Data Protection Notice

Bethel Chambers LLC ("we", "us") is a law practice in Singapore.

This notice tells you how we collect, use, disclose and protect personal data. It follows the Personal Data Protection Act 2012 (the "PDPA").

This notice covers personal data about our clients. It also covers personal data about other persons related to our matters. Some of these persons have never contacted us.

We also have a duty of confidentiality to our clients. Legal professional privilege also applies to our work. These duties are separate from the PDPA. In some cases they are stricter. This notice does not reduce these duties.

We hold personal data about:

• Clients, possible clients, and persons who book a consultation
• Persons related to a client's matter. This includes spouses, former spouses, children, family members, executors, beneficiaries, next-of-kin, donors and donees under a Lasting Power of Attorney, persons who do not have mental capacity, and their deputies and carers
• Other parties to a matter. This includes opposing parties, their lawyers, witnesses, counterparties, and their advisers
• Professional contacts. This includes foreign lawyers, agents, experts, and court staff
• Job applicants and our own staff
• Persons who visit our website, or who contact us by email, telephone or WhatsApp

Often the person does not give us the personal data. We get personal data about other persons from our client. We also get it from opposing parties, from courts, and from public registries. This is necessary in family, probate, mental capacity and litigation matters.

Some of these sources include:

• Directly from you or your business, including through our client due diligence and onboarding process
• From opposing parties, courts, tribunals and public registries
• Through your use of our website, including enquiry forms and cookies (see Section 10)
• Through networking, for example at conferences, seminars or events we host or attend
• From publicly available sources, such as ACRA, court records, the Law Society directory, and professional or media profiles

We do not rely on consent when we hold personal data about a person who is not our client. Instead we rely on the following:

• Collection, use or disclosure that is necessary for an investigation or proceedings (First Schedule, Part 3)
• Legitimate interests, when the benefit is greater than any bad effect on the person
• Collection, use or disclosure that the law requires or permits. This includes court rules, court orders, the Legal Profession Act 1966, and rules made under that Act
• Consent, or deemed consent, when the person has received notice

We record the basis when the basis is not clear.

We use personal data to:

• Check for conflicts of interest before we accept a matter
• Do client due diligence and identity checks. The Legal Profession (Prevention of Money Laundering, Financing of Terrorism and Proliferation Financing) Rules 2015 require this
• Give legal advice and act for our clients
• Prepare and file documents with courts, tribunals and registries
• Write to other parties
• Instruct foreign lawyers, agents, experts, valuers and process servers
• Issue bills, keep accounts, and recover fees
• Obey our professional and legal duties. This includes duties to the Law Society of Singapore, to courts, and to the authorities
• Answer complaints, claims and disciplinary proceedings
• Manage the firm, and instruct our insurers and advisers
• Recruit and employ staff
• Send information about our services to persons who agreed to receive it

If we need personal data by law, or under the terms of our engagement with you, and it is not provided when requested, we may be unable to act for you or to continue acting for you.

Direct marketing

You can withdraw consent to marketing, or opt out, at any time by contacting us using the details in Section 11. Marketing emails include an unsubscribe option.

We disclose personal data only when it is necessary for the purposes in Section 4, or when the law requires or permits it.

We can disclose personal data to:

• Courts, tribunals, registries and authorities, in Singapore and in other countries
• Other parties to a matter, and their lawyers
• Foreign lawyers, agents and experts that we instruct
• Our bank, accountant, auditor, book-keeper, insurers and advisers
• Service providers that process personal data for us, under a contract. This includes our practice management system, our document system, our IT support, our storage and destruction contractors, and our booking service

We do not sell personal data. We do not disclose personal data for the marketing of other organisations.

We instruct lawyers and agents in other countries. We write to clients in other countries. Some of our service providers keep data outside Singapore. Our booking service is one example.

Before we transfer personal data out of Singapore, we take steps to protect it. We make sure the recipient must give a standard of protection comparable to the PDPA. Usually we do this by contract.

We use reasonable security arrangements. These arrangements protect personal data against unauthorised access, collection, use, disclosure, copying, modification and disposal.

Our arrangements include:

• Access controls on matter files
• Multi-factor authentication on our systems
• Encryption of data in transit and at rest
• Limits on the removal of client information from our systems
• Training for all staff

We stop keeping personal data when two conditions are true:

1. The purpose of collection is complete
2. We no longer need the personal data for legal or business purposes

We can also remove the means to connect the personal data to a person. This has the same effect.

For a law practice, legal and business purposes continue for a long time after a matter closes. The reasons are:

• Limitation periods for claims about the matter
• Our exposure to professional negligence claims and complaints
• The duty to keep client due diligence records for at least five years after the business relationship ends
• The duty to preserve books of account, ledgers, records and bank statements for client accounts for at least six years
• Court orders, undertakings, and current or expected proceedings

We apply a written retention schedule. The schedule gives a period for each type of record. You can ask us for a copy.

Access. You can ask us what personal data we hold about you. You can also ask how we used or disclosed it in the past year.

Correction. You can ask us to correct an error in your personal data.

Withdrawal of consent. You can withdraw your consent when we rely on it. Give us reasonable notice. We will tell you the results of the withdrawal. If you are a client in a current matter, we can become unable to continue to act for you.

Limits on these rights. The PDPA does not require us to give personal data in the Fifth Schedule. This applies often in a law practice. Examples are:

• Material that legal professional privilege protects
• Opinion data that we keep only to make an evaluation
• Personal data that would show confidential commercial information
• Personal data about another person, which we must not give to you

If we refuse a request for one of these reasons, we will tell you the reason.

If you are a party against our client, we will assess your request in the same way. But our duties to our client do not change.

How to make a request. Write to our Data Protection Officer. Section 11 gives the contact details. Describe the personal data clearly, so that we can find it. We can ask you to prove your identity first.

What we may need from you. We may ask you for specific information to confirm your identity before we act on your request. This protects your personal data from being disclosed to someone who has no right to it, and is not a way of delaying a legitimate request.

Our response time. We will respond as soon as we reasonably can. If we cannot respond in 30 days, we will tell you the date of our response. We will tell you this in those 30 days.

Fee. The firm has discretion to charge a fee for access requests. If we decide to charge a fee, we will inform you of the fee before we proceed with your request.

Our website uses cookies. The cookies operate the site and show us how visitors use it.

Our Data Protection Officer is responsible for our compliance with the PDPA.

Data Protection Officer
Yue-En Chong, Managing Director, Bethel Chambers LLC

Address: 39B Neil Road, Singapore 088823
Email: dpo@bethelchambers.com
Telephone: +65 6980 0230

Contact the Data Protection Officer if you have a question or a complaint about personal data. We will confirm that we received your complaint. We will tell you how we will deal with it.

If our response does not satisfy you, you can contact the Personal Data Protection Commission.

Our website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins or applications (for example, publications we contribute to, or professional or referral networks). Clicking those links may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy practices. We encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

We review this notice each year. We also review it when our practices change.

The version number and date at the top show the date of the last change. The version on this page is always the current version.