Osborne Clarke has become the first to obtain LOCS:23 certification – the new legal services-specific data protection standard approved by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
Jane Whitcombe, senior legal counsel at Osborne Clarke, said the certification process had allowed the practice to “take a step back and look at everything holistically”.
The ICO said the aim of the Legal Services Operational Privacy Certification Scheme or LOCS:23, launched in February, was to provide law firms, chambers and others with “certainty” when processing personal data and reassure clients that lawyers had “strong information security” in place.
Ms Whitcombe went on to say that the main challenge in obtaining LOCS:23 was the time it took and the “information-gathering” involved, “I had go into aspects of the more technical and cyber-based aspects of GDPR compliance that were not really my comfort zone, and get help from my more technical colleagues.”
She said the process involved members of the firm’s internal IT, information security, business continuity and risk management teams, and had helped identify opportunities to improve internal processes and procedures.
For more information on how your law firm, or legal services provider business, can achieve this valuable certification, please get in touch with our team.
