Privacy Notice

This notice tells you how I look after personal information held and received in relation to my former practice as a solicitor and your privacy rights in relation to that information. Please note that I have not knowingly collected (and do not knowingly collect) personal information relating to children. Please note that I stopped practising as a solicitor on 30 September 2026. In winding up the work of the practice, I continue to receive personal information, hold it and process it in other ways. I might also receive personal information after that in connection with the former business.

1Ruth Finch is the controller and responsible for your personal information (usually referred to as I, me and my in this notice). My full details are:

Ruth Finch of 170 Cambridge Street, London SW1V 4QE

Contact email address: info@ruthfinch.com

Contact telephone number: 07879 885362

2I will use personal information (and I explain in paragraph 3 below what I mean by personal information) that you have provided or provide, most commonly:

• Where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you and I are parties;
• Where it is necessary for my legitimate interests – see below – or those of a third party and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests;
• Where I need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

Legitimate interest means my interest in winding down my former business as a solicitor (including responding to questions or requests for information by former clients) and various related matters. There are examples, in paragraph 5 below, of legitimate interests. However, I make sure I consider and balance any potential impact on you (positive and negative) and your rights before I process your personal information for my legitimate interests. I do not use your personal information for activities where my interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless I have your consent or am otherwise required or permitted by law). You can:

• Obtain further information about how I assess my legitimate interests against any particular impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting me at info@ruthfinch.com; and
• Object to this processing if you wish by contacting me at info@ruthfinch.com.

3I may collect, use, store and transfer personal information about you as follows:

• Contact and Query Information – this is information that I obtain when you contact me (after visiting the website or otherwise) and may include your name and contact details and information that you provide to me by email and/or notes that I make of any conversation we have.
• Client and Former Client Information – this is information I obtained whilst providing clients with legal services or in responding to questions or requests for information after closing the practice.
• Non-client Information – this is information that I obtained or obtain from those supplying me with services, business contacts and others to whom I have not provided, and do not provide, legal services. It may include information relevant to services you have provided, or provide (or wish to provide), to me or to another person. It may include your name, contact details and other information that you provide to me by email and/or notes I make of any conversation we have.

There may be overlap between these categories.

Where relevant to services I have provided or you wished me to provide or in connection with questions or requests for information, special categories of personal information may be obtained about you (such as details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric information).

4I have used, and may use, different methods to collect information from and about you including:

• Through third parties and/or publicly available sources – I may obtain information provided by third parties (for instance, others that you ask or authorise me to speak to) and/or publicly available information from searches carried out in relation to you.
• Information that you have provided, or provide, to me – you may have provided me with Contact and Query Information or Client and Former Client Information in emails or when we speak (and I may then make notes of any conversation). You may also provide me with Contact and Query Information and Non-client Information in the same circumstances.

5I may use personal information I have received or receive as set out below.

• I may use your Contact and Query Information to review and respond to your contact and to discuss a query or situation with you before entering into a contract with you (and quite possibly without any contract being entered into between us). Such use would be necessary for my legitimate interests (to interact with people who contact me in relation to the business, to wind down my former practice and to respond to questions or requests for information by former clients).
• I may use Client and Former Client Information (including continuing to hold Client and Former Client Information) to comply with legal and regulatory requirements, in the course of winding down my practice as a solicitor and to respond to client questions or requests for information, to respond to a complaint or to respond to a claim against me or to bring a claim or proceedings and for other legitimate interests. These uses are necessary for my legitimate interests – see paragraph 2 above.
• I may use Non-client Information to comply with legal and regulatory requirements, to wind down my practice as a solicitor and to respond to client questions or requests for information, to respond to a complaint or to respond to a claim against me or to bring a claim or proceedings and for other legitimate interests. These uses are necessary for my legitimate interests – see paragraph 2 above.

I will only use your personal information for the purposes for which I collect or collected it unless I reasonably consider that I need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you would like an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact me at info@ruthfinch.com. If I need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, I will notify you and explain the legal basis that allows me to do that.

6Please note that I may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above requirements, where this is required or permitted by law.

7Except in the following circumstances, I will not disclose your personal information to anyone else without your prior specific, informed, opt-in consent:

• To receive services from you or in advance of expecting or hoping to do that (where applicable);
• Where I am required by law to do that (for instance, to HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances);
• In connection with any actual or prospective legal proceedings;
• To establish, exercise or defend my legal rights; or
• As provided for in paragraph 8.

8Third parties providing me with services from time to time (for instance, IT and related services; professional services, such as insurance, banking, accounting and legal services) may have access to personal information that I collect or hold. However, I restrict the processing of your personal information by those third-party service providers.

9You are legally entitled to request details of the personal information that I hold about you (which is often known as a subject access request). Please contact me at info@ruthfinch.com if you:

• Would like a copy of that personal information (which would allow you to check the personal information I hold about you);
• Think that information I am holding about you is not correct or is not complete; or
• Have any other questions or issues related to data protection.

10If you think that any of your personal information is not accurate or up-to-date, you can ask me to correct that or update it by sending an email to me at info@ruthfinch.com. Please note that I may need to check the accuracy of any new information that you provide.

11You may ask me to:

• Erase your personal information. This allows you to ask me to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for me to continue to process it. You also have the right to ask me to delete or remove your personal information where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see paragraph 12 below), where I may have processed your personal information unlawfully or where I am required to erase your personal information to comply with local legal and regulatory requirements. However, I may not always be able to comply with your request for erasure for specific legal reasons; if they apply, I will tell you about those when you make the request.
• Restrict processing of your personal information that I am holding. This allows you to ask me to suspend processing of your personal information in the following cases:
  • If you want me to establish the accuracy of the information;
  • Where my use of the information is unlawful but you do not want me to erase it;
  • Where you need me to hold the information even if I no longer need it because you need to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or
  • You have objected to my use of your information but I need to verify whether I have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

I will erase your personal information or restrict processing except in the following cases:

• Where that means that I can no longer respond fully to queries raised by a former client or to respond to a complaint against me or I consider that my ability to do so would be restricted if any request or complaint were to be made in the future;
• Where I am required by law to keep the relevant information (but only to the extent that I am required to do so);
• In connection with any actual or prospective legal proceedings;
• To establish, exercise or defend my legal rights (or where my ability to do so would be prejudiced); or
• To provide information and materials requested or which I anticipate may be requested by my previous, current and future insurers or brokers or any person acting for them.

12You may also:

• Object to processing of your personal information that I am holding where I am relying on a legitimate interest (or that of a third party) and where there is something about your particular situation that makes you want to object to processing on this ground because you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. In some cases, I may demonstrate that I have legitimate grounds to process your information that override your rights and freedoms.
• Request the transfer of your personal information to you or to a third party. I will provide to you, or to a third party that you have chosen, your personal information in a structured, commonly-used, machine-readable format. Please note that this right applies only to automated information which you initially provided consent for me to use or where I used information to perform a contract with you.

13I will not usually charge a fee for access to personal information or if you exercise any of your other rights (see paragraphs 9 to 12 above). However, I may charge a reasonable fee if a request you make is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, I may refuse to comply with the request you make in those circumstances.

14I will only keep your personal information as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes I collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements and so that I am able to establish, exercise or defend my legal rights and in order to provide information and materials requested by my previous, current and future insurers and to meet my other legitimate interests. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, I consider a range of factors. In the case of:

• Personal data relating to employees and contractors working at corporate former clients and then-prospective employees and contractors at those former clients;
• Personal data about former clients who are individuals;
• Personal data about customers of former clients;
• Personal data about other individuals involved with work for former clients, including professional advisers; and
• Personal data about those supplying services to me,

I keep personal data for a period of seven years from the date of submitting the final invoice for the relevant work. However, this is subject to the points set out below.

• Where the work has involved a document that is a deed, the relevant period is thirteen years from the date of submitting the final invoice for the relevant work;
• Where the work has involved issue of any instruments that mature following completion of the work, the relevant period is seven years (or, in the case of documents executed as a deed, thirteen years from final maturity of the relevant instruments);
• Where work has involved any tax-based structuring, the relevant period is thirteen years from the date of submitting the final invoice for the relevant work or, if later, from final maturity of any relevant instruments or termination of any relevant tax-based scheme; and
• Where work carried out for me relates to tax matters, the relevant period is ten years from completion of the relevant work (or, where the work has involved a document that is a deed, thirteen years from completion of the relevant work).

In the other limited cases, I aim to review personal data six months after the last contact although there are some exceptions to this.

At the end of the relevant retention period, I consider whether it is then appropriate to continue to keep the relevant personal data. I also consider then whether it would be appropriate to keep documents in a redacted or other form that removes personal data, although I expect that it will not be possible to do this in the case of emails because of the way in which they are received and stored. Also, ‘Sent’ emails are held, together, in a small number of email ‘boxes’ or folders and I am not currently able to extract or delete personal data in the form of emails or other documents held on old laptops or on back-up devices. Emails might also relate to more than one piece of work or have information that is relevant to other older or more recent work. This makes it harder to identify a single piece of work any particular email relates to and means that there are risks attached to deleting emails as a block.

15I am committed to ensuring that your personal information is secure and I have put in place appropriate technical, physical and administrative procedures to safeguard and secure that information. You may also have a legal claim through the courts. I have arrangements in place to deal with any suspected breach in respect of personal information and I will notify you and any relevant regulator of a breach where I am legally required to do that. My contact details are:

Ruth Finch of 170 Cambridge Street, London SW1V 4QE

Contact email address: info@ruthfinch.com

Contact telephone number: 07879 885362

16This website (including materials accessed from this website) may include links to third-party websites and clicking on those links may allow third-parties to collect or share data about you. I do not control any such third-party websites and I am not responsible for their privacy statements. I encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit when you leave this website.

17You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (the ICO), which is the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). I would, though, appreciate the chance to deal with any concerns you have before you approach the ICO and so I would ask that you contact me in the first instance.

18I reserve the right to make changes to any part of this notice at any time and at my discretion and the new notice will appear on this website. You should check this page from time to time to make sure you are happy with any changes.

October 2026