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Privacy notice for job applicants
Last updated January 2026
What is this Privacy Notice about?
Charles Russell Speechlys LLP and its subsidiary and associated entities (the Firm, us or we) are data controllers or joint data controllers for the purposes of data protection law and are responsible for processing personal information about you. We are committed to complying with data protection law and protecting the privacy and security of your personal information.
This Privacy Notice describes how and why we collect and use personal information about you during the application and recruitment process, and you should read this carefully to understand how we handle your personal information.
If you have any questions about this policy, please contact our Data Privacy Officer.
This Privacy Notice, which applies to all applicants for all roles with Charles Russell Speechlys LLP and each of its subsidiary and associated entities, does not form part of any contract we may have with you and may be amended by us from time to time. This Privacy Notice does not in any way change the status of your relationship with us and is not an indication of employment or any contractual obligations between us.
What information do we hold about you?
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about a living individual from which that person can be identified.
We may collect, store, and use some or all of the following categories of personal information about you, some of which may have been provided to us in relation to your application, at various stages of the process:
- Personal and contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses.
- Date of birth.
- Gender.
- Marital status and dependants.
- Next of kin and emergency contact information.
- Current or previous salary, annual leave, pension and benefits information and notice period in current employment.
- Location of current employment / workplace.
- Copies of right to work documentation and other identification documentation and/or utility bills.
- References (including current and previous employment and/or academic or personal references).
- Notes and video recordings of interviews and/or assessment centres.
- If you are offered employment, information contained in credit and/or criminal record and/or sanctions check forms and results.
- Education and training records.
- Employment records (including job titles, work history, working hours, training records and professional memberships).
- Compensation history.
- Information from your CV, cover letter or application.
- Photographs, if you have included those in your CV or other application documents.
- Any information relating to regulatory (e.g. Solicitors Regulation Authority) or other professional memberships.
- CCTV records and other monitoring (e.g. visitor records) are held by us and some of our building managers who may provide these to us for purposes related to our business (for example, security and insurance).
- Information about your personal devices through your use of our Wi-Fi.
- Other publicly available information about you, for example, social media checks and internet searches, where required for background screening or regulatory purposes.
- Any other personal data provided by you as part of the application / recruitment process, including assessment information.
- Banking and payment details including card, electronic wallet or different types of debit details.
- Any other information you provide to us during the recruitment process.
We may also collect, store and use the following special categories of more sensitive personal information (Special Categories) to the extent that you voluntarily share information with us or we are legally required to process it as a part of the recruitment process:
- Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and political opinions.
- Trade union membership.
- Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.
- Information about criminal convictions and offences.
How is this information collected?
We collect personal information about you through the application and recruitment process, both directly from you and from recruitment agencies, and background check provider (including credit reference agencies, Disclosure and Barring Service, personal and professional referees and from publicly available sources, including the internet and social media.
If we offer you employment, we will also collect additional information from third parties which may include former employers, credit reference and criminal record agencies, education and training providers, other staff or contractors and your employment referees.
How do we use this information?
Our lawful basis for using your personal information.
We need the categories of information in the list above (at paragraph 2) to allow us to:
- Comply with legal or regulatory obligations.
- Pursue legitimate interests of our own (for example, in furtherance of our own business) or third parties’ legitimate interests.
It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to appoint you to work since it would be beneficial to our business to appoint someone to that role. Having received your CV and/or application, we will then process that information to decide whether you meet the basic requirements to be shortlisted for the role. If you do, we will decide whether your application is strong enough to invite you for an interview. If we decide to call you for an interview, we will use the information you provide to us at the interview to decide whether to offer you the role. If we decide to offer you the role, we will then take up references and/or carry out a criminal record and/or carry out any other check before confirming your appointment.
We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:
- Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests).
- Where it is needed in the public interest or for any official purposes.
How we may use your personal information
The types of situations in which we may process your personal information are listed below:
- Making a decision about your recruitment.
- Determining the terms on which you work for us.
- Carrying out background, reference and other checks.
- Checking you are legally entitled to work in the UK or any other jurisdiction in which you may be offered work.
- Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the role.
- Communicate with you about the recruitment process.
- Reimbursing expenses to you, if offered by us as part of the recruitment process.
- Keeping records related to our recruitment process.
- Contacting you in relation to future job opportunities that may arise.
Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.
Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent in compliance with the above where this is required or permitted by law.
If you fail to provide personal information
If you fail to provide information when requested, which is necessary for us to consider your application (such as evidence of qualifications or work history), we will not be able to process your application successfully. For example, if we require a credit check or references for a role and you fail to provide us with relevant details, we will not be able to take your application further.
Special Categories of personal information
Special Categories (see above) of personal information require higher levels of protection. We may process such information in the following circumstances:
- In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent.
- Where we need to carry out our legal obligations and in line with our employment and associated policies.
- Where it is needed in the public interest, such as for equal opportunities monitoring and in line with our employment or data protection policies.
- Where it is needed to assess your working capacity on health grounds, subject to appropriate confidentiality safeguards.
Less commonly, we may process this type of information where it is needed in relation to legal claims or where it is needed to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent (such as a medical emergency), or where you have already made the information public.
How we may use it
We may use Special Categories of personal information in the following ways:
- We may use information about your physical or mental health (which may include information about disabilities, pregnancy or post-natal status) , to ensure that we are able to comply with our legal obligations to make reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process in respect of any risk assessment, comfort or disability needs.
- We will use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual life or sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.
Consent
We do not need your consent to process your personal data where we have another lawful basis to do so, as set out above. However, if we do need to seek your consent to processing, we will provide you with reasonable details of the information that we would like to use and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent.
You should be aware that it is not a condition of your contract with us that you agree to any request for consent from us and, where you have given consent, this can be withdrawn at any time by contacting the Data Privacy Officer. Please note that this may mean we cannot progress with your application.
Information about criminal convictions
Where appropriate, we will collect information about criminal convictions as part of the recruitment process but only at the point that you have been conditionally offered a role. We will use information about criminal convictions and offences in connection with any assessment we make in connection with your suitability for employment in the role offered to you including as to your fitness and propriety or any other requirement of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) or any other legal or regulatory obligation. Please note that the SRA requirements apply to all staff, not just legal roles.
Our pre-employment and updated background checks may be conducted with the assistance of our third-party background check provider, who is a data processor in respect of this processing and required to use your information in accordance with our instructions.
Automated decision making
Automated decision making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention. We may use automated decision-making in the following circumstances:
- Where we have notified you of the decision and given you 21 days to request a reconsideration of the decision.
- Where it is necessary to perform the contract with you and appropriate measures are in place to safeguard your rights.
- In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent and where appropriate measures are in place to safeguard your rights.
You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making, unless we have a lawful basis for doing so and we have notified you.
Data Sharing
We share your personal data with third parties, (including third-party service providers and our other entities) where required by law or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so, including in the administration of our recruitment process.
We require third parties to take appropriate security measures and only process your personal data for specified purposes.
We may also share your personal information with the SRA and other regulators for regulatory purposes.
We use third party software to manage our recruitment processes, and your personal information will be uploaded by you, your recruitment consultant or us onto that software during the application process.
The services provided by third parties include: search consultancy, IT, word processing, professional advice, recruitment, and identification, credit, criminal records, sanctions and background checks.
Transferring information outside the UK and the EU
We may transfer the personal information we collect about you to countries outside the UK and the EU/EEA in order to perform our contract with you.
As set out above, your data may be processed by our other entities, including those outside of the UK and the EU/EEA. Some of our third-party service providers are also based outside the UK and the EU/EEA. To ensure that your personal information receives an adequate level of protection, we have put in place contractual obligations to ensure that your personal information is treated by those third parties in a way that is consistent with and which respects UK, EU and local data protection and employment laws
If you require further information about these protective measures, you can request it from the Data Privacy Officer.
Data Security
We have put in place technical and organisational security measures to ensure a level of security appropriate to the risks of processing your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed.
We have a Data Protection and Monitoring Policy with which our staff are required to comply, and we have provided training to our staff regarding their obligations in ensuring the security of your personal data. Staff are aware that misuse of personal data may be grounds for disciplinary action against them.
We also have procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator where we are legally required to do so.
Data Retention
We retain your personal information for only as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
If you are not successful in being offered employment, ordinarily, for the exercise or defence of possible legal claims, your data will be held securely for twelve months from the date your application was determined and after that date it will be erased. If we consider that we may wish to contact you in relation to a future position, we may ask you if we may retain your details for a further limited period and contact you during that time about any suitable roles that may become available. It is your choice whether you consent to this request or not.
If you are successful in being offered employment, your personal data will be processed under our Employee Privacy Notice.
Rights of access, correction, erasure, and restriction
Your duty to inform us of changes.
It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during the recruitment process.
Your rights in connection with personal information
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
- Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to be told about how that information has been collected and used.
- Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
- Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. Please note this is subject to our retention requirements explained above.
- Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on our own legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and there is something about your situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground.
- Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
- Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.
- Withdraw consent for the processing of your personal information. In the limited circumstances where you have provided your consent to the collection and processing of special category personal data you may wish to withdraw your consent. If you notify us of such withdrawal we will no longer process that personal information unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so.
These rights granted to you under applicable laws are not absolute, they apply only in certain circumstances and may be subject to limitations or exemptions under law.
You will not usually have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.
How you exercise these rights
Any request in relation to any of the above rights should be directed to the Data Privacy Officer.
What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
Further questions or complaints
If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the Data Privacy Officer.
You have the right to make a complaint at any time. You can address your complaint to our Data Privacy Officer or to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.
Changes to this Candidate Privacy Notice
We reserve the right to update this Candidate Privacy Notice at any time, and any substantial updates will be communicated to you at that time. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.