Terms of business

People responsible for your work

1. Your matter will be dealt with by a partner, assistant, solicitor, paralegal or legal executive. A “Client Care Letter” will be sent to you at the outset of your matter stating the person who will be dealing with your matter and the name of the supervising partner.

2. Sometimes work will need to be delegated to another member of staff where we deem it appropriate to expedite matters or to minimise expense. All staff are closely supervised, and we take complete responsibility for work carried out in this way.

Communication 

We aim to communicate with you by such method as you may request and in plain language.

4. We will review your matter regularly and we will update you with progress on your matter as soon as reasonably possible by telephone or in writing.

5. We may need to virus check discs of email.

6. Unless instructed otherwise, we will communicate with others when appropriate by post, telephone, email or other electronic communication but we cannot be responsible for the security of correspondence and documents sent by such media.

7. We are authorised, unless otherwise stated, to take such action as we think necessary to obtain the required result. We shall not refer to you for specific instructions every time we take a step. If, therefore, there is a limit to what you require us to do, or a limit to expenditure, we must be notified of this in advance.

8. You will provide us with clear, timely and accurate instructions along with all documentation required to complete the transaction in a timely manner.

Complaints Procedure

9. We are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).

We are committed to providing high-quality legal advice and client care. If you feel there is any aspect of our service, billing, or conduct that you are dissatisfied with, we encourage you to inform us promptly so that we can resolve the issue.

Our complaints process involves the following steps:

1. Informal Resolution: Raise concerns directly with the person handling your case
2. Formal Complaint: Escalate to the Managing Partner Tracy Murgatroyd if the issue remains unresolved. Your complaint will be reviewed and you will receive a written response within seven working days
3. If your complaint is against the Managing Partner, your complaint will be dealt with by our Compliance Officer Vidisha Joshi
4. External Escalation: If we are unable to resolve your complaint you may refer the complaint to the Legal Ombudsman or relevant regulatory body.

10. The Legal Ombudsman deals with individuals, small businesses that have an annual turnover of less than £1 million, charities that have an annual income of less than £1 million and trusts that have a net asset value of less than £1 million that meet the following criteria:

• The complaint is made within six months of the date of our final written response.
• The complaint relates to an act or omission that occurred within one year or that you became aware of within the last year.

11. Contact details for the Legal Ombudsman:

• Address: PO Box 6167, Slough SL1 0EH.
• Telephone: 0300 555 0333
• Website: legalombudsman.org.uk

Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)

12. If your concerns relate to dishonesty, ethics, or professional misconduct, you can contact the SRA. Please note that the SRA does not handle complaints about service quality. For further information, visit:

sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor

Commitment to Client Care

13. We are committed to resolving complaints fairly, promptly, and transparently. If you have any questions about this procedure, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Complaining about our fees

14. Please note that our invoices refer to the period of time they describe and cover work already completed for you. If you wish to dispute an invoice sent to you, it is important that you do so as soon as possible and we refer you to our Terms and Conditions.

15. Invoices are payable immediately and are enforceable after 30 days. We reserve the right to take enforcement action and/or apply interest on invoices that are not paid in full after 30 days. If you have any queries regarding items charged for on your invoices, please raise these with the Fee Earner with usual conduct of your matter in the first instance.

16. In order to avoid you incurring additional fees that might be beyond your capacity or willingness to pay, we reserve the right to suspend provision of legal services whilst enquiries are made into the level of your fees.

17. If your invoice relates to contentious work, you may be entitled to have our charges reviewed by the Court by way of a ‘detailed assessment’. If you wish to do this, you should apply to the Court within one month of the date of the invoice. If you apply after one month but within twelve months, the Court may order a detailed assessment but may also order that a sum of money be paid into the Court to cover all or part of the invoice. For more information visit gov.uk/challengesolicitors-bill 

Charges and expenses

18. Unless otherwise specifically agreed, our fees are based mainly on the time spent on your matter by the partner and staff acting for you. This includes: time spent on meetings, drafting of documents; reading and research; preparing and working on papers and correspondence, telephone calls and any time spent travelling or waiting while on client business.

19. The time recorded is costed according to a formula, which gives a charging rate or cost per hour for undertaking work on behalf of our clients, according to the level of fee earner e.g. partner, assistant, solicitor, legal executive or conveyancing executive allocated to the matter (the “charging rate”).

20. These charging rates are reviewed each 1st October. If your matter is not concluded prior to that date, we will confirm in writing the new charging rates that will apply.

21. We will give you a written estimate of the probable cost of the transaction and also of all disbursements which we can reasonably foresee at the start of the matter. We will notify you in writing if for any reason we feel it necessary to vary that estimate and we will explain to you the reason for doing so.

22. We will add VAT to bills at the rate that applies when the work is done. At present, VAT is 20%. 

23. VAT is payable on certain disbursements. We have no obligation to pay disbursements unless you have provided us with the funds for that purpose.

24. We may be incurring expenses in the provision of our advice to you, for example for searches, fees, expenses etc, the cost of which will appear on your bill with the addition of VAT.

Billing arrangements

25. The timing of our bill will depend upon the matter we are undertaking on your behalf, the details of which will be set out in the Client Care Letter.

26. In the event of any bill or request for payment on account not being paid, we reserve the right to decline to act further in the matter. The full amount of work completed up to that date will be the subject of a final bill rendered and will be a debt due from you.

27. We may charge simple interest on unpaid bills from one month after delivery of the bill on a daily basis at the rate of 8% per annum.

Acts of Parliament and regulations give our clients procedures for challenging a solicitor’s bill.

28. Sections 70, 71 and 72 of the Solicitors Act 1974 set out your rights in relation to having the bill assessed by the Court. Should you consider this necessary we will provide you with details of the procedure you must follow. Any application to the Court must be made within one month of the delivery of the bill.

29. You should be aware that the Legal Ombudsman may not consider a complaint about the bill if you have applied to the Court for assessment of the bill.

30. If the whole of the bill has not been paid we are entitled to charge simple interest on the outstanding amount of the bill in accordance with Article 5 of the Solicitors’ (Non-Contentious Business) Remuneration Order 2009. Unless otherwise agreed with you, the rate of interest will be 8% per annum.

31. After completing any work, we are entitled to keep all papers and documents while there is money owing to us for our charges and expenses.

Financial arrangements

32. Our policy is to only accept cash up to the sum of £500.00 from clients. If you ignore this policy and deposit cash direct with our bank we reserve the right to charge for any additional checks we deem necessary regarding this source of the funds.

33. Our bank account details will be provided to you in our Client Care Letter. 

34. Where we have to pay money to you, it will be paid by bank transfer. It will not be paid in cash or to a third party without your written authority.

35. Funds held on behalf of our clients could be affected in the event of the above named bank holding the client account collapsing. In this instance, you may be eligible for compensation from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). The FSCS can pay compensation to consumers if a company is unable, or likely to be unable, to pay claims against it.

36. We can confirm that we are unlikely to be held liable for losses resulting from a banking failure and in the event of the bank collapsing, we will seek consent from you to disclose your details to the FSCS. The compensation limit for lost funds is £85,000.00.

Interest payment

37. In accordance with the Solicitors Accounts Rules 2011 it is our policy to account to clients for interest on a fair and reasonable basis to both the client and the Practice. If we hold money in a separate designed client account on your behalf, we will account to you for the interest earned on that account.

38. If we hold money on your behalf in a general client account, or if money should have been held in an interest-bearing account on your behalf but was not, then we will account to you for a sum in lieu of interest calculated as below. The company does not pay the full rate of interest which it earns on general client funds to clients because this is an enhanced rate that the company can secure from holding large levels of client funds in aggregate. 

39. We will not account to you for any interest in the following situations:

• If the amount of interest would be £50.00 or less;
• On money held for the payment of a professional disbursements if the person to whom the money is owed has requested a delay in settlement;
• On an advance from us into our general client account to fund a payment on your behalf in excess of funds already held for you in that account;
• If there is an agreement between us to contract out of the provision of this policy;
• On funds paid to us in advance on account of our anticipated fees or disbursements;
• Funds held for less than 56 days where the sum held is less than £100,000.00; or you have notified us at the outset of the case that you cannot accept interest on religious grounds. Failure to notify us will result in interest being added when required and sent to you.

40. If applicable we will normally calculate and pay interest once your matter has been concluded. All interest that is paid to you is paid as a Gross amount (unless the law requires otherwise).

41. In calculating interest, we will apply a rate that we reasonably believe reflects the market rate for the relevant sum paid on an instant access current account offered by a UK high street bank over the period when interest is due and calculated on a simple basis and not compounded.

42. We will not be liable to you or any third party for any loss or damage suffered as a result of any act, omission, delay, negligence, insolvency or default of any bank, financial institution, clearing or payments system nor that of the directors, officers, employees, agents or representatives of any of the foregoing. The Practice has an active policy of considering the potential exposure of client funds to commercial risks and regularly reviews the choice of banking institutions where the Practice holds client funds.

43. This policy will be reviewed from time to time to ensure the overriding objectives are met.

Storage of papers and documents

44. Concluded files will, at our discretion be stored, committed to microfilm or scanned and stored electronically.

45. Where stored, the file of papers will be kept in storage for not less than six years. After that, storage is on the clear understanding that we have the right to destroy papers after such period as we consider reasonable or to make a charge for storage if we ask you to collect the papers and you fail to do so.

46. We will not destroy any original documents such as Wills, deeds and other securities, which we have been asked to hold in safe custody. No charge will be made for such storage unless prior notice in writing is given of a charge to be made from the future date which may be specified in that notice.

47. If we retrieve papers or documents from storage in relation to continuing or new instructions to act, we will not normally charge for such retrieval. However, we will make a charge based on time spent for producing stored papers or documents for you or for another party at your request where there are no continuing or new instructions to act. This charge is currently £75 plus VAT.

Limit of our liability to you

48. You agree that the limits on our liability set out in these Terms are reasonable in all the circumstances including the availability and cost of professional indemnity insurance.

49. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability where the law prevents us from doing so, including liability for death, personal injury, fraud, or fraudulent misrepresentation.

50. We are not liable for any special, indirect, or consequential loss or damage, whether or not it was foreseeable. This includes loss of profit, revenue, income, business, opportunities, goodwill, or similar economic loss.

51. We are not liable for loss or damage caused by events beyond our reasonable control (“force majeure”), where those events prevent us from providing our services.

52. We are not liable for any loss or damage that arises because we comply with our legal or regulatory duties. This includes delays or disclosures required under anti-money laundering laws.

53. We are not responsible for the acts, omissions, or services of any third party, even if we instruct them on your behalf or use their services to assist with your matter.

54. We are not liable for losses caused by the failure of any bank where client funds are deposited.

55. We owe duties only to our clients. We accept no liability for professional negligence to anyone who is not our client. These Terms do not give any rights to third parties. The Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 does not apply.

56. Our maximum liability to you, whether in contract, tort, breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, for all claims, losses, liabilities, costs, and expenses arising out of our engagement is £3,000,000 (three million pounds), or such higher limit as we notify you of in your client care letter.

57. This cap applies regardless of the basis of liability (for example, negligence, breach of contract, or breach of statutory duty) and regardless of the type of loss or damage, except where the law prevents us from excluding or limiting liability.

58. Our services are provided by our lawyers on behalf of the firm. You agree not to bring claims personally against any of our people, including partners, members, or directors, for loss or damage arising from our services. This does not affect your right to claim compensation, where appropriate, from the firm itself or from our insurers.

59. We will only advise you on matters within the scope of our agreed instructions. We cannot advise outside our expertise. In particular, we do not provide tax advice, advice on the law of other jurisdictions, or financial or accounting advice.

60. Further details on the name and contact details of our insurer and the territorial coverage of the insurance policy can be provided on request and/or can be made available for you to inspect at the Practice’s offices.

Financial services and insurance contracts

61. We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. We are, however, included on the register maintained by the Financial Services Authority so that we may carry on insurance mediation activity, which are broadly the advising on and 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 website at fca.org.uk.

62. We may carry limited investment advice services where these are closely linked to the legal work we are doing for you because we are members of the Law Society of England and Wales.

63. 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. The Legal Ombudsman is the independent complaints handling body who will investigate any complaints made against solicitors.

64. At your request further details on the professional rules applicable to solicitors and how to access those rules can be made available for you.

Identity, disclosure and confidentiality of business

65. The law (Money Laundering Regulations 2017) requires us to:

• Obtain information about a client’s identity and to verify that information.
• Obtain identity information about people related to the client (beneficial owners), where relevant and at times verify that information.
• Continue to monitor the transaction and keep identity information up to date.

66. This is because solicitors who deal with money and property on behalf of their client can be used by criminals wishing to launder money. In order to comply with the law on money laundering we will need to obtain evidence of your identity as soon as practicable.

67. If you are an individual we will require you to provide a current valid full passport (original or certified copy) or a current photocard driving licence (original or certified copy).

68. If you are unable to provide a passport or driving licence please provide one of the following:-

(a) National identity card or resident’s permit (original or certified copy)

(b) Firearms certificate (original or a certified copy)

(c) State pension or benefit book (original or a certified copy)

(d) H M Revenue and Customs tax notification (original or a certified copy)

69. In addition to the above we will, like most practices, use an Agency to verify your identity. We make a charge for this of £35.00 plus VAT per name and £35.00 plus VAT for any company (and £35.00 plus VAT per name of any beneficial owners of that company).

70. If you are a company we will require you to provide:

(a) Certificate of incorporation (or equivalent) and memorandum and articles of association (original or a certified copy)

(b) Evidence of current registered address

(c) Latest report and accounts (audited where applicable) (copy)

(d) Identification evidence as for individuals above for at least two officers of the company

(e) List of shareholders (with their percent shareholdings)/corporate partners and identification evidence as for individuals above for each shareholder with more than 20% holding in the company (f) Power of attorney and/or Board Resolution (authorising person who will provide instructions to us to act) (original or a certified copy)

71. If you are a partnership or unincorporated business we will require you to provide:

(a) List of partners/owners and identification evidence as for individuals above for all partners

(b) Latest report and accounts (audited where applicable) (copy)

(c) Evidence of trading address

(d) Mandate from partnership or owners authorising person who will provide instructions to us to act (original or a certified copy)

72. We, as solicitors, are under a professional and legal obligation to keep the affairs of our clients’ confidential, however:

• Money laundering regulations may require disclosure of confidential information by law. Recent legislation on money laundering and terrorist financing has placed solicitors under a legal duty in certain circumstances to disclose information to the National Crime Agency. Please note that we accept no responsibility for any loss arising from compliance with the Money Laundering Provisions of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and any amending legislation howsoever caused.
• The Solicitors Regulation Authority and other supervisory bodies may call for a file which is the subject of a complaint.
• A Court order can compel disclosure of confidential material in certain circumstances.
• Where 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, while we are acting for you, it becomes necessary to make a money laundering disclosure, we may not be able to inform you that a disclosure has been made or of the reasons for it.
• External firms or organisations may conduct audit or quality checks on our practice from time to time. They may wish to audit/quality check your file and related papers for this purpose. It is a specific requirement imposed by us that these external firms or organisations fully maintain confidentiality in relation to any files and papers which are audited/quality checked by them.
• Your file may be reviewed in a due diligence exercise relating to the sale or transfer of all or part of our business, the acquisition of another business by us or the acquisition of new business.
• Your file may be required to be seen by an assessor from our insurance company if required for insurance purposes.

73. Acceptance of these terms and conditions is deemed to include consent to such disclosures, as well as consent to allowing us to send the contents of your file to a third-party auditors and, if applicable, to our insurers. This consent may be withdrawn by you in writing at any time.

GDPR – Data Protection Notice and Communication between you and us

74. On 25th May 2018 the Data Protection Act 2018 (“the act”) came into legal effect. The act controls how your personal information is used by organisations, businesses or the government.

75. Adviser Legal Limited (“the firm”) is required to obtain your consent to the holding and use of your personal data. Legislation requires us to inform you that your data will be held on our database. The data will be held by the firm in manuscript, written, electronic and in specialist legal and accounting format. It will be held on the cloud as well as securely at our offices. We may, from time to time, use these details to send you information. We do not make this information available to other providers of goods or services. We may be required to provide details to Government Agencies by law, i.e. HMRC or police. This will be governed by our professional rules.

Use of your data

76. We only use your data for the purposes of providing you with legal advice, assistance and where appropriate, representation and for reasons directly associated with those services (i.e. providing information to quality auditors etc.).

In particular:

• to deliver our services
• to manage our relationship and communicate with you
• to provide you with advice or guidance about our services
• to make and manage payments
• to respond to complaints and seek to resolve them
• to train our staff and measure the quality of the service we give to clients.

77. We also use data to communicate with our regulators or legislators and to obey laws, regulations and codes of conduct that apply to us. For example, we will process your data to enable us to identify and/or verify your identity and conduct fraud, credit and anti-money laundering checks in accordance with anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing legislation and regulation.

78. We may use your data to notify you of our other services but only where we have your consent to do so.

79. We also use data to develop our business and services. In particular:

• to respond to individual experiences shared with us and for editorial content to enhance your online experience
• to conduct research and surveys
• to develop and manage our services including marketing of new or enhanced services
• to research your views and experiences for research and editorial purposes, including requests for feedback on our services
• to understand your website journey, including what pages you have viewed and for how long
• to administer and keep safe and secure our website and for internal operations, including data analysis, testing, statistical purposes.

Cookies

80. A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added, and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

81. By law, we may not place cookies on your computer without your consent, unless they are strictly necessary to the operation of the service that we provide on the Website, e.g. We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

84. On occasion we may consider that we ought to stop acting for you. If this is the case, we will give you reasonable notice that we will stop acting for you and provide an explanation for our reasons for doing so.

85. If you, or we, decide that we should stop acting for you, you will pay our charges up to that point. The charges will be calculated as set out in the Client Care Letter.

86. Under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, for some consumer instructions, you may have the right to withdraw, without charge, within 14 days of the date on which we were asked to act. 

Limited companies

87. When accepting instructions to act on behalf of a limited company, we may require a director and/or controlling shareholder to sign a form of personal guarantee in respect of the charges and expenses of this Practice. If such a request is refused, we will be entitled to stop acting and to require immediate payment of our charges on an hourly basis and expenses as set out earlier.

Referral arrangements

88. We may pay a referral fee for work to be referred to us. In such a situation we will inform you in writing and will tell you what fee we have paid. The advice which we give to you will be independent and we will treat you the same as any other client. You are free to raise questions on all aspects of the transaction and any information which you disclose to us will be treated as confidential and not disclosed to the referrer or to any other third party without your consent. We will not act for the referred in connection with the same transaction in any way at all and you are under no obligation to instruct us in connection with the transaction.

Terms and Conditions of Business

89. If you require clarification on any of the above points, please do not hesitate to contact us. Unless otherwise agreed and subject to the application of currently hourly rates, these Terms and Conditions of Business shall apply to any future instructions given to us.

90. Although continuing instructions in this matter will amount to an acceptance of these Terms and Conditions of Business, it may not be possible for us to start work on your behalf until one copy of the Terms and Conditions of Business has been returned to us for us to keep on our file.