4 minute read
News. A round up of what's been happening at the Society, members' and city news
NEWS
TALBOTS NAMED BEST LAW FIRM TO WORK FOR IN THE BLACK COUNTRY being able to give something back, with over £50,000 raised for Birmingham Children’s Hospital in the last twelve months. The company has also been using its legal expertise to support frontline NHS workers during Covid-19, providing a free will writing service for doctors, nurses, hospital staff and ambulance technicians.Talbots Law made a string of senior promotions at the beginning of the year to help it oversee expansion across all areas of the business and a £2m increase in fees on the previous twelve months.
Talbots Law has been named as the best legal firm to work for in the Black Country after moving up 13 places in the Sunday Times and Best Companies national list.
The independent law firm, which employs over 240 people across six offices in Codsall, Dudley, Halesowen, Kidderminster, Stourbridge and Wolverhampton, was in 52nd place on the prestigious rankings and was also awarded a 2-star rating for the way it engages with its staff.
Its index score improved by 4% from 2019 and was driven by high marks in personal growth, wellbeing and in Whilst Covid-19 has caused significant issues for the legal sector, the firm’s new business development team has a pipeline of new opportunities to work through, with the public still very keen to move home and an inevitable increase in dispute and family disagreements arising from this unfortunate situation.
SPOKEN WORD WINNER!
The BAME sub committee is pleased to announce the winner of it’s inaugural spoken word competition; Sana Haris and the runner up Beyounce Porter. Both students are undergraduate students at the University of Law.
The competition was open to BLS students and asked students to submit a video explaining if they could make a law what would it be? The winner, Sana will undertake work experience at leading law firm Gowling WLG.
Sana stated “The competition was an opportunity for me to raise awareness on many disproportionate challenges and stereotypes we all may face in various forms, often as a result of a simple assumption. These challenges motivated me to enter the competition to convey the impact these assumptions have and to encourage everyone to contemplate the consequences of assuming matters, which can lead to harmful results.
I am incredibly pleased to have been voted the winner of the competition by the panel of judges; it has given me confidence to continue raising awareness of these issues.
I look forward to working with Gowling WLG with great excitement and anticipation. I conveyed many messages in my spoken word piece and Gowling are a firm that represent many, if not all of these key stances through their commitment and support for their clients as well as their employees.”
DATA CONSIDERATIONS FOR RE-OPENING PUBS
The Government has issued guidance to pubs, bars, restaurants and takeaways following the announcement that they can re-open from 4 July.
One key change in the guidance, alongside social distancing measures is that hospitality businesses are asked to keep a temporary record of customers and visitors for 21 days in order to support the NHS Test and Trace service. It is not yet clear whether this is a mandatory requirement or advised best practice.
As the guidance rightly notes, many businesses that take bookings already have systems for recording their customers and visitors. The Government has said that it will share details of its proposed system ‘shortly’ and that the system will be designed in line with data protection legislation. Whatever system businesses decide to use, as a minimum, hospitality businesses will have to update their privacy notices to advise customers that their personal data will be shared with the Government through the NHS Test and Trace.
Any such app will likely have features to store customers’ data and could be a practical tool to allow the business to meet the guidance in both keeping a record and also social distancing. Collecting information through an app introduces a number of privacy issues, and the app provider will usually seek to pass any privacy risk to the hospitality business. Check the terms of use carefully before agreeing to share any customers’ data via an app. Finally, collecting contact details from customers may be a really useful marketing tool, but you need to make sure you comply with GDPR. In particular, if you are going to use the contact details for electronic marketing, you need to ensure that you are legally permitted to do so.
