What’s been happening at Hayes Connor Solicitors?

1. The UK's leading data breach law firm, at Hayes Connor Solicitors we celebrated many significant wins and developments in 2019. Here are just some of the things we have been up to over the past 12 months.

We were highly commended in two awards

In 2019, Hayes Connor Solicitors was highly commended at the Eclipse Proclaim Modern Law Awards in the boutique law firm of the year category. The prestigious awards, celebrate and identify sparkling talent and success in the modern legal services arena. They also showcase and set the benchmark for best practice in the ever diverse, challenging and exciting legal landscape. As well as the boutique law firm of the year commendation, Hayes Connor was also shortlisted in the Marketing and Communication Strategy of the Year category (and we were shortlisted in two categories again this year!).

Also in 2019, Hayes Connor was highly commended for its innovative marketing at The Symphony Legal Annual Conference. The Symphony event is designed to spark inspiration, ideas, and innovation for anyone involved in running a law firm. Hayes Connor was recognised for our client-focused approach to marketing. In particular, we were praised for our use of technology to simplify the enquiries process and increase the speed of response, alongside our commitment to raising awareness of consumer data protection rights.

Hayes Connor was appointed was as Data Protection Supplier to Communication Workers Union

In 2019, Hayes Connor Solicitors was appointed to deliver data protection claims support to nearly 200,000 members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU). CWU is the largest union for the communications industry in the UK and includes members from the postal, telecoms, mobile, administration and financial sectors. Members of the organisation include the Telefonica 02, UK Mail and BT, EE, Virgin Media and Santander.

Commenting on the appointment, our managing director Kingsley Hayes said:

"We are extremely proud to be working with an association as large as the Communication Workers Union which has a long history of campaigning to raise the voice and protecting the rights of its members. There is a strong synergy in our values and commitment to protecting individuals, so we are delighted to be working with its legal team to represent members when their data protection rights have been violated".

We hit back at journalists calling data protection lawyers as "ambulance chasers".

As data breaches continued to rise, we started to see media reports asserting that data breach claims were the new PPI.

In response, we argued that, every day, privacy breaches are causing misery and upset to people across the UK. And, with organisations failing to take their data protection responsibilities seriously, we asserted that something had to be done to make companies accountable for such loss and anguish - and to ensure that failing organisations implemented more secure processes. Perhaps it was time to turn the spotlight on those businesses not doing enough to meet their legal obligations under the GDPR?

Hayes Connor saw a huge increase in claims

In 2019, our firm saw a surge in both mass data breaches and individual cases following data protection violations in the public and private sectors. In total, we opened over 4,500 data breach cases, and we manged in excess of £5 million worth of claims.

Eight new people joined the Hayes Connor team

Over the last 12 months, we have experienced significant growth. Employee numbers increased from four to 12 over the previous year, and we are actively recruiting. Today, our experience and expertise ensure that our growing team of data breach solicitors is unmatched in the UK. Furthermore, as our group actions moved forward, we also appointed another barrister to our expert data breach team.

To find out more about developments at our firm, and the wider data breach sector, read our 2019 Data Breach Report.