Privacy Notice / FAQs Online Anonymised Survey

Background

The Minister for Justice (the “Minister”) has asked the Legal Services Regulatory Authority (“LSRA”) to consider the economic and other barriers that continue to be faced by young barristers and solicitors following their professional qualification from the King’s Inns and the Law Society respectively. In considering these issues, the Minister has requested that the LSRA pay particular attention to equity of access and entry into the legal professions, and the objective of achieving greater diversity within the professions.

The Minister has asked the LSRA to engage appropriately with all relevant stakeholders, including with university law students, those students currently studying in the King’s Inns and the Law Society and newly qualified members of both professions. The Minister has further asked that the LSRA, having considered these issues, make recommendations for changes which could be introduced by way of effective reform of the present system.

On foot of the Minister’s request, the LSRA proposes to prepare a report for the Minister (the “Report”) in accordance with section 34(1) of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015 (the “2015 Act”). For the purpose of preparing the Report, and in accordance with section 13(2)(i) the 2015 Act, the LSRA proposes to carry out an anonymous survey of (a) trainee and qualified solicitors with up to 7 years post qualification experience, (b) student barristers and barristers with up to 7 years post qualification experience and (c) certain law undergraduates (the “Online Anonymised Survey”).

The LSRA has engaged an external research/survey company, Behaviour & Attitudes (“B&A”), in order to assist with the design of, and to conduct, the Online Anonymised Survey. The Online Anonymised Survey will be distributed by email with the support of the Registration, Levy and Fees Unit of the LSRA, the Law Society of Ireland, the King’s Inns and the Bar of Ireland (the “Representative Bodies”) and certain colleges and ITs (the “colleges”) as follows: Athlone IT; IT Carlow; DCU; Limerick IT; LYIT; Maynooth University; NUIG; Technical University Dublin; TCD; UCC; UCD; University of Limerick; Griffith College; and Dublin Business School. Waterford IT will share a link to the Online Anonymised Survey with law undergraduates via the Moodle programme pages of law courses.

Privacy Notice / Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

This Privacy Notice/FAQ has been prepared to provide respondents with certain information in relation to the processing of their data for the purposes of carrying out the Online Anonymised Survey and to answer some frequently asked questions that you may have.

Participation in the Online Anonymised Survey is entirely voluntary. The Online Anonymised Survey will be distributed online and will take approximately 15 minutes to complete. The Online Anonymised Survey will be hosted by Microsoft Azure.

Where you receive a survey link from the Representative Bodies, the survey does not need to be completed in one go. When the survey is restarted, it will resume at the last unanswered question. Only fully completed surveys will be processed.

Where you receive a survey link from the colleges, you will need to complete the survey in one go. Only fully completed surveys will be processed.

No personal details will be captured on the Online Anonymised Survey.

The Online Anonymised Survey will be augmented by a number of in-depth one-to-one qualitative interviews with a small number of respondents.  Respondents will be asked in the Online Anonymised Survey if they are open to taking part in a one-to-one in-depth interview. If a respondent answers yes, they will be re-directed to a separate qualitative recruitment screener survey where, among other matters, they will be asked to provide their email address. Those respondents who have indicated a willingness to participate in an interview will receive an acknowledgment email. Some of those who have indicated a willingness to participate will be further contacted and invited to participate in an in-depth interview; others will receive an email indicating that they will not be invited to participate in an in-depth interview.

Yes. Participation is entirely voluntary. If you do not wish to be contacted again in relation this Online Anonymised Survey please reply to the emails you receive in relation to the Online Anonymised Survey by typing “REMOVE” in the subject line and you will not be contacted again in relation to the Online Anonymised Survey. Alternatively you can contact us by using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

By design, access to the survey will be:

  • via unique URL without pre-assigned identifiers attached to individual participants for the purpose of survey distribution,

or

  • via a generic link.

No names, addresses or personal contact details will be captured in the Online Anonymised Survey.

The survey results will be reviewed in aggregate anonymous form as a statistical report and will not be linked back to respondents in any way. Any identifiable responses will be edited to ensure that the respondent remains anonymous. The anonymous results will be held separately from the unique URLs. This will avoid potential matching between participants and their survey response.

Where you indicate a willingness to participate in a one-to-one in-depth interview, you will be re-directed to a separate qualitative recruitment screener survey to provide your email address for the purpose of contacting you to enable that interview to take place. B&A will store your email address in a password protected file on a private drive with access limited to the Field Manager and Researcher which will be destroyed 8 weeks after the project concludes.

B&A will share the aggregated Online Anonymised Survey results with the LSRA however no personally identifiable data will be shared with the LSRA to ensure respondent anonymity.

As set out above, the LSRA is conducting an Online Anonymised Survey for the purpose of reporting to the Minister on the economic and other barriers that continue to be faced by young barristers and solicitors following their professional qualification from the King’s Inns and the Law Society respectively.

Due to the subject matter of the survey, some of the questions in the Online Anonymised Survey relate to potentially sensitive subjects (e.g. ethnicity, health etc.). If at any stage you feel uncomfortable answering any question or would prefer not to say, please just answer ‘prefer not to say’ to move to the next question.

Participation in the Online Anonymised Survey is entirely voluntary therefore the legal basis is consent. Your consent to participate can be withdrawn at any point. To do this, simply do not complete the full survey and/or you can choose to opt out at any time by closing your browser and not returning to the survey. Please note it will not be possible to withdraw consent once the survey has been completed as individual participants cannot be identified.

The results of the Online Anonymised Survey will be used by the LSRA for the purpose of preparing the Report for the Minister. It is envisaged that the results of the Online Anonymised Survey and Report will be shared with the following:

  • The Minister for Justice;
  • The Department of Justice.

It is also envisaged that the results of the Online Anonymised Survey and Report may be shared with the following, for the purpose of further consultation in relation to making recommendations to the Minister:

  • The Representative Bodies;
  • The External Reference Group (a group made up of representatives of the Bar of Ireland Young Bar Committee, the Bar of Ireland Equality and Diversity Committee, Dublin Solicitors’ Bar Association Young Members Committee, the Law Society In-House and Public Sector Committees, Diversity in Law, the Law Society’s Younger Member’s Committee, the In-House Legal Network, the Solicitors OUTlaw Network, the Irish Women Lawyers’ Association and the Society of Young Solicitors in Ireland as well as individual solicitors and barristers from a variety of backgrounds, an academic expert and a university access worker).

However, no personal data will be shared in circumstances where survey results will be reviewed in aggregate anonymous form as a statistical report and will not be linked back to respondents.

The Report will be laid before each House of the Oireachtas in accordance with the 2015 Act and will be publicly available on the LSRA’s website.

Security is integrated into the Azure platform with multiple levels of encryption, back up, and vulnerability assessment tests are run on B&A’s online servers in Dublin on a quarterly basis. Specific measures taken include:

  • Responses to the Online Anonymised Survey are encrypted in transit, storage and at rest.
  • Respondent email addresses, obtained via the online recruitment survey, will be stored password protected on a private drive with access limited only to the Field Manager and Researcher. Once the qualitative one to one in-depth interviews have been completed, respondent contact details will be electronically shredded eight week after project close. B&A is certified to ISO27001:2013 Information Security Management System.

It is not anticipated that data will be transferred outside of the EEA. The Online Anonymised Survey will be hosted by Microsoft Azure in Dublin.

Respondent email addresses, where they are provided via the recruitment screener survey, will be stored for 8 weeks after the project concludes and after this time will be electronically destroyed. Anonymised online survey response data will be held for a period of 12 months after the project concludes, after which it will be electronically destroyed.

Recordings of the qualitative in-depth interview will be stored for 6 months after the project close and after this time will be electronically destroyed. Transcripts of recordings are anonymised and will be stored for 12 months after the project close.

You have the following data protection rights:

  • If you wish to access, correct, update or request deletion of your personal information, you can do so at any time by contacting us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.
  • In addition, you can object to processing of your personal information, ask us to restrict processing of your personal information or request portability of your personal information. Again, you can exercise these rights by contacting us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.
  • You have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information. The Data Protection Commission can be contacted at [email protected].

B&A do not collect cookies for the conduct of their online surveys. The cookies function is disabled.

The data controller for the purpose of the Online Anonymised Survey is the LSRA. If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, please contact our data protection officer using the following details: [email protected]. You can contact the LSRA at PO Box 12906, Dublin 7.

The Law Society of Ireland is a joint controller for the purpose of the Online Anonymised Survey insofar as their registrants are concerned.

You can contact B&A’s data protection officer by emailing the DPO Officer at [email protected]. A copy of B&A’s Privacy Policy is available here https://banda.ie/privacy-policy/