Cookies
What are cookies?
Cookies are small unique text files stored on your computer or device while you’re visiting a website. Cookies help make websites work. They also provide us with information about how users interact with our site.
Some cookies remain on your device only for as long as you keep your browser active (session cookies) and others remain for a longer period (persistent). Cookies may be placed by us when you visit our website, or by third parties.
Why we use cookies
We use cookies on our site to:
- provide necessary functionality
- understand how users navigate around our site
- try to improve your experience on our site (including remembering settings you have chosen previously)
- show you more relevant content
We also feature elements from other sites on our site to add value and convenience to your experience, including images, social media plug-ins or advertising. A number of these services may set cookies on your browser. See the tables below for more information.
Some of the cookies used on our site collect, use and store personal data. This might include your IP address or other unique identifiers to help remember you. This lets us recognise you each time you visit our site, including if you log in using a different device. It lets us provide you with tailored content that matches your interests.
We also use these cookies to:
- analyse the way people use our site and the services it offers
- enable us, and third parties, to show you more relevant advertising
Setting your cookie preferences
Some of the cookies we set are needed to make our site work (necessary cookies). If you’re unhappy with these you may be able to disable them using your browser settings but our site may not work correctly.
We need your consent to use non-essential cookies. When you first visit our site, you’ll see a cookie banner giving you the option to accept our recommended cookie settings or offering you more control. A consent cookie will be placed on your browser to remember your choice. You’ll be prompted to confirm this choice again after 120 days; if we add new cookies; or the next time you visit our site if you reset your browser settings. You can choose to reset your preferences manually at any time, if your browser or device permits this, or by clicking Change your cookie settings above.
You can see more detail below about the cookies we may set on your browser. A hyperlink to this information about cookies appears prominently on most pages of our website.
We’ll update this Cookie Policy from time to time, so please check back regularly.
Cookies set on our site
Below is a list of cookies set on the Law Society website, along with a brief description of what each is used for.
These cookies are needed to make our site work. You can only disable them by changing your browser preferences. If you disable them, our site may not work correctly.
| Cookie name | Purpose | Duration | Set by |
| ASP.NET_SessionId | Assigns a unique ID to your browsing session to preserve your session state across different page requests while you’re on our site. | Session
|
.lawsociety.org.uk |
| ARRAffinity | The Application Request Routing Affinity cookie is used by our infrastructure platform to route requests to the correct server for load balancing. | Session | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| ARRAffinitySameSite | This cookie performs the same job as the previous cookie, but with the extra SameSite security setting applied. | Session |
.lawsociety.org.uk |
| CookieControl | Records and saves your cookie consent preferences to avoid asking you for consent again each time you log in. | 120 days | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| sxa_site |
Our site uses Sitecore SXA content architecture. This cookie matches your request with the correct site within our publishing systems. | Session |
.lawsociety.org.uk |
| fasSL |
This cookie stores an identifier for a firm when using the Find a Solicitor short-list functionality. | Session |
solicitors.lawsociety.org.uk |
| faST |
This cookie stores whether the ‘quick search’ or ‘pro’ version of search has been used when using the Find a Solicitor site. |
Session |
solicitors.lawsociety.org.uk |
| _initial_referrer |
Tells Infogram which site is embedding the content. |
Session | Infogram |
| x-ms-cpim-trans |
Used by our single sign-on service during registration, this cookie tracks the transactions between lawsociety.org.uk and Azure Active Directory. |
Session | tlsb2cprd.b2clogin.com |
| x-ms-cpim-csrf |
Used by our single sign-on service to protect against cross-site request forgery attacks. |
Session | tlsb2cprd.b2clogin.com |
| x-ms-cpim-cache|* |
Used by our single sign-on service to maintain the request state. |
Session | tlsb2cprd.b2clogin.com |
| x-ms-cpim-sso:tlsb2cprd.onmicrosoft.com_0 |
Used for maintaining the single sign-on session. |
Session | tlsb2cprd.b2clogin.com |
| __cfduid |
Used by Law Society Connect, this cookie helps Cloudflare detect malicious visitors to the website and minimises blocking legitimate users. It may be placed on users’ devices to distinguish individual anonymised clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis. It is necessary for supporting Cloudflare's security features. |
Session | tlsb2cprd.b2clogin.com |
| destination_url |
Law Society Connect uses this cookie during login to redirect to the requested page. |
Session | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| sso_destination_url |
Law Society Connect uses this cookie during single sign-on to redirect to the requested page. |
Session | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| authentication_data |
Law Society Connect uses this cookie during full-screen login to return data to the JavaScript application. |
Deleted on next page view | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| fsl |
Law Society Connect uses this cookie to store the full screen login client setting. |
Session | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| theme_key |
Law Society Connect uses this cookie for client theme personalisation. Only used when “Make this my default theme on all my devices” is unselected. |
Session | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| cn |
Law Society Connect uses this cookie to clear client notifications. |
Session | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| _bypass_cache |
Law Society Connect uses this cookie with ‘fsl’ for full screen login. |
Session | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| _t |
Law Society Connect uses this cookie as a user authentication token. |
60 days | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| _forum_session |
Law Society Connect uses this as a session cookie. |
Session | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| dosp |
Law Society Connect uses this cookie to inform the client denial of service protection is in place. |
Deleted on next page view | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| PHPSESSID | Used by Law Society Learning to maintain your session consistently as you move from page to page across the site. | Session | learn.lawsociey.org.uk |
| TotaraSession | Used by Law Society Learning to maintain your session consistently as you move between different parts of the learning management system (Wordpress and Totara). | Session | learn.lawsociey.org.uk |
| wordpress_logged_in_* | Used by Law Society Learning to store a hashed version of your username to identify you to the learning management system. | Session | learn.lawsociey.org.uk |
| wordpress_test_cookie | Used by Law Society Learning to check that the learning management system can set necessary cookies. | Session | learn.lawsociey.org.uk |
| wp_woocommerce_session_*_ | Used by Law Society Learning to maintain your session across different pages as you browse and purchase courses on the learning management system. | 2 days | learn.lawsociey.org.uk |
| woocommerce_cart_hash | Used by Law Society Learning to ensure the security of the cart functionality when purchasing courses on the learning management system. | Session | learn.lawsociey.org.uk |
| woocommerce_items_in_cart | Used by Law Society Learning to keep track of items in your cart when purchasing courses on the learning management system. | Session | learn.lawsociey.org.uk |
| NID | Used by Law Society Learning to provide security to the Worldpay payment gateway when checking out as part of the purchase process (Google ReCaptcha). | 6 months | .google.com |
| machine | Used by Law Society Learning to provide security to the Worldpay payment gateway when checking out as part of the purchase process. This cookie contains a unique random identifier to ensure that payment transactions are not intercepted. | Session | .worldpay.com |
| JSESSIONID | Used by Law Society Learning to maintain your session across different pages when going through the Worldpay check-out process. | Session | .worldpay.com |
These cookies help improve our site by helping us and our content partners understand better how visitors find, interact with and navigate around our site.
We use Google Analytics to collect and analyse data about how our website is used. These cookies collect information and report site usage statistics but do not personally identify individual visitors to our site to Google. To learn more about how Google Analytics collects and uses data when you use our site, and how you can control the information sent to Google Analytics, read Google’s page about safeguarding your data.
We use other third-party tools on our site to improve its functionality, including Hotjar (an analytics and feedback tool), Infogram (for infographics and maps), Spreaker (a podcast tool) and Carto (for interactive maps). These services set cookies on our site to make these functions work and to analyse how users interact with these tools. More information on these cookies is set out below. You can disable these cookies but if you do, then some or all of these services may not work correctly on our site.
Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behaviour and their devices. This includes:
- a device’s IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form)
- device screen size
- device type (unique device identifiers)
- browser information
- geographic location (country only)
- the preferred language used to display our website
Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymised user profile. It is restricted from selling any of the data collected on our behalf. For further details see the ‘about Hotjar’ section of Hotjar’s support site. To disable Hotjar cookies on your browser, visit Hotjar's opt out page.
Infogram, Carto and Spreaker set Google Analytics cookies to collect aggregate data on how their services are used on our site. For more information on how they process this data see their privacy policies:
| Cookie name | Purpose | Duration | Set by |
| SC_ANALYTICS_GLOBAL_COOKIE |
Assigns a unique ID to help us recognise you when you return to our site or log in using a different device, to show you more personalised content. |
10 years | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| _clck | Persists the Microsoft Clarity User ID and preferences, unique to that site, on the browser. This ensures that behaviour in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID. | 1 year | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| _clsk | Connects multiple page views by a user into a single Microsoft Clarity session recording. | 1 day | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| _qca | This cookie contains a unique ID for Quantcast Measure so that we can gather anonymised demographic data about our visitors. | 392 days | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| _ga | Google Analytics cookie. This assigns a unique ID to help us, and third party services on our site, recognise returning users to our website. This is used to generate statistical data on how visitors use our website. | 2 years | lawsociety.org.uk, Carto, Spreaker, Infogram |
| _gat _gat_UA-20934186_10 |
Google Analytics cookies. These control the number of requests that are made to Google Analytics when a page is loaded or interacted with. | 1 minute | Spreaker, Infogram, Carto |
| _gid | Google Analytics cookie. This assigns a unique ID to help recognise and distinguish between returning users on our site. | 24 hours | lawsociety.org.uk, Carto, Spreaker, Infogram |
| _hjid | This cookie is set when you first land on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the Hotjar User ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures the behaviour in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID. | 1 year | Hotjar |
| _hjIncludedInSample | Processes a value of 1 or 0 to identify if a user is part of a Hotjar experiment. | Session | Hotjar |
| _hjClosedSurveyInvites _hjDonePolls _hjDoneTestersWidgets _hjMinimizedPolls _hjShownFeedbackMessage |
These cookies may be set once you interact with a relevant option on our site (such as a survey invitation popup, a feedback poll or a user tester form). They are used to ensure that the same feature does not reappear if it has already been shown or completed, or if you minimise an option, that it stays minimised as you navigate through our site. | 1 year | Hotjar |
| _hjRecordingLastActivity | This should be found in sessionStorage (as opposed to cookies). This gets updated when a visitor recording starts and when data is sent through the WebSocket (the visitor performs an action that Hotjar records). | Session | Hotjar |
| hjTLDTest | When the Hotjar script executes we try to determine the most generic cookie path we should use, instead of the page hostname. This is done so that cookies can be shared across subdomains (where applicable). To determine this, we try to store the _hjTLDTest cookie for different URL substring alternatives until it fails. After this check, the cookie is removed. | Session | Hotjar |
| _hjCachedUserAttributes | This cookie stores user attributes which are sent through the Hotjar Identify API, whenever the user is not in the sample. These attributes will only be saved if the user interacts with a Hotjar Feedback tool. | Session | Hotjar |
| _hjLocalStorageTest | This cookie is used to check if the Hotjar tracking script can use local storage. If it can, a value of 1 is set in this cookie. The data stored in_hjLocalStorageTest has no expiration time, but it is deleted immediately after creating it so the expected storage time is under 100ms. | Session | Hotjar |
| 4 | User attributes sent through the Hotjar Identify API are cached for the duration of the session in order to know when an attribute has changed and needs to be updated. |
Session/when you close the browser | Hotjar |
| mc | This cookie contains a unique ID for Quantcast Measure, allowing Quantcast to associate an anonymised ID across multiple publisher sites in the Quantcast network. This allows us to better understand the demographics and wider browsing behaviour of our visitors. | 13 months | .quantserve.com |
| CLID | Identifies the first-time Microsoft Clarity saw this user on any site using Clarity. | 1 year |
www.clarity.ms |
Content personalisation cookies help us recognise you and understand what content you’ve viewed on our site previously, so we can show you relevant content in the future. They do this by assigning a unique user ID so we can recognise you when you navigate around our site.
We personalise content for users of our site by setting the SC_Analytics_Global_Cookie. While this cookie is non-essential for viewing most of the content on our site, if you want to register for, log into or use the My LS function on our website, you’ll need to accept this cookie. If you do not accept the cookie, My LS will not work properly.
| Cookie name | Purpose | Duration | Set by |
| SC_ANALYTICS_ GLOBAL_COOKIE |
Assigns a unique ID to help us recognise you when you return to our site or log in using a different device, to show you more personalised content. | 10 years | .lawsociety.org.uk |
We use cookies, including third party cookies, to serve advertising on pages of our website. These cookies help us and our partners to deliver advertising which is relevant to your interests on our site, across the web and on social media, and to measure how well this advertising performs. We use Google Ad Manager cookies to do this. These cookies do not directly store personal information – instead they uniquely identify the device and browser you’re using.
Get more information about the way Google uses personal data for advertising.
| Cookie name |
Purpose | Duration | Set by |
| _gads | Assigns a unique identifier to each of our website users for the Google Ads system, to recognise returning users. | 2 years | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| _gcl_* | Google Ads conversion tracker, whose main purpose is to help advertisers determine how many times people who click on their ads end up taking an action on their site (for example making a purchase). These cookies allow Google and the advertiser to determine that you clicked on the ad and later visited the advertiser’s site. Conversion cookies are not used by Google for personalised ad targeting and persist for a limited time. | 90 days | .lawsociety.org.uk |
| ANONCHK | A Microsoft Clarity cookie, this indicates whether MUID is transferred to ANID, a cookie used for advertising. Clarity doesn't use ANID and so this is always set to 0. |
390 days | .clarity.ms |
| MR | A Microsoft Clarity cookie, this indicates whether to refresh MUID. | 6 months | .clarity.ms |
| MUID | A Microsoft Clarity cookie, this identifies unique web browsers visiting Microsoft sites. These cookies are used for advertising, site analytics, and other operational purposes. | 390 days | .clarity.ms |
| SM | A Microsoft Clarity cookie, this is used in synchronising the MUID across Microsoft domains. | Session |
.clarity.ms |
| IDE | Sets a unique ID used for ad conversion tracking and re-marketing. This is used to register and report a website user’s actions after viewing or clicking on an ad, to measure its effectiveness, to avoid showing you advertising you have already seen and so we, and our partners, can show you more relevant ads based on content you have viewed on the site. | 13 months | Doubleclick.net |
| _fbp | To store and track visits across websites. | 9 months | |
| fr | To store and track visits across websites. | 90 days | |
| bcookie | Browser identifier cookie to uniquely identify devices accessing LinkedIn to detect abuse on the platform. | 2 years | |
| lang | Used to remember a user's language setting. | Session | |
| bscookie | Used for saving the state of 2FA of a logged in user. | 2 years | |
| lissc | Used to ensure there is the correct SameSite attribute for all cookies in that browser. | 1 year | |
| lidc | To optimise data centre selection. | 1 day | |
| UserMatchHistory | Used for LinkedIn Ads ID syncing. | 30 days |