General FAQs

You can certify a document as a true copy of the original by getting it signed and dated by a professional person, like a solicitor. When you apply for something like a bank account or mortgage, you may be asked to provide documents that are certified as true copies of the original.

Your document must be certified by a professional person or someone well-respected in your community (‘of good standing’). You could ask the following if they offer this service:

• bank or building society official
• councillor
• minister of religion
• dentist
• chartered accountant
• solicitor or notary
• teacher or lecturer

The person you ask should not be:

• related to you
• living at the same address
• in a relationship with you

To learn more about certifying documents you can visit the government website here.

To find out more information on how to make a complaint, please visit our complaints page.

We’re constantly reviewing feedback from customers to learn how we can improve and recognise staff who have provided a good service. There are a number of ways you can leave feedback, including:

• Directly with the team dealing with your claim.
• Through review platforms like Trust Pilot and Google.
• Through customer surveys which we will send to you at key stages throughout your claim.

You can contact us by phone or email. Direct contact details of the team dealing with your claim can be found on:

• Documents that we send you.
• In the contact us section of your INK account.
• In the meet the team section of our website.

A litigation friend is someone who acts on behalf of someone under the age of 18 or someone who lacks mental capacity in bringing forward their injury claim.

A litigation friend is someone who acts as the claimant because the injured party is under 18, or is someone who lacks mental capacity. In both circumstances, a litigation friend is appointed to run the claim. This is usually a family member such as a parent.

The driver can only be a litigation friend for minors involved in the accident if the other side have admitted liability.

Your partner/friend/family member can be an authorised person on your file which means they can talk on your behalf. An authorised person can ask questions and provide information but they cannot give instructions, any decisions on the claim must be made by yourself.

You can make a subject access request at any time by contacting the person dealing with your claim and asking for a copy of all of the information that we hold relating to you, this can be made using any of our accepted communication channels.

Once we receive your request, we will aim to send the information to you within one calendar month. If for any reason this is not possible, we will let you know as soon as we can and agree with you a new completion date.

You can limit your request to as much or as little information as you like. If you would just like a copy of a specific document or phone call, contact your file handler who will be able to arrange this for you.

Our preferred method of providing the information to you is electronically using Microsoft SharePoint, this is free and easy to use, is widely available and includes additional security measures such as two-way authentication to keep your personal information safe. Using this method also allows you to access the information on a range of devices, such as smart phones and tablets and helps to reduce our carbon footprint.

If you would prefer to receive the information via a different method, please specify this in your request, or as soon as you can afterwards, and we will try our best to accommodate your request.

Unfortunately, we’re only able to take instruction from the subject individual or an appropriately authorised individual, for example, a litigation friend or an individual appointed as the executor of an estate. Please be patient with us if we need to ask a few more questions or take further steps to verify your identity, it’s important to us that we keep personal data safe and to do this we need to follow our data protection protocols.

Minster Law will share your personal information with organisations where it is required to progress your claim. If we need to share special category information with another organisation, we will discuss this with you at the time to ensure that you are comfortable with us doing this. Further details on how we use your information, who we might share information with and for what purpose can be found here in our Privacy Notice.

If you have any concerns about the way in which Minster Law has handled your data, please get in touch with us as soon as possible so that we can address any issues. You can do this by contacting the person dealing with your claim, using any of our accepted communication channels, or you can email the Data Protection Officer directly using [email protected].

We’re legally required to keep documentation to meet our regulatory and statutory obligations for a period of 7 years from the end of the legal claim. If the claim has been brought on behalf of a child, the information will be retained for 10 years from the child’s 18^th birthday.

There are some circumstances where we may need to keep information for longer than this, but we’ll let you know if this applies to your information. Full details of our retention periods can be provided on request.

If you would like us to erase your personal information from our system, please contact the person dealing with your claim, using any of our accepted communication channels, or email the Data Protection Team using [email protected].

More information about your Information Rights can be found in our Privacy Notice, Cookie Policy or by visiting the Information Commissioner’s Office website https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/