Direct Access Barrister

Privacy & Cookies

Privacy & cookies notice

This notice explains what personal information I collect — through this website and in the course of acting for clients — why I hold it, who sees it, how long I keep it, and the rights you have over it. Barraj Legal is a trading style of Rhys Allan Johns, a barrister authorised and regulated by the Bar Standards Board. I am the data controller for the information described here, registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office under number ZA821494. It is written to be read plainly; if anything is unclear, ask.

• —Visitors to this website, and anyone who sends an enquiry or uses the enquiry or AI-check forms.
• —Clients, and prospective clients who send me papers before instructing me.
• —People connected with a client’s matter — the other side and their representatives, witnesses, family members, beneficiaries, trustees, attorneys, experts. I will usually have received your information from my client, from a court or tribunal, or from a public register rather than from you, and this notice is how I tell you what I do with it.
• —Referrers, instructing solicitors and other professional contacts.

Where I am instructed through my clerks, they hold their own records of that instruction and are a separate data controller for them; their privacy notice applies to what they hold, and this notice applies to what I hold.

Inside the practice. Every document and every piece of advice is settled by me. I am assisted by a small team, employed by me or engaged under contract, who work under my supervision and under written confidentiality obligations equivalent to my own professional duty. They may index your papers, prepare research for me to test, prepare first drafts to my instruction, and deal with correspondence, quotations and invoices. I remain responsible to you for their handling of your information.

External providers. I use a short list of providers to run the practice. Each acts as a processor under a written contract requiring it to keep your information confidential on terms equivalent to my own duty, to process it only on my instructions and in accordance with data protection law, and to allow the Bar Standards Board access to its records where required. The categories are:

• —Email, document storage and office software — Microsoft 365, including Outlook, OneDrive and SharePoint.
• —Artificial intelligence tools for research, drafting and administration — see section 05.
• —Transcription and dictation services.
• —Electronic signature services, used for engagement documents.
• —Identity verification and anti-money-laundering checking services, where the Regulations require a check.
• —Accounting, invoicing and payment services.
• —Website hosting, enquiry-form handling, email delivery and analytics.
• —Professional advisers and support — my accountant, my professional indemnity insurer (the Bar Mutual Indemnity Fund) and IT support.

Outside the practice. I disclose information only where: you consent; it is necessary to carry out your instructions — to courts and tribunals, the other side and their representatives, mediators, experts, other counsel and, for clerked work, my clerks; the information is already public; or I am under a legal or professional obligation or entitlement to disclose it — for example to the Bar Standards Board, the Legal Ombudsman, my insurer, HMRC, or under the money-laundering legislation. Your information is never sold and is never passed to third parties for marketing.

A cookie is a small file a website stores on your device. This site uses only two kinds. Strictly necessary storage remembers your cookie choice so you are not asked on every page — this is essential and always on. Analytics cookies (Google Analytics) are set only if you accept in the banner; decline, and none are placed. There are no advertising or third-party tracking cookies on this site.

Like most modern practices, I use secure, professional AI tools to assist with legal research, drafting and administration. They assist my work; they never replace it. Every document and every piece of advice is settled by me, and I remain professionally responsible for all of it. Where I use these tools on a client matter, material from your file may be processed by them, subject to the safeguards below.

The tools currently used are Thomson Reuters CoCounsel (legal research and document review), Microsoft 365 Copilot (drafting and administration within my Microsoft environment), Claude Team (Anthropic) (drafting and analysis) and ChatGPT Enterprise (OpenAI) (drafting and analysis). Each provider acts as a processor on my instructions. Where personal data is transferred outside the UK, the transfer is covered by the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or equivalent safeguards.

• —No training on your data. Under the business terms in place, your information is not used to train the providers’ models.
• —No automated decisions. No decision affecting you is taken by an AI tool. There is no automated decision-making or profiling producing legal effects.
• —Minimised and confidential. Only what is necessary for the task is provided, and legal professional privilege and my duty of confidentiality apply to material handled this way exactly as they do to the rest of your file.
• —Verified. Nothing an AI tool produces reaches you, a court or another party until I have checked it against the primary sources.

Client files and emails are held in my Microsoft 365 environment.

I take reasonable measures to protect the information I hold: access restricted to those working on your matter, multi-factor authentication, and encryption of devices and storage. If something goes wrong I contain it at once, assess it within 24 hours, report it to the Information Commissioner within 72 hours where the law requires, and tell you without delay where the risk to you is high. No internet transmission is ever perfectly secure, so please do not send anything highly sensitive through the website if you would rather not — ask me for a secure route instead.

You have the right to ask for a copy of the information I hold about you; to have it corrected; to have it deleted; to object to or restrict its use; to receive information you gave me in a portable form; to withdraw any consent you have given; and not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing. To exercise any of these, email info@barraj.co.uk. I will respond within one month — extendable by two further months where a request is complex, in which case I will tell you — and at no charge unless a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive.

These rights are not unlimited. Legal professional privilege, my duty of confidentiality to clients, and my regulatory and insurance obligations mean that some material cannot be disclosed or deleted on request; in particular, if you are not my client, a request from you will not reveal my client’s privileged information. Where I refuse or limit a request I will tell you why.

If you are unhappy with how I have handled your information you may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk · 0303 123 1113), though I would be glad to try to put things right first.

This notice is reviewed at least once a year, and whenever the practice, its team or its providers change. The current version always appears here.

Barraj Legal is a trading style of Rhys Allan Johns, a barrister authorised & regulated by the Bar Standards Board.