Terms of Business

Our Commitment to You

We aim to offer you quality legal advice with a transparent fee structure. These Terms of Business set out the basis on which we will work for you. As these are standard terms some of them may not be immediately applicable to your matter. However, they may become relevant in the future. We therefore ask you to print out and retain this document for future reference.

Your Instructions to Us

In instructing us to act for you in relation to a particular matter, it is implied that you will be authorising us to take all appropriate measures to protect your interests and to incur reasonable expenses on your behalf in relation to that matter.

Identity and Disclosure

We are required to obtain proof of identity for yourself or for any principal whom you may represent. We will refuse to act for you if you fail to provide an acceptable proof of identity.

We are not allowed to disclose information about a client's affairs without the client's authority. By signing these terms and conditions of business you authorise us to disclose to the other parties in a transaction all information which we have in relation to your involvement in the transaction. You may withdraw this authority at any time, but we will inform the other parties in the transaction and their agents or advisers that this authority has been withdrawn.

The firm will not be liable for any loss, damage or delay arising out of the firm's compliance with any statutory or regulatory requirement. Our advice is provided to you and may not, without our prior written consent, be disclosed to any other party. You will not refer to us or our advice in any public document or communication without our prior written consent.

Limited Companies

When accepting instructions to act on behalf of a limited company, we may require a Director and/or controlling shareholder(s) to sign a form of personal guarantee in respect of the charges and expenses of this firm. If such a request is refused, we will be entitled to stop acting and to require immediate payment of our charges accrued to date.

Fees and Expenses

Because we offer a transparent fee structure, we consider different ways of charging for our services to you. Prior to the commencement of your transaction, we will agree with you the fee structure to be applied in your matter.

The various possible fee structures include hourly rate charges, fixed fees, fees subject to a fee limit, percentage fees based on the value of the transaction and retainer fees.

Our fees take into account and include attending meetings with you and others, reading, considering and working on documentation, making and receiving telephone calls, correspondence (including emails), travelling and waiting time incurred on your transaction and other activities necessary and incidental to your matter.

The factors we take into account in calculating our fees include the complexity of the matter, the need for specialist expertise and the speed at which a transaction has to be completed. In some cases the value of the financial benefit may be considered.

In addition to the time spent, we may arrange for some of the work on your matter to be carried out by persons not directly employed by us. Where we have agreed a fixed fee with you, we will not charge separately for this unless the necessity arose during the transaction, and was not foreseen prior to agreeing our fixed fee with you.

Sometimes payments are required to be made to third parties during a transaction. These are known as 'disbursements', examples of which are travel costs, fax and photocopying expenses, plus consultation with experts. Our fee estimates do not include these payments to third parties, and we have no obligation to make such payments unless you have provided us with the funds for that purpose, and we will therefore ask for funds in advance from you for such payments.

Where we provide you with an estimate of our charges, these are given as a guide only, to assist you in budgeting, and should not be seen as a definitive quotation unless this is specifically agreed in writing.

Value Added Tax

At present the rate of VAT is 17.5%. Our quotations, estimates or agreed fixed fees are subject to the addition of VAT. Most expenses that we pay on your behalf will also be subject to the addition of Value Added Tax.

We will add VAT to your invoice at the rate that applies when the work is done.

Limits to Fees

You may agree with us an upper limit for the fees and expenses that may be incurred by us without further authority in a particular case. This means that you must pay those incurred up to the agreed limit without our needing to refer to you further. Depending on the nature of the work, it may be necessary to review that upper limit with you as the matter or transaction progresses.

Changes to Fees

Our hourly charge-out rates are reviewed with effect from 1 April each year.

Payment Arrangements

Our invoices are payable within 28 days from the invoice date unless we have agreed with you otherwise in writing. If an account is not paid within that period we reserve the right to charge interest for that matter. Interest will be charged on a daily basis at 4% over Lloyds TSB Bank Plc's base rate from time to time.

Where an account is overdue we are entitled to retain documents and papers belonging to you, and our papers, until our account is settled. The firm reserves the right to stop acting for you in the event that any bill or request for payment is not made.

If instructions for a piece of work are given by more than one person or company, we may recover our fees, disbursements and VAT from any one or more of them. This includes situations where one person or company instructs on behalf of another.

We will send you monthly invoices unless otherwise agreed so that you will have a monthly update on the accrued cost of our work.

If a transaction or other matter does not proceed to completion, our fees (together with disbursements and VAT) will still be payable. Any special fee (such as a fixed or capped fee) agreed for a matter will not cover additional work not identified when the arrangement was agreed.

Payments on Account

It is normal practice to ask clients to pay sums of money from time to time on account of the charges and expenses which are expected. If such requests are not met with prompt payment, this may cause delay in the progress of a matter, and where we accept instructions to act for you conditional on the making of a payment on account, we may terminate the retainer if you do not make the payment as requested.

Any money that you pay to us on account will be held in our client account and you will be entitled to interest on it. We will offset that money against your bills, although our total fees and expenses may be greater than any advance payments.

We do not accept payments in cash.

Methods of Communication

We will communicate with you in such method as you request, however, for the sake of convenience, we may communicate with you using normal, non-encrypted email. This form of email is not secure and there is a risk to you if we communicate confidential information to you in this way. We cannot accept liability for any communication which is intercepted or otherwise falls into the hands of those other than the intended recipient. We will assume that we have your consent to communicate with you by this method, unless you advise us otherwise.

Under the Data Protection Act, we are required to advise you that your particulars are held on our database. We may, from time to time, use these details to send you information which we think might be of interest to you.

Storage of Documents

Once your matter is concluded, we will keep your files and papers in storage for not less than 1 year. After that, storage is on the understanding that we have the right to destroy the documents after what we consider a reasonable period or to make a charge for storage.

This policy does not apply to the storage of title documents, title deeds and other valuable documents, which you specifically ask us to keep in safe custody.

If we retrieve papers or documents from storage in relation to continuing or new instructions to act in connection with your affairs, we will normally charge you for the cost to us of that retrieval. We may also make a charge based on time spent producing stored papers or documents to you or another at your request.

Tax Advice

Unless specifically agreed with you in writing in our retainer letter our advice to you will not extend to advice on the tax implications of the work on which we are advising you.

Financial Services and Markets Act 2000

The firm is not authorised under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. We can, however, provide limited investment services if they are incidental to the transaction on which we are acting for you.

Terms and Conditions of Business

Unless otherwise agreed, the firm will accept instructions to act only on these Terms and Conditions of Business.

Although your continuing instructions in a matter will amount to an acceptance of these Terms and Conditions of Business, we may not be able to start work on your behalf until one copy of them has been signed and returned to us, together with any other documentation or information which we request from you.

Confidentiality and Conflicts

Conflicts may arise between your interests and those of another client. Where the firm finds this to be the case, we may be obliged to cease to act for you. If this happens we have the right to withhold details of the conflicting information from you, and to charge you for our fees and disbursements up to the date of ceasing to act for you.

Governing Law

These terms are governed by English law and any disputes arising in connection with these terms are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.

Our agreement with you is personal as between you and us and is not intended to confer any rights of enforcement on any third parties. The Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 shall not apply to our agreement with you.