Terms of Business
Fees
Our charges will be calculated by reference to the time spent dealing with the matter. This includes advising, attending on you and others, attendances at Court, considering your documents, dealing with papers, preparation of detailed costs calculations, correspondence, e-mails, telephone calls, attendance and file notes, travelling and waiting time. Unless otherwise stated charges are exclusive of V.A.T. Charges are in units of 6 minutes, and routine communications are charged as one unit.
Hourly rates for members of staff are:
Directors - £225 per hour
Solicitors & Legal Executives - £225 per hour
Paralegal Staff - £150 per hour
Accounts should be settled within 28 days. Interest will be charged on bills not paid within that time at 8% per annum.
Cancellation (in circumstances where contract is concluded away from the office only)
You have the right to cancel your instructions to us within 14 days of the date on which we agreed to act for you by giving us notice in writing. We will acknowledge your notice within 14 days. We will then return to you any funds you have paid to us on account without charge. If, however, we have performed work within the 14 day cancellation period because you have expressly instructed us to do so, we will be entitled to charge you for that work.
Terminating your instructions to us
We hope that this will not be the case but if, for any reason, you no longer wish us to act for you, you are entitled to end your instructions to us in writing at any time. We will be entitled to charge you for the work we have already performed for you at the applicable hourly rate for the time spent on your matters and for any expenses we have incurred on your behalf.
We may decide to stop acting for you only with good reason. We must give you reasonable notice that we will stop acting for you.
Lien
The common law entitles us to retain any money, papers or other property belonging to you which properly come into our possession pending payment of our costs whether, or not, the property is acquired in connection with the matter for which the costs were incurred. This is known as a “general lien”. We are not entitled to sell property held under a lien but we are entitled to hold property, other than money, even if the value of it greatly exceeds the amount due to us in respect of costs.
Regulation
We are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) whose professional rules we adhere to. Those rules can be found on the SRA website at https://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/standards-regulations/ (SRA Standards and Regulations, in force from 25th November 2019).
Professional Indemnity Insurance
Details of our professional indemnity insurers are on our office notice board and will be provided to you on request.
Complaints
We aim to offer all our clients an efficient and effective service. However, should there be any aspect of our service, or our bill, with which you are unhappy, and which we cannot resolve between ourselves, please contact Teresa Ryall who is the firm’s complaints manager. If your complaint is about Teresa Ryall or a matter in which she acted on your behalf, please contact Mike Harris. We have an internal complaints procedure, a copy of which is available on this website (see Complaint Procedure page) and also available upon request.
If you are not happy with our handling of your complaint you can ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider the complaint. Time limits apply (see below). Contact details for the Legal Ombudsman are:- PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ. E-mail enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk Telephone 0300 555 0333.
Time Limits:- You must complain to us (or, if that is not appropriate, to the Legal Ombudsman) within one year of the matter which gives rise to the complaint. Alternatively, where you have complained to us but are not satisfied, you must complain to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our last contact with you.
Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974 also contains provisions relating to your right to object to our bill and apply for its assessment by the Court. The Legal Ombudsman will not be able to deal with a complaint about our bill if you have already applied to the Court for assessment.
Money Laundering
Legislation and regulations provide that we are to follow certain procedures with a view to preventing money laundering. Penalties for non-compliance are severe. In order to verify your identity, we need to see the originals of 1) a document bearing your address and photograph, such as a passport and 2) a document such as a utility bill or bank statement sent to you within the last three months confirming your address. The address on the two forms of identification should match. Alternatively, we can arrange for a link to be sent to you via email from our provider, Credas, for you to complete the verification checks remotely.
Identity checks will be carried out for each client for which we will charge you an administration fee of between £5 and £10 plus VAT each.
If you are instructing us on behalf of someone else, we need to see and check identification for that person as well. Please would you kindly arrange to let us see the evidence described above as soon as possible, as we are unable to progress your matter without it.
Financial Services/Insurance Mediation
In certain situations we advise upon/arrange an insurance policy, such as defective title indemnity insurance.
We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. However, we are included on the register maintained by the Financial Conduct Authority so that we can carry on insurance mediation activity, which is broadly the advising on, selling and administration of insurance contracts. This part of our business, including arrangements for complaints or redress if something goes wrong is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The register can be accessed via the Financial Conduct Authority website at https://register.fca.org.uk/.
Sometimes conveyancing/family/probate/company work involves investments. We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority and so may refer you to someone who is authorised to provide any necessary advice. However, we can provide certain limited services in relation to investments, provided they are closely linked with the legal services we are providing to you, as we are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
The Law Society is a designated professional body for the purposes of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 but responsibility for regulation and complaints handling has been separated from the Law Society’s representative functions. The Solicitors Regulation Authority is the independent regulatory body of the Law Society and the Legal Ombudsman is the independent complaints handling body of the Law Society.
Privacy, Data Protection Act 2018 and UK GDPR
We hold and process your personal information to enable us to provide legal services including advising and acting on your behalf. We also process such personal information to maintain our own accounts and records, to support and manage our employees and to comply with our own legal obligations, for instance pursuant to money laundering legislation.
The personal information referred to above may include your full names and contact details, family details, date of birth, financial details and medical information.
This is a broad description of the way we hold or process personal information. You have certain rights in connection with your personal data.
Please refer to the enclosed Privacy Policy for further details,
Interest Policy
We have a written policy which sets out the circumstances in which we will pay interest to you on funds that we hold for you in client account. We do not pay interest on all funds we hold for you. Our interest policy is available on request from our cashier, Sharon Roberts.
Bank details
Due to the risk of fraud, we ask that you give us your bank details for payments out to you at our first meeting. In order to protect your funds we will not make any payments to you by bank transfer other than to the account details you have given us at our first meeting, nor will we provide details of our account details by e-mail. If you receive an email that appears to come from us providing different bank details from those we have supplied to you or indicating a change in our bank details, please immediately contact me or a member of my staff. We cannot accept responsibility if you transfer money into an incorrect account.
If you wish to vary the bank details you have given us, you may do so in person or in writing but we will generally not be able to accept any changes by e-mail or telephone.