that you visited our website
  • which pages you visited
  • what products and services interest you

If you want to know more about how we use cookies, you can find our cookie statement on the tab above.

 

Personal Information we collect from other sources

We work with a number of other organisations such as payment processing companies, credit reference agencies and cookie providers who may provide us with information about you.

We may collect personal information from the following organisations:

  • Google Analytics – they provide us with information about how you use our website
  • co.uk – they provide identity searches

 

How we use your Personal Information

In order to provide our website, process your request for information or instructions for us to act on your behalf, we may use your information in the following ways:

  • Communicate with you in relation to your legal and business queries and provide you with legal services linked to these queries;
  • Manage and maintain our records of business communications;
  • Implement client engagement and risk management procedures;
  • Ensure and monitor non-discrimination;
  • Comply with regulations to prevent and detect fraud and other illegal activity;
  • Investigate complaints, or protect or enforce our legal rights;
  • Comply with regulatory and other legal obligations, including those of the Solicitors Regulation Authority;

 

Our legal basis for using your information

The law only allows us to use your personal infrmation in certain limited circumstances. We have listed these below and what information they allow us to process.

1.) When we enter into a contract with you

  • If you ask us to act on your behalf as your legal advisors, we will need to process your personal information in order to fulfil our contractual obligations to you.
  • We may also need to use your personal information in order to administer and provide the website (such as troubleshooting, data analysis, research)
  • To tell you about changes to our website
  • To help us (or the software developers) improve the website

2.) Where you have consented to us using your personal information

When you submit information to us on our website to ask for information about our services, respond to a blog article or request a newsletter, we will process your personal information in order to comply with your request for further information.

3.) Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests

We may provide you with marketing information about our own services similar to those that you have purchased or enquired about (unless you tell us to stop), but we will only do this where the receipt of such information does not affect your rights or freedoms.

4.) Where we need to comply with a legal obligation

  • We collect personal information from you to verify your identity so that we can comply with money laundering rules.
  • Keeping records for tax purposes.

 

Our Marketing

We may provide you with information about our services, legal updates and other news that we feel may interest or assist you.

Depending on what contact information you have given to us, we may contact you by email or post. You can opt out of such marketing at any time and If you wish to do so, please email us at admin@probertlegal.com .

 

Sharing your Personal Information

Other third parties

We may share your information with certain other third parties including:

  • Our business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with them or you
  • Our website providers who need to see your information in order to keep our website up and running
  • Analytics and search engine providers who analyse information about your use of our website and help us to tailor the product and offers that we offer to you and other users

We work with the following organisations:

 

Legal Requirements and Law Enforcement

We may also disclose your personal information to third parties:

  • If we sell our business in which case the personal information that we hold will be part of the transferred assets
  • If we are required by law, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use. This includes exchanging information with other organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction

 

Third Party Privacy Policies

Our site may contain links to websites owned by other organisations.  If you follow a link to another website, these websites they will have their own privacy policy.  We suggest that you check the policies of any other websites before giving them your personal information as we cannot accept responsibility for any other website.

 

Where we store your Personal Information

Storage of Personal Information

We are committed to ensuring that our suppliers have appropriate technical, administrative and physical procedures in place to ensure that your information is protected against loss or misuse. All personal information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers or on secure servers operated by a third party service providers.

Most of the personal information that we process is held within the EEA, any personal information that is transferred outside of the EEA will only be transferred where the supplier has agreed to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses for Data Transfer outside of the EEA.

All third parties who provide services or software to us are required to sign a contract requiring them to have appropriate technical, administrative and physical procedures in place to ensure that your information is protected against loss or misuse.

 

Retention of information

We only hold your personal information for as long as necessary for the purposes for which we collected your information.

We have a retention policy which lays down timescales for the retention of information. Customer retention periods can be found below:

Type of Documents Description of Document Retention Period
Client related information Matter file 7 years from completion of matter.
Enquiries by email Emails One year after last contact
Newsletter database Name and email address For a maximum of 1 year from completion of last matter.

 

Emails

If you chose to send us information via email, we cannot guarantee the security of this information until it is delivered to us.

 

Your rights

Access to information

You have the right to access information that we hold about you. If you wish to receive a copy of the information that we hold, please contact at admin@probertlegal.com or write to us at the address above

 

Changing or deleting your information

You can ask us at any time to change, amend or delete the information that we hold about you or ask us not to contact you with any further marketing information. You can also ask us to restrict the information that we process about you.

You can request that we change, amend, delete your information or restrict our processing by emailing us at admin@probertlegal.com.

 

Right to prevent Automated decision making

You have a right to ask us to stop any automated decision making. We do not intentionally carry out such activities, but if you do have any questions or concerns we would be happy to discuss them with you and you can contact us at admin@probertlegal.com.

 

Transferring Personal Information

You have the right to request that your personal information is transferred by us to another organisation (this is called “data portability”). Please contact us at admin@probertlegal.com with the details of what you would like us to do and we will try our best to comply with your request. If may not be technically feasible, but we will work with you to try and find a solution.

 

Complaints

If you make a request to us under this Privacy Policy and you are unhappy with the response, you can ask for the request to be reviewed under our internal complaints procedure. Our internal complaints procedure allows your request to be reviewed by Edmund Probert who will do their best to try and resolve the issue.

If you have been through the internal complaints procedure and are still not happy with the result, then you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office. They can be contacted as follows:

Website: www.ico.org.uk

Telephone: 03031231113

Address:

Information Commissioners Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

 

Changes to our Privacy Policy

We review our Privacy Policy on a frequent basis to check that it accurately reflects how we deal with your information and may amend it if necessary. You should check this page regularly to see the most up to date information.

 

How to Contact us

We welcome questions, comments and requests regarding this Privacy Policy which can be sent to admin@probertlegal.com.

Blog Guidelines

These guidelines apply to any contribution you make to our blog or website, please ensure that you read them carefully.

Your comment or contribution must:

  • Be accurate (where they state facts).
  • Be genuinely held (where they state opinions).
  • Comply with applicable law in the UK and in any country from which they are posted.

Your comment or contribution must not:

  • Contain any material which is defamatory of any person.
  • Contain any material which is obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory.
  • Promote sexually explicit material.
  • Promote violence.
  • Promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age.
  • Infringe any copyright, database right or trade mark of any other person.
  • Be likely to deceive any person.
  • Be made in breach of any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence.
  • Promote any illegal activity.
  • Be threatening, abuse or invade another’s privacy, or cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety.
  • Be likely to harass, upset, embarrass, alarm or annoy any other person.
  • Be used to impersonate any person, or to misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person.
  • Give the impression that they emanate from us, if this is not the case.
  • Advocate, promote or assist any unlawful act such as (by way of example only) copyright infringement or computer misuse.

If we believe that your comment or contribution breaches these rules we may take such action as we deem appropriate.

Failure to comply with these rules constitutes a material breach of our Website terms of use (located under tab labelled website terms) upon which you are permitted to use our website, and may result in our taking all or any of the following actions:

  • Immediate, temporary or permanent withdrawal of your right to use our website.
  • Immediate, temporary or permanent removal of any posting or material uploaded by you to our website.
  • Issue of a warning to you.
  • Legal proceedings against you for reimbursement of all costs on an indemnity basis (including, but not limited to, reasonable administrative and legal costs) resulting from the breach.
  • Disclosure of such information to law enforcement authorities as we reasonably feel is necessary.

We exclude liability for actions taken in response to breaches of these rules. The responses described in this policy are not limited, and we may take any other action we reasonably deem appropriate.


Cookies Policy

Thank you for visiting our website, we hope you found it informative and easy to use.

We use cookies to help us make our website more user friendly and so that we can tailor our pages to your preferences.

By continuing to use our website you agree to our use of cookies. We have given you instructions on how to change our cookies below.

What are cookies?

A cookie is a small file of data which our website places on your computer’s hard drive. The cookie helps us look at web traffic or lets us know when you visit a particular website.

Cookies allow website to respond to you as an individual and let us tailor our website to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about you. We use cookies help us to provide you with a better website.

What cookies do we use?

Our website uses persistent and session cookies:

  • Persistent cookie allows a website to recognise users when they return to a site and keep certain information on user preferences. These cookies stay on a computer until they are deleted by the user.
  • Session cookies allow a website to carry over information from one page to another so that a user does not have to re-enter information. These cookies deleted themselves at the end of the session or at a certain time.

Cookies that we use

.www.probertlegal.com _ga 2019-07-05 – –
.www.probertlegal.com _gid 2017-07-06 – –
.www.probertlegal.com _gat 2017-07-05 – –
.vimeo.com vuid 2019-07-05 – –
.player.vimeo.com __utma 2019-07-05 Google Analytics – Google Analytics uses this cookie name.
.player.vimeo.com __utmb 2017-07-05 Google Analytics – Google Analytics uses this cookie name.
.player.vimeo.com __utmc Google Analytics – Google Analytics uses this cookie name.
.player.vimeo.com __utmz 2018-01-03 Google Analytics – Google Analytics uses this cookie name.
.player.vimeo.com __utmt_player 2017-07-05 – –

 

How to delete and control cookies

Most computers automatically accept cookies but you change your settings so that you will not receive cookies and you can also delete existing cookies from your computer.

If you do change your settings, you may find that some parts of our website will not function properly.

To find out how to delete cookies or adjust their settings please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org/.

If you do

Complaints Procedure

This document explains how to complain about work undertaken by Probert Legal Limited (“the Firm”).

The Firm is committed to a high quality legal service and client care. The Firm will investigate complaints promptly, fairly and in accordance with this procedure.

Complaints should be addressed to one of the Directors of the Firm. Clients wishing to utilise this Complaints Procedure are requested to put their complaint in writing. Complaints can be about the legal work undertaken by the Firm and/or about the Firm’s fees. Additionally, under changes introduced on 1stFebruary 2013, the scope of matters which the Legal Ombudsman can deal with has been extended to include situations where a client has been unreasonably refused a service or ‘persistently or unreasonably offered a service’ that the client does not want. Please note that a complaint is unlikely to be upheld by the Legal Ombudsman if the Firm declines to act because the nature of the matter is outside of its business expertise or a business decision has been made not to accept an instruction. There must be some evidence to show that the Firm has acted unreasonably.

Upon receipt of a complaint, the Firm will:

  • acknowledge receipt of the complaint; and
  • indicate when a substantive reply will be provided.

Complaints will be handled as follows:

  1. The complaint will be considered by a Director of the Firm. The investigating Director will requisition the Firm’s file and ascertain whether further information is needed to deal fully with the complaint.
  2. No charge will be made for work involved in investigating or rectifying a complaint.
  3. Having investigated the complaint, the investigating Director will provide a substantive response explaining the findings and outlining the reasoning.
  4. If all or part of a complaint is upheld, the investigating Director will consider how best to resolve the complaint in the client’s best interests and having regard to all the circumstances of the case. In most cases it will be appropriate for the Firm to offer remedial action to rectify the client’s complaint. In more serious cases, it may be appropriate for the investigating Director to advise the client to obtain independent legal advice.
  5. In any event, the client will be provided with an opportunity to comment further on the Firm’s handling of the complaint, in writing or in person (at the option of the client).

If the complaint relates to work undertaken by a Director of the Firm, the client will be given the option of having the complaint considered by a different Director. In circumstances where it is felt that there is no appropriate person within the Firm to investigate a complaint, the Firm will discuss with the client a means by which the complaint may be investigated by an independent person.

Clients are reminded that the Firm is regulated by The Solicitors Regulation Authority (“SRA”). The SRA is established to protect members of the public and to ensure solicitors meet high standards – and they can help you if you are concerned about our behaviour. Clients may obtain more information at www.sra.org.uk. The address of the SRA is Ipsley Court, Berrington Close, Redditch, B98 0TD.

Additionally, you may have the right to complain to the Legal Ombudsman. This can normally only be done if the Firm has not resolved your complaint within eight weeks. However, in certain exceptional circumstances you may be able to refer the complaint sooner.

If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint you can ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider your complaint by using  the website at www.legalombudsman.org.ukor by writing to PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ. They are also contactable by phone on 0300 555 0333 between 9am and 5pm. This service is independent, impartial and free.

The Legal Ombudsman can accept complaints about issues regarding your service from the Firm if:

  • You are referring your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within either six years of the problem happening, or three years from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint; and
  • You are referring your complaint within six months of the Firm’s final response

There may also be a right to object to the Firm’s invoice by applying to the court for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974. However, the Legal Ombudsman may not wish to deal with a complaint about a bill if the client has applied to the court for assessment of that bill.

Please note that there are restrictions on larger companies or organisations using the services of the Legal Ombudsman. In order to ascertain whether or not you are eligible to apply, please refer to the Scheme Rules which can be found on the Legal Ombudsman’s website or may be obtained by writing to the address given above.