Legitimate interest assessment (LIA) template
- Art. 6 GDPR
- About 30 minutes
- Italiano · Deutsch · Français · English
In brief
The worksheet by which you check, in three steps, whether you can base processing on your own interest without overriding people's rights. It documents the reasoning in case anyone asks for it.
- Who it is for
- Internal use: the internal contact and management. It is kept with the record of processing activities.
- To decide first
- Which processing you are assessing; then you answer the questions of the three steps: the interest, the necessity, the balancing against people's interests.
- Afterwards
- Keep it with the record, state the chosen basis in the privacy notice and repeat the assessment if the processing changes.
What it contains
- 1Purpose
- 2Description of the processing
- 3First step: the interest
- 4Second step: necessity
- 5Third step: the balancing of interests
- 6Resulting obligations
- 7Decision and review
An excerpt
1. Purpose
This worksheet serves to verify, before the processing begins, whether the interest of __________ justifies the processing of personal data, and to document the reasoning. The test has three steps: the interest, necessity, and the balancing against the interests of the individuals.
GDPR. All processing needs a legal basis. The legitimate interest of the controller or of a third party is one of the possible bases (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR): it applies only if the interests pursued are not overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject, in particular where the data subject is a child. The controller must be able to demonstrate this (Art. 5(2) GDPR). This basis does not replace consent where a rule requires it and, for special categories of data, one of the conditions of Art. 9 GDPR is needed in addition.
The full text is generated on the platform, with your organisation's details already in place.
Related templates
A template is general information, not advice on your case: it must be adapted to your organisation. For a question on your case there is Advisorn's consulting. By Advisorn, updated on 20 October 2026.