Divorce Lawyer Data Breach Compensation Claims Guide
Divorce Lawyer Data Breach Compensation Claims Guide
Our guide to divorce lawyer data breach compensation claims examines what the eligibility criteria are for making a personal data breach claim. Divorce lawyers provide us with legal services during a highly stressful time. Therefore they may be privy to a lot of personal and sensitive information, which under UK law must be kept secure.
If your personal data is breached, you may experience stress after the data breach. What’s more, the distress can harm your overall mental health. Furthermore, data breaches can lead to financial losses. Particularly if the breach includes your financial data, enabling criminals to steal money or assets from you.
Legal Expert can help if a family lawyer has breached your personal data. If you are eligible to claim, we can provide you with a skilled data breach solicitor to handle your case.
Please contact us to see if you can claim:
- Call Legal Expert’s claims helpline on 0800 073 8804
- See if you can start your claim online
- Or enter your question into our Live Support widget, and our team will answer it as soon as possible.
Select A Section
- What Are Divorce Lawyer Data Breach Compensation Claims?
- How Could A Divorce Lawyer Have Breached Your Data?
- What Is Personal Information?
- Time Limits To Claim After A Data Breach
- Calculating Divorce Lawyer Data Breach Compensation Claims
- No Win No Fee Claims For A Data Breach By A Divorce Lawyer
What Are Divorce Lawyer Data Breach Compensation Claims?
Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 DPA, data controllers, companies and organisations that collect your data, must keep personal data secure at all times.
Personal data can be any kind of processed information that can be used to identify you. This can be one piece of information or a group of data used in conjunction. You are the data subject and, with the introduction of these laws, have a lot more say on how your personal data is processed.
The UK GDPR also provides you with the right to claim data breach compensation if a data controller, such as a law firm, fails to comply with data protection laws, and this causes your personal data to be breached. In a successful claim, you could be compensated for any financial losses caused by the breach or injuries to your mental health.
Human error is very often the cause of a data breach, although it can happen through cyber attacks and breaches.
So if a divorce lawyer has not taken adequate steps to protect your personal data, meaning your personal data has been put at risk, call our advisors to see what your next steps could be.
How Could A Divorce Lawyer Have Breached Your Data?
Here are some examples of what could cause a solicitors data breach:
- Criminals may carry out a cyber attack on a law firm to steal personal data.
- An employee may lose a workplace device containing personal data.
- A divorce lawyer may accidentally disclose personal data without a lawful basis to do so.
- Or a lawyer sends personal data to the wrong address, email or fax number.
Data Security Trends By The ICO
The Information Commissioner’s Office is an independent public body tasked with upholding our data protection laws. Organisations that suffer data breaches are supposed to report the breach to the ICO if the breach poses a risk to others. The Information Commissioner’s Office publishes data security incident trends, which help us understand how many data incidents occur.
- From Q1 2019/20 to Q4 2021/22, the legal sector reported 2,332 data security incidents to the ICO.
- 1,801 of the data incidents were not cyber security related.
- 531 of the data incidents were cyber security related.
What Is Personal Information?
In order to have valid divorce lawyer data breach compensation claims, your case must meet the requirements of the UK GDPR. Not all data breach victims will be able to pursue such as claim.
For a claim to be valid, these points must be true:
- The data controller, such as a law firm, failed in their obligation to take the correct steps to protect your personal data.
- This means that personal data has been breached, and
- You suffered mentally and /or financially as a consequence of the breach.
Personal data is all information that is processed either physically or digitally that can be used to identify you, the data subject. Special category data is also a type of personal data. However, this information tells something about you, such as your ethnic origin, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or Trade Union membership. Special category data needs even more protection as this kind of information is considered sensitive.
Call our claims team if you have any questions at all about the eligibility criteria for making a personal data breach claim.
Time Limits To Claim After A Data Breach
There is a time limit to start divorce lawyer data breach compensation claims. The time limit for starting a personal data breach claim is six years. However, if you are claiming against a public body, then this time limit may be reduced to just one year.
Call our claims team if you have any questions on how long you have left to be able to initiate a data breach claim.
Calculating Divorce Lawyer Data Breach Compensation Claims
Successful data breach claims will take into account two areas of damage.
The first head of claim is material damage, which is compensation for any financial losses associated with the data breach. The second is non-material damage, compensating you for the emotional distress and psychiatric injuries you may have endured.
When claiming data breach compensation for non-material damage, legal professionals may look at a document known as the Judicial College Guidelines. The compensation amounts in the table are based on 16th edition guidelines written by the Judicial College. The guidelines were updated for 2022.
| Type Of Harm | Notes On This Condition | Guidelines On Compensation Settlement |
|---|---|---|
| Severe Psychiatric Harm | A severe form of psychiatric harm which has or could impact multiple parts of their life. Their ability to work, to study and to maintain relationships will be affected. | £54,830 to £115,730 |
| Moderately Severe Psychiatric Harm | Whilst this person could be impacted in a similar way to the severe category, there could be a more positive outcome. | £19,070 to £54,830 |
| Moderate Psychiatric Harm | This person could have a more improved and optimistic outlook. | £5,860 to £19,070 |
| Less Severe Psychiatric Harm | Payouts could be impacted by how much the person’s sleep was affected as well as other factors. | £1,540 to £5,860 |
| Severe Reactive Psychiatric Disorder | A psychiatric disorder which prevents this person from being able to continue in their life as they could before the trauma. | £59,860 to £100,670 |
| Moderately Severe Reactive Psychiatric Disorder | A level of recovery will have taken place or it could do if the person gets professional care. | £23,150 to £59,860 |
| Moderate Reactive Psychiatric Disorder | A majority of the recovery will already have happened. Lasting symptoms will not disable the person. | £8,180 to £23,150 |
| Less Severe ReactivePsychiatric Disorder | Close to a complete recovery will take place in 2 years. | £3,950 to £8,180 |
Please note that if your claim succeeds, the value of your settlement may differ from what you see in the table. Please feel free to call Legal Expert, and we can provide an estimate of how much compensation you could potentially claim.
No Win No Fee Claims For A Data Breach By A Divorce Lawyer
Please call our claims helpline to speak with an advisor today. The advisor will assess your claim. When they can see that your case is valid and has good grounds for claiming compensation, they can ask if you would like one of our data breach solicitors to work on your claim.
Furthermore, all our data breach solicitors offer No Win No Fee terms.
If your case is taken on by a No Win No Fee solicitor, you may be asked to sign a Conditional Fee Agreement CFA. The CFA will state on what grounds the solicitor will receive their success fee.
With a CFA:
- There are no upfront solicitor fees.
- If the claim is a success, there is a maximum deduction of 25% from your compensation award to cover their success fee.
- If the claim fails no success fee to pay.
To begin your No Win No Fee claim, contact us today
- Call 0800 073 8804 to speak with an advisor
- Enquire about beginning your claim online
- Or use the Live Support widget to ask us a question
Other Information About Data Breach Claims
Please read our guides to learn more.
What Is A Conditional Fee Agreement And What Does It Cover?
Comparison Site Data Breach Compensation Claims Guide
How To Report A Data Breach Incident
Information for individuals and families from the National Cyber Security Centre
Special category data – a guide to sensitive data from the ICO
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – an NHS guide
Thank you for reading our guide about divorce lawyer data breach compensation claims.
