Terms & ConditionsTerms for the Provision of Legal Services and Regulatory matters
When we act for Clients our regulatory body, the Solicitors Regulation Authority, requires us to provide certain information about our firm and the basis upon which we act. We write a letter to all clients at the outset of each new matter we handle to give this required information. This letter is commonly referred to as a "client care" letter.
We are not authorised by the Financial Services Authority. However, we are included on the register maintained by the Financial Services 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 Services Authority Web site at: www.fsa.gov.uk/register. We are also able, in certain circumstances, to offer a limited range of investment services to you because we are members of the Law Society. We can provide these investment services if they are an incidental part of the professional services we have been engaged to provide. If you have any problem with any services we provide for you in this context then please let us know. We will try to resolve any problem quickly and operate an internal complaints handling system to help us to resolve the problem between ourselves. If for any reason we are unable to resolve the problem between us, then we are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which also provides a complaints and redress scheme.
Property-related work
If we carry out property-related work for you we will require you to confirm, by returning the duplicate copy of our client care letter , that we are irrevocably appointed as your agents for the purposes of completing any Stamp Duty Land Tax return (including filing returns on-line as your agent) and making full disclosure of any information in our possession relating to your transaction and authorising us to retain such papers as may be required in connection with any subsequent enquiry by the Stamp Office
Confirmation of instructions
Please note that, save in case of emergency, we usually need clients to confirm to us in writing their understanding that the terms and conditions in our client care letter will apply to any instructions received from them before we can carry out any substantial work on their behalf. Delays in providing this may affect your case.
Identification and Anti-Money laundering procedures
The Law now requires Solicitors, as well as banks, building societies, and others, to obtain satisfactory evidence of the identity of their clients. We will therefore ask all clients to provide us with documents to verify their identity and address. We will give full details of applicable requirements in speciific cases with our client care letter.
Although solicitors are normally under a professional and legal obligation to keep the affairs of clients confidential there are statutory exceptions in relation to recent legislation on money laundering and terrorist financing where solicitors have a legal duty to disclose information to the Serious Organised Crime Agency. If a solicitor knows or suspects that a transaction on behalf of a client involves money laundering, the solicitor may be required to make a money laundering disclosure. If this happens, we will neither be able to inform clients that a disclosure has been made nor of the reasons for it because the law prohibits “tipping-off”.
Responsibility for work
You will be assigned a named member of our staff who will deliver legal services for you, if for any reason you are unable to contact that person you should please always ask for their secretary who will be familiar with your file. If the secretary is unable to help you directly they will be pleased to take a message for you and will let the named member of staff know of your call so that they can personally deal with your enquiry as soon as possible.
The Principals of this firm with ultimate responsibility for any transaction are J. A. Buxton and N. P. Fluck. We aim to offer all of our clients an efficient and effective service and we are confident that we will meet or exceed your requirements.
Setting ourselves standards
We try to ensure that we maintain a high standard of excellence with regards to client care and in particular that:
- Clients receive copies, or have explained to them, any important correspondence.
- Clients’ telephone calls are returned during the course of the same day wherever possible.
- Correspondence is attended to on the day of receipt.
- Appointments are made for clients without undue delay.
There are other standards, which govern the way in which we deal with clients’ transactions, but those set out above are the ones that will be most obvious to you in our dealings with you. We ask all clients to remind us if they feel that we are not keeping to these standards.
What we expect from our clients
We expect clients to respond to any requests for information or further instructions promptly and we know they will understand that we cannot accept responsibility for delays caused solely by our inability to obtain information or instructions from a client or client's third party advisors.
We expect clients to pay to us in advance any monies we may need to pay out to third parties in connection with the legal services we are delivering for them.
Where any transaction is lengthy or where our fees and costs are likely to be substantial we will submit interim accounts to our clients and we reserve the right not to carry out any further work or accept any further instructions from them whilst any such interim account remains unpaid.
In some cases we may agree special payment arrangements with clients for their convenience. Subject to status we may be able to agree to receive regular retainer payments to help clients spread the costs of legal services over a period of time.
Fees
Our fees are calculated by reference to the time spent by the named staff member and any associated staff in dealing with the requested legal services.
This includes advising the client, dealing with papers, telephone calls and all forms of correspondence.
The status of the named staff member will be confimed in our client care letter and an estimate of the length of chargeable time we think is likely to be incurred will be given.
We will usually update such time estimates on a monthly and certainly on not less than a six-monthly basis as we deal with the matter.
In addition to time charges our charges may also contain an element based on the value at issue in a transaction. This is because that value is a measure of the responsibility that the firm takes in dealing with the matter. We have never levied an additional charge will never exceed 1% of the total value in issue in the transaction and such a charge will only be made in a case where it has been disclosed, discussed and quantified to you in advance of any account.
Please note:
- Our fees and other charges do not include VAT, which we are required to add to our accounts.
- All accounts submitted to you are due for payment immediately and may be deducted by us from any monies we hold on your behalf.
- If our accounts are not paid within twenty-eight days we reserve the right to charge interest on the account at the rate stated on it.
- If the transaction is protracted or where our fees and costs are likely to be substantial we may deliver interim bills for work carried out.
- If we are required to handle monies electronically for you we will charge a handling fee on a per matter basis and the charge levied by our bank from time to time as a disbursement.
- Special considerations apply if we have given a quotation for our fees. In these circumstances we will not normally charge more than the quoted sum however if problems occur during the course of the work which require additional work to resolve we will notify you as soon as this becomes apparent and thereafter we reserve the right to charge for such additional work at normal hourly rates.
- If a transaction does not proceed for any reason or if you should withdraw instructions to act for you at any stage we will only charge you the hourly rate applicable to the time spent together with the amount of any unpaid disbursements made on your behalf. This charge may be as much as, but will not exceed, the total charge for the time estimate given.
Service Issues
We hope that clients never have cause for complaint about any aspect of our Firm’s services but we encourage any client who feels we are not meeting their expectations to draw this to the attention of the Senior Partner, Mr. Buxton, in writing, so we can deal with their concerns as quickly as possible.
