Introduction
At Droit-Humain, it is important to us that you understand why and how we collect and use your personal information, if we work with you. This Privacy Notice sets out our policies on the collection and use of your data, and your rights under data protection legislation in the US.
Your Personal Information
Why do we collect personal information?
We believe in collaborative social justice, and create projects in which lawyers work with non-lawyers to meet gaps in access to justice and to reduce inequality for marginalised and disadvantaged groups.
We contribute our legal expertise through:
• Providing direct legal advice and representation
• Supporting legal surgeries and other legal outreach (such as helplines, email advice and second-tier advice)
• Delivering professional training and public legal education
• Contributing to research, advocacy and policy
In order to fulfil our aims, and support our projects, we may need to collect personal information from individuals seeking advice, or participating in our training and outreach events.
What might we request?
We may request personal information from you, such as your name and contact details, in order to provide you with legal advice, either directly or through our legal surgeries or helplines. We might also request sensitive personal information, such as your racial or ethnic origin, details of your health, or of harm you may have suffered, if this is relevant to the advice we require to give you.
If you attend a professional training, public legal education or other outreach event, we might request personal information, such as your name and contact details, and payment details, so that we can process your order and record your attendance at this event.
How will we request this information?
We will always seek your active consent (specific permission) in order to provide this information (either in writing or orally). You have the right to withhold certain information, if you wish. We may still be able to provide you with a service, even if you choose to withhold information, but this will depend on the service you are accessing at the time.
If you wish to withhold information, please tell us as soon as possible, and we will explain what this means in terms of whether we can continue to work with you.
What will we do with this information, and who will we share it with?
We will use the personal information you have given us to provide you with the legal service we have offered to you. We will explain to you specifically what purposes we will use your information for, and who it will be shared with, at the time we take your consent. These specific terms will apply in place of any, more general, terms contained in this Privacy Notice.
Generally, however, we use the information to provide you with accurate legal advice about your situation. We may also use some of this information for research or to write reports, but would only do so anonymously, so that you cannot be identified. If we are working in collaboration with another partner organisation, we may share some of this information, as needed, in order to support the collaboration.
We will not use your personal information for any purpose other than the purposes we told you about at the time you agreed to share it with us, unless we are required to do so by law. If we wish to use your personal information for any other purpose, we will contact you to explain this purpose, and ask for your explicit permission.
How will we store this information?
We use secure online cloud-based servers, and this is where we store all information relating to our legal casework, including our email communications, as well as our other training, research and policy work. The data is securely stored and access is restricted to only members of our staff, our IT services providers, and our case management system provider, who require this information to do our work.
We also store some personal information in paper files held in locked filing cabinets. We have an Information Governance and Data Protection Policy to ensure that our staff are aware of their obligation to handle data securely, including if they require to work remotely, and setting out our procedures in the event there is a data breach.
We use a range of online and communication tools in order to offer remote services, including legal advice, training and legal education, as well as to accept payments and donations. These include (but are not limited to) Microsoft 365, Zoom, Eventbrite, Paypal, JustGiving and MailChimp. The data you provide through those tools are securely stored there, and access is restricted to only members of our staff and those service providers who require this information to do our work.
How long will we store this information?
We will only store your information for as long as necessary, or as long as we are required to do so by law. This will usually be set out in the specific information we give you when we take your consent.
You have the right to withdraw your consent and ask us to delete all information we hold about you, at any time, as explained further below.
Your Rights in Relation to Your Personal Data
You have a number of important rights in relation to the data we hold about you, which you can exercise at any time:
• To ask to see a record of all the personal information we hold
• To ask that we amend any incorrect or incomplete data that we hold
• To withdraw consent and request that we permanently delete any data we hold
• To complain about how we have taken or processed your data
For more information or to exercise any of these rights, please contact our Data Protection Officer, at [email protected].
Thank you for taking the time to read our Privacy Notice. We hope you have found it helpful, welcome any comments you may have and look forward to working with you.