You recently carried yet another warning for law firms to register as data controllers (see [2005] Gazette, 18 August, 4).

For smaller firms - usually those that do not employ management software but use computers for word processing, accounts and payroll - there is an uncertainty in the legislation, on which the Law Society should give guidance.


Processing personal data on a computer requires notification. The Information Commissioner publishes a number of templates for guidance and one of these is the administration of legal services. It would seem to be cut and dried.


However, there is a statutory exemption for core business purposes - primarily accounts and records. This is discussed in the Law Society publication, Data Protection Handbook. The illustrations given fall directly within the categories of work covered above.


From correspondence with the Information Commissioner's office, I know that it does not agree. It takes the view that any data processing on a computer by a solicitor requires registration.


Will the Law Society consider advising both the third of the profession that has not yet notified the Information Commissioner that they are data controllers and the other two thirds that may have registered unnecessarily (and to whom £35 and the related labour is still a factor) the extent to which the core business exemption applies to solicitors?


CMF Langdon, Young Coles & Langdon, Hastings